College Ave Student Loans
Challenge
College Ave Student Loans was the newest player in a crowded financial services market. The start-up generated millions of dollars in funding and needed to hit its benchmarks for lead generation and brand impressions. While it had run social media campaigns in the past, none of them were able to deliver significant revenue producing leads.
Insight
We recognized that there is nothing else that gets people more excited about college than March Madness. Working with College Ave, our team developed a campaign idea that was designed to collect email addresses. In order to achieve this goal, we knew we had to offer something with high perceived value. Utilizing the College Ave website, we created a landing page with an entry form where students submitted pictures of the main street on their college campus and their contact information in order to enter. The primary awareness driver were social media ads and email broadcasts. Over the course of 6 rounds, different schools went head-to-head. Users could vote once per day for the school of their choice in each matchup, and every time a school advanced, their cumulative prized increased. Entrants who advanced received scholarships ranging from $100 to the grand prize of $2,150. The champion was also able to donate $1,000 to the charity of their choice.
Success
The campaign was incredibly successful. The day it launched, there were 28,000 visits to the website, the highest volume for a single day in the company’s history. Overall, College Ave generated over 1,500 email addresses of college students, one of its primary targeted audiences. The company also benefitted from almost half a million brand impressions from people in college and their social networks.
