Campaign Development

The Opportunity

The pandemic put online learning in the spotlight, skyrocketing demand from customers unfamiliar with the format. As the world moved from panic to “new normal,” edX was primed to connect with a new audience looking for paths forward. At the same time, a homepage pop-up survey revealed that only 30% of new visitors to the platform knew what subject they wanted to learn.

The Solution

Connect the 70% of site visitors seeking direction with pathways to careers in high-growth fields + draw new audiences searching for similar guidance through clear, easy-to-follow content:

• Created well-researched, SEO-optimized landing pages positioned as timely career guides for subject areas like data science, computer science, supply chain, + more

• Infused content with edX faculty and learner visuals and expertise, using real people to build trust

• Packaged quotes, infographics, videos, stats, and more into digestible, actionable advice with bold colors and text for easy sharing across social and email channels

• Wove in CTAs as exit ramps to relevant edX courses and programs

The Impact

Overall, the career guides grew into the top 5 blog pages driving organic traffic, increased conversion on paid + owned channels, and fueled months of content for site, email, and social. Learning from testing, the highest-engagement templates became a part of our evergreen email and social content strategies.

• Career guides achieved page-one ranking for competitive, high-value keywords such as data science career + supply chain career

• Social promotion of career guide pieces earned 14% above average engagement

• Emails featuring the guides doubled average conversion rate

• Faculty collaboration strengthened relationships, with many participants acting as influencers via promoting the guides on their own channels and drawing new audiences

The Opportunity

Use Ashley Furniture customer story as vehicle to build brand awareness and credibility for Formlabs within the manufacturing vertical, focusing on two key audiences:

• Director-level decision makers who associate 3D printing with aspirational, business-level change

• Production engineers (end users), with potential to champion impactful tech that will make their and others’ jobs easier

The Solution

We set out to construct a story and assets that would feel authentic to our target audience and be easily shareable across channels, extending the story beyond a single moment into a more cohesive campaign.

• Created a shot list that captured content for already-planned marketing roadmap (e.g., paid ads, social videos, etc.) in addition to core story

• Captured visuals of industrial tech and environments, including people, alongside 3D printed parts that could be used to instantly communicate recognizable context, both in this story and in other future assets

• Mapped core story characters to personas, grounding story in problems and opportunities they care about + created separate blog and video assets specifically aimed at each audience

• Worked with team to develop new video animation style to identify 3D printed parts and their materials in context — especially for shorter form executions like social

• Presented story to entire company to position as “hero” example for Formlabs products as low-risk high-impact purchases for large manufacturers

The Impact

We carried forward this new video visual language into future projects and successfully used campaign assets to reach and convert new customers as evidenced by core landing page metrics:

• Awareness: core blog was the 4th most visited Formlabs web page the week of posting

• Engagement: core video earned 9 min average time on page and a <50% bounce rate

• Lead generation/funnel movement: 5+% (100s) of visitors exited on relevant CTA pages, including: request a sample part, product pages, industry page, and white paper download

The Opportunity

edX was acquired by publicly-traded edtech company 2U in Fall ‘21. Our new team and leadership proposed a multi-million dollar investment in a brand campaign that would create awareness of edX (and our recently updated brand) for new audiences and drive performance for a portfolio of key courses and programs. Investment included opportunity for outdoor (billboards and airport digital signage), paid digital ads and social, and additional organic channels.

The Solution

I worked with our new and legacy team plus an external agency to manage creative concepting and production of a campaign system grounded in eye-catching curiosity-centric prompts. The design and copy system needed to be able to scale across dozens of iterations for paid ads and landing pages for specific disciplines and programs.

• Briefed and partnered with agency to create strong repeatable prompt, “we all have more to learn, start with edX,” and visual design templates to prioritize info in clear hierarchy

• Worked with designers to create collections of background images across subject areas, approved as a batch, to streamline production and launch of final assets

• Reviewed copy master doc alongside leadership to finalize approach and tone ahead of assigning final pieces

• Prioritized higher level prompts for more general audiences (outdoor) and discipline-specific messaging for paid, targeted content

The Impact

The campaign was delivered on time and on budget, and resulted in upticks in organic traffic in targeted markets against controls. Outdoor in particular, a new medium for edX, outperformed benchmarks as reported by our media placement agency partner.

Paid campaigns were lauded by university partners and created a baseline of leads for demand generation teams focused on building learner pipelines for new nurture programs.