The Most Effective Scholarship Marketing Strategies
with Client Success Stories
Knowing how to effectively promote your scholarships to students can be a vital aspect of driving applications, and when it comes to scholarships, you want to make sure you’re targeting the right students based on the specific eligibility requirements that vary from scholarship to scholarship.
Employing a targeted marketing strategy can help ensure that you not only increase your number of applications, but also the quality of the students who apply.
There are lots of options to promote your awards on ScholarshipsCanada.com, including:
Featured Scholarship Listings
A Featured Scholarship listing can be instrumental to your marketing plan. It means your scholarship will display on ScholarshipsCanada.com, which receives over 100,000 visitors each month! This means your listing has the potential to receive thousands of views and hundreds of clicks.
Targeted One-Off Email Campaigns: A Case Study
A targeted drip email campaign is one of the best ways to reach the students that match your scholarship’s eligibility criteria. Using our database of over 1,000,000 students, we can target them based on age, location, program(s) of interest, academic average, heritage, and more.
In particular, sending a one-off email campaign about your scholarship can really help to generate interest and applications for your award.
Using this highly targeted marketing approach, Manulife saw the largest source of their applications come from ScholarshipsCanada.
Here is a case study with Manulife:
Objective
To generate more applications for Manulife’s scholarship program.
Target Audience
Canadian students studying at a post-secondary institution who’ve experienced the loss of a parent or guardian.
Method
We sent one email to two groups: eligible students as well as school counsellors.
Student Email
students reached
%
unique open rate
application clicks
Counsellor Email
counsellors reached
%
unique open rate
application clicks
The Results
Using this highly targeted marketing approach, Manulife saw the largest source of their applications come from ScholarshipsCanada.
Our campaign was a big success! We are very happy with the results from our Scholarships Canada ad and email campaign. Once again this year, most of our applications came from the Scholarships Canada website. To be more specific, of the 402 applications that came in, 160 were from Scholarships Canada and 44 were from a school or school advisor.
Targeted Drip Campaigns: A Case Study
An even more effective way to reach students via email is with a targeted drip campaign. Using the same targeting metrics, a drip email campaign involves a series of emails to the same group leading up to your deadline. This has been proven to be a more effective way to increase engagement and ultimately applications.
Here is a case study with Electro-Federation Canada (EFC):
Objective
To generate more applications for EFC’s electrical industry scholarship program.
Target Audience
Students studying an electrical or related program at a Canadian post-secondary institution.
Method
Using drip marketing, we targeted eligible students and sent 4 emails from March – April, which produced stronger, more cost-efficient applications.
Email 1: Building Awareness
Subject Line
Noah, get access to $130,000 worth of scholarships!
Preheader
If you’re going into your 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year at a Canadian post-secondary institution, this is your chance to make a dent in your education costs!
students reached
%
unique open rate
application clicks
By using a personalized subject line and preheader, we were able to achieve a high open rate and generate application clicks.
Emails 2-4: Generating Awareness & Applications
The next three emails provided brief details about the scholarships and employed catchy phrases such as “don’t miss out!” to increase engagement and ultimately clicks.
Email 2
students reached
%
unique open rate
application clicks
Email 3
students reached
%
unique open rate
application clicks
Email 4
students reached
%
unique open rate
application clicks
The Results
Overall, 52% of students opened one or more of the emails — almost double the unique open rate of any of the individual campaigns! By sending a series of emails up until your deadline, you can ensure a greater number of applications.
“We have again partnered with The SchoolFinder Group and last weekend deployed an email promoting our program to 5,000 students across Canada in their database and featured the program on their ScholarshipsCanada.com website. The email campaign had a 35% open rate and we are conducting two more campaigns before the May 31st deadline.
When I accessed the application site there were 300 student applications already in the system. This is the largest amount I have seen at the end of March!”
Next Steps
If you have any questions about starting a scholarship program or would like to discuss managing, marketing or adjudicating your existing scholarship program, contact us at:
The SchoolFinder Group Team
info@schoolfindergroup.com
Further reading:
» Leveraging Your Scholarship to Improve Talent Acquisition: the Eaton Success Story
» Marketing, Managing, & Adjudicating Scholarships: Opterus Success Story
» How to Develop Your Own Scholarship Program
» The Most Effective Scholarship Marketing Strategies
» ScholarshipsCanada Content Calendar 2023
» The SchoolFinder Group Email Query Fields
