Case Study:

Tilburg University

How University beat the odds, diversified and doubled their growth of international students STRATEGIC COLLABORATION AND ADVANCED OMNI-CHANNEL STUDENT JOURNEY ANALYTICS

How Tilburg University beat the odds and doubled their international student growth, while increasing quality and diversity.

#Winning Strategies 1 Introduction New recruitment methods to stay ahead of the game

With ever increasing offer in international-oriented university programmes and each institution, city, country and continent having ambitious goals in the 'chase for talent’, international student recruitment is an increasingly competitive field for universities worldwide. University marketing staff need to master all modern communication channels to attract their best-fit prospective students.

Studyportals is on a mission to make education transparent globally. In 2019, over 36 million students used Studyportals to explore over 200,000 degree options abroad. For universities, Studyportals is a result-based partner for international student recruitment and marketing, revolutionising the way universities reach a global audience and optimise their student population, in a digital, transparent and result-committed way.

This case study shows how Tilburg University collaborates with Studyportals and how it has helped them to qualitatively outgrow many other universities while building a future proof, measured funnel for effective talent recruitment.

This study also shares the results of a comprehensive student- journey touchpoint analysis, outlining the students' journey from discovery to enrolment into Tilburg University and Studyportals' role in their decision making. 2 The Case Study Meet our client & the institution

Fernanda Guimarães Global External Affairs Representative Tilburg University

Fernanda Guimarães is the Global External Affairs Representative at Tilburg University. She has been working for the Marketing and Recruitment department of Tilburg University since 2016.

Fernanda is currently responsible for the global external affairs and international representatives, acting also as the contract manager for Studyportals. Her connection with the university started in 2013 when she did her pre-master’s and subsequently, the master’s studies in Culture Studies: of Cultural Diversity.

Tilburg University

Tilburg University is a public university specialising in the social and behavioural sciences, , , business sciences, theology and humanities, located in Tilburg, the . With its motto ‘Understanding Society’, Tilburg University aims is to contribute to solving complex social issues.

The university counted 17,378 students in 2019 – including 3,105 international students, 71 Bachelors & Masters of which 48 in English, and over 74,000 Alumni since 1927, +6,900 international. The Case Study 2 (continued)

Tilburg University Rankings:

• #6 worldwide in Business Administration, Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, 2019

• Top 75 worldwide in Business & Economics, Law and , Times Higher Education World University Ranking, 2020

• Top 100 QS Rankings by Subject, 2020 worldwide in Accounting & Finance, Management & Business, Economics & Econometrics, Law & Legal Studies, and Psychology

Global Student Satisfaction Awards 2019 The Global Student Satisfaction Awards empower students across the globe to determine the best universities of 2019. By rating institutions on a scale from 1 to 5, on multiple studies-related questions, we found the top educators of the world.

Besides international academic recognitions, in 2019, Tilburg University received 3 Global Student Satisfaction awards, based on Studyportals students’ shared experiences. It is a remarkable achievement, granted by international students themselves, who shared their first- hand experience of studying at Tilburg University. 3 The Goal Growing to 20,000 students by 2025

Tilburg University has done large investments into teaching, developing new programmes, state of the art teaching facilities, but has limited marketing budgets. Nonetheless, the university leadership defined ambitious growth goals, as of 2016.

The aim was to grow from 14,000 students to 20,000 students by 2025, and considerably increase the number of international students with a focus on student quality and fit.

The strategy to achieve this implied reimagining their traditional student recruitment methods with the help of digital tools, while smartly investing the marketing budget in provable results. Omni-channel student 4 recruitment

Tilburg University employs a wide range of marketing and recruitment activities, ranging from physical (and virtual) events, paid online advertisements, social media, alumni/ ambassadors/ peer-to-peer marketing, PR, print to student recruitment agents, and Studyportals services. It was important to assess the role each activity plays to come to the best-possible mix and ROI. 5 The Solution Studyportals Partnership

The marketing and recruitment team was striving to find the most optimal and effective, ‘no cure-no pay’ cooperation model – a risk-free cooperation, letting both partners play to their strengths, aimed at all-round promotion and compensation for successful and tangible results of international recruitment.

In order to achieve the ambitious growth plan of Tilburg University and to minimise the university’s commercial risk, Studyportals and Tilburg University agreed on an innovative Enrolment-based Partnership.

The Enrolment-based Partnership focuses on long-term cooperation with close communication between the university and Studyportals teams. Together we share the same goal and success – attracting talented students from all over the world.

Studyportals takes the risk, providing unlimited exposure, dedicating more resources to the digital marketing promotion worldwide and by that increasing interest among more relevant candidates. As a result, Studyportals helps the university attract the best-fit prospective international students. Implementation & 6 Service

Key actions taken by Studyportals:

• Rapidly expanded reach and discoverability of studies by publishing the complete portfolio of English-taught degree programmes

• Presenting relevant and up-to-date information for a well-informed study choice of interested students

• Offering ‘best fit’ tool for students to assess their academic and financial fit for the programme of interest

• Contributing to Tilburg University's worldwide online brand exposure: delivering high-quality traffic of interested students to the university's website

• Measuring campaign results throughout the full funnel

• Assessing and recalibrating on measured conversion rates and the university’s strategic objectives Implementation & 6 Service (continued)

The partnership started on the 1st of April 2018, with the promotion of all Bachelor’s, Master’s and Pre-Master’s English taught degree programmes on Studyportals.

The tracking set up was achieved with:

• Individual UTM links for tracking purposes of traffic coming from Studyportals to Tilburg University website

• Anonymous Pixel tracking of completed university applications

• Encrypted comparison of Tilburg University’s and Studyportals’ data

Throughout the partnership there were intensive collaboration & multiple touchpoints: multiple alignment meetings between Studyportals’ team and the Marketing and Communication team of Tilburg University, as well as, strategic meetings aiming at outlining the priorities, challenges, sharing the enrolment projections and annually reflecting on the delivered results. The most recent strategic meeting took place in February 2020, where the performance to date was reviewed in detail and expansion and further innovation in the partnership was agreed for at least three years more. 7 Main Results

Below are the campaign results from 1 April 2018 to 31 December 2020

6,208,874 Impressions (Programmes presented to relevant students)

281,937 Views (Students selecting the program and reading details) 45,486 Referrals (Interested students forwarded to the university)

695 Fully tracked and confirmed new international enrolments 7 Main Results As the Partnership started in April 2018, and students typically take 12-18 months from discovery to enrolment, only a part of the results is yielded before the end of 2020.​

Also, due to conservative tracking, only a part of the students can be tracked from discovery to enrolment. The full enrolment effect of the partnership is estimated at 850-1100 enrolments. This is also confirmed by the increase in overall growth data of the university.

Total tracked and confirmed enrolments per intake

350 325

300

247 250

200

150

100

45 50 40 38

0 Autumn 2018 Spring 2019 Autumn 2019 Spring 2020 Autumn 2020 7 Main Results

Additionally, the partnership has contributed to also achieving the diversity goal: the identified enrolments originated from 60 countries.

Count of country of origin

40 0 Key findings of the 8 student journey analysis Key findings of the journey analysis of the tracked enrolments and all their touchpoints:

On average, the confirmed enrolments were registered to be active on Studyportals during a period of 280 days throughout their study choice process.

78% of confirmed enrolments were active earlier on Studyportals than with any other touchpoint tracked by the university.

Of those 78% that were active with Studyportals earlier, were so for 163 days before they first registered on Tilburg University’s systems and were also still active for 117 days after they registered with the University.

Studyportals was by majority the medium where the students discovered the university and its offer, but they were also active throughout their whole decision-making process, including when making the final choice between multiple offers from universities. Key findings of the 8 student journey analysis In a combination of various promotional efforts online and offline, Tilburg University has achieved remarkable results attracting more international students over the course of the past 4 years.

Year on year growth rate of international students at Tilburg University

35% 30% 30% 27%

25% 22%

20%

14% 15%

10%

5%

0% 2017 2018 2019 2020

Start strategic partnership

With this positive trend, Tilburg University and their international Marketing and Communications team are on track to reach their ambitious growth goal by 2025. 9 Key Benefits ‘Studyportals is an innovative company, which is How did you supportive and flexible in their business model, so experience the that it fits best to their clients’ strategy and needs. overall collaboration There were complex and challenging projects and with Studyportals? trajectories, but Studyportals showed its willingness and cooperation along the way.’

‘Studyportals was open for feedback and tried to How did you adjust their business model and advise Tilburg experience the University every time it was necessary. Studyportals support & advice team is definitely open for feedback, proactive, and that you received manages to implement requests and changes and from Studyportals? always responds in due time.’

How did you experience the ‘The strategic account management from Studyportals promotion & tracking enabled Tilburg University to set up the promotional set-up and alignment activities in close collaboration, and align the input, at the start of the throughput and output.’ collaboration?

‘Studyportals offers comprehensive information and helps international students with comparing their available Can you compare the options and limits the options list based on their profile; results with this was exactly what Tilburg University needed, as Studyportals to other addition to their omni-channel marketing strategy. marketing efforts? The most outstanding advantage of the partnership with Studyportals is their place as the innovative strategic, marketing and recruitment first mover.’ 10 Get in touch

Increase brand Capture student Convert interest awareness interest, diversify into enrolments

When students are Have informed and Track the full student finding their dream interested students journey, measure the programme, make sure referred to your university ROI of your digital your university stands and programme landing campaign, reduce your out through SEO, search pages and capture risk and scale your results, targeted requests for additional result. banners, emails information. and newsletters.

Student-first Transparency Best fit Diversity Best tracking Results-driven

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