Improving Enrollment via Social Media Campaigns

A case study on the use of Facebook Campaigns and Commercials to advance school enrollment.

Established in 1929 by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mount Sacred Heart School is a private, catholic, coeducational institution open to students of San Antonio and the surrounding areas. Through their elementary, middle school, and montessori programs they serve children from ages 2 1/2 to 8th grade. Mount Sacred Heart is focused on a multi-faceted curriculum with traditional academic and honors programs as well as special studies in musical theater, speech, drama, dance, music, band, athletics, art, and more.

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Challenges and Objectives:

Mount Sacred Heart was looking for new ways to increase enrollment numbers and educate the public on the indispensable value that a venerable catholic institution provides in education. This desire came along with challenges from new competition in the form of free charter schools, increased school choice options, and the announcement from their founding Sisters for the need for new management for the school given their declining numbers.

In the face of that, Mount Sacred Heart chose Mastic to aid them specifically with enrollment campaigns and concrete lead nurturing and capture for families who were considering a quality catholic education.

Solutions:

From that need and partnership, we came up with a very efficient solution in the form of short creative commercials shot and professionally edited on site by Mastic’s production team. These commercials were meant to be warm, creative and establish rapport and relationship with interested parents and their families.

The commercials were then distributed via Facebook campaigns and Custom Audiences exclusively to reach a B2C market of parents interested in a change for their child. Expert data sciences were used to identify parents most likely to exit consideration stages and engage with the school directly. Those parents most likely to do so were targeted first and foremost. Secondarily, research options such as the school website and extra landing pages were also linked to these campaigns for those families still in the consideration stage and therefore needing more information before engaging the school to make a decision.

Mount Sacred Heart has directly employed these solutions with Mastic Media for over two years and we are honored to have them as a client.

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Results:

• Per campaign, each video averaged roughly 15,000 views from over 8000 people with an average viewership frequency of 1.7 times per person. This kind of viewership entered new families into the awareness and consideration stages of their enrollment cycle upon being inspired by the media and helped more families in the consideration stages enter the final decision making stage as well.
  

• The end result was an average of 7-14 families per Facebook Video campaign. Each prospect’s dollar value per child amounted to revenues of $44K to $77K in leads per campaign. These leads were captured, given expectations of next contact, and passed on to their admission’s team for closing and final enrollment.
  

• Each campaign netted an average minimum ROI of 300% over the cost of the campaign itself. Some campaigns netted up to 550% and 800% respectively above the cost of service.

Future Plans:

Mount Sacred Heart has continued to be a loyal client up until present day even despite the Coronavirus. Their latest campaign yielded some of the highest net returns in the history of our relationship post-coronavirus shutdowns. Mount Sacred Heart plans to keep advancing their programs and is opening a new Mother Cabrini center under the new guiding hand of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, who came to aid the school as both benefactor and management when the Sisters of the Sacred Heart sought relief. Future projects are in discussion regarding a re-design of their site to optimize future conversions and improve the prospective families experience.