What you need to know

• Two years after implementing a CDP, the University of Tasmania is delivering digital advertising efficiency & cost savings including a 20 per cent decrease in cost per application and even a conservative estimate of the software's impact would suggest it's contributed to half a million dollars of a much larger saving
•  In part that's off the back of an email marketing boost that's seen a 20 per cent increase in email open rates, a 10 per cent improvement in unique click-through rates, and a 23 per cent reduction in unsubscribe rates.
• But the biggest impact is in behavioural targeting, says director of marketing Courtney Geritz. Thanks to the the ability to track and leverage behavioural insights, it's been able to tailor messaging based on a student's stage in the journey, and more effectively retarget high-intent students, boosting conversion rates.

The University of Tasmania has pulled off a magic trick—not the rabbit-out-of-a-hat kind, but the kind that makes marketing dollars stretch further, student engagement sharper, and operations smoother. Its secret weapon? A Customer Data Platform (CDP) that has spent the past two years quietly dismantling data silos, decoding behavioral breadcrumbs, and turning marketing guesswork into an exact science.

By tracking students from their first inquiry to graduation (and beyond), the university has cracked the code on smarter retargeting, streamlined inquiry management, and pinpointed exactly where their marketing money should go. The result? Lower costs, sharper campaigns, and a more holistic student experience.

According to Courtney Geritz, Director, Marketing, University of Tasmania, “When you look at our email marketing campaigns in particular, one of the things that we've noticed over the last year is the big improvement in our email performance. Our email open rates are up 20 per cent, click-through rate is up 10 per cent and we've seen a reduction in our unsubscribe by 23 per cent. All of these results are over the sector's benchmark. We ultimately obviously aim to outperform the sector,” 

It's a result ascribed directly to the CDP.

“We’ve seen a real return on the cost improvement for our digital campaign. When we create lookalike audiences targeting our demographics and geographics with a high propensity to enrol with us or by improving our retargeting, our cost per application has reduced by about 20 per cent. That’s really significant for us," Geritz says.

“If you put that in dollar terms, if the CDP is only responsible for 10 per cent of that, that's half a million dollars already. So, yes, that’s a really big cost saving.”

In addition she says, "The unsung hero for us is really around the administrative and the operational costs we're we are saving upwards of seven hours a day, almost an FTE."

Silo busting

Prior to the CDP implementation, all the data was siloed she says.

“Our students could have up to five different records in different systems across application portals, CRM, email marketing, student management, you name it. Just being able to synthesise all of those systems in one 360, degree profile of the student has been invaluable, and it's enabled us to really customise our communications from end to end.”

Geritz believes the ability to extract more sophisticated behavioural insights is the most significant improvement the project has delivered.

“That’s because it really allows us to tailor our communications. What do students need at what point in time? We can look at them from when they are a prospective student through to when they apply, and then all the way through to when they're a current student, and ultimately when they graduate as well. We've never had that holistic view before.”

Campaign targeting is also much improved, she tells Mi3 Australia. “The CDP has really helped in our campaign retargeting and making sure we're going after those students who have the highest propensity to actually enroll with us.

“While it’s hard to really align any of those improvements with CDP alone, what it has enabled us to do is look at the ways that we manage our inquiries coming through.”

It has equally made life easier for other stakeholders such as the call centre teams, who can now look at the student holistically and then improve outbound engagements and interventions. 

“We’ve been able to really optimise our digital campaigns too. So I don't think it can be attributed fully to the CDP, but I certainly think what it does is spark a conversation with the wider organisation about how we improve the student experience now that we can look at them as a unique profile, as opposed to five different, disparate profiles across the organisation? It helps us to laser focus on that," Geritz continues.

University marketers will tell you it’s a hard slog getting students to commit. The decision-making process is anywhere between 18 to 24 months and often extends beyond enrolment for a few weeks. It is not unknown for students to register with several universities at once and to only make a choice at the final moment, after the academic year has started.

“Having that visibility and that long decision-making process for us being able to actually map those behaviours upfront and then track them longitudinally has been really invaluable for us," she says.

Using the CDP, Uni of Tasmania has built strong prospective student lookalike lists. In addition, it helps in terms of attribution models from a marketing perspective. 

“We used to look at what the cost was of getting a student in," Geritz explains. Today, the process is more granular.  “Now it what does that look like for a particular student in a particular course area for example.”

That level of nuance and targeting wasn’t possible before, says Geritz. It is an area of particular interest for the marketing leader, whose PhD was based on the expectation versus experience of students. 

“I think it's also allowed us to map out what are they expecting before they come in, what are some of the things that they're asking about. Then we are better able to to support them on the other side, in terms of what are we going to deliver for them, managing some of those inquiries through to end-to-end.”