CASE STUDY
edX drives 2x more clicks with user generated content
Industry
Driving engagement. Celebrating milestones. Surging hope.
That’s what edX set out to do when they were faced with the challenge of celebrating graduates and learners of all kinds after thousands of graduations across the globe were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
edX is the education movement. Together with their founding partners Harvard and MIT, they’ve brought together over 30 million learners, the majority of top-ranked universities in the world, and industry-leading companies onto one online learning platform that supports learners at every stage. As a global nonprofit edX is transforming traditional education, and it’s no surprise that they found a way to celebrate in a new way, too.
With some quick and thoughtful pivoting, edX’s marketing team developed #GlobalGraduation, an initiative that encouraged people from around the world to come together to celebrate learning achievements and sign edX’s virtual yearbook while offering words of congratulations and encouragement to graduates and learners around the globe.
The Challenge: Creating Global Connection + Submission Management
edX’s #GlobalGraduation was more than a virtual event to celebrate the students, but represented the organization’s commitment to the graduates to fully celebrate the immense milestone in their academic career despite the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic brought to them. The campaign provided edX an opportunity to bring together a global community infused with hope, celebration, and inspiration through user-generated content (UGC)
The edX team had worked with user-generated content in the past but recognized the #GlobalGraduation campaign needed a turn-key solution to manage this global campaign properly while taking the heavy lifting off the edX marketing team.
The Challenge?
How to maintain a swell of submissions and engagement across channels during the week-long campaign.
In past efforts to collect UGC, the edX team pointed to the process being “too bulky, and they needed to find a solution where they could move quickly and effectively to get the #GlobalGraduation campaign up and running.
“We hadn’t done a user-generated content campaign on this scale before and knew it would be effective, but needed to find a solution of how to present the content effectively to build the connection we were looking for from the campaign,”
— said Sree Lenhart, edX Senior Director of Brand Marketing.
The team quickly sought a solution to collect, aggregate, and share well wishes from the edX community and partners while celebrating the momentous educational milestones the edX community learners achieved.
edX’s marketing team knew that finding a turn-key solution to managing UGC and submissions was paramount to driving success and connection with the edX community for their campaign.
The Solution: Integrated Marketing + TINT Experience Builder = Winning Combo
edX found its solution to connecting their global community through TINT Experience Builder and an omnichannel promotional strategy utilizing user-generated content to promote #GlobalGraduation.
Within a week, edX’s marketing team developed their #GlobalGraduation experience, began promotion, and began seeing the global celebration take off across their marketing channels.
With TINT’s Experience Builder, the edX team was able to build and easily brand their #GlobalGraduation campaign with premade layouts and launch their promotion of it across their email marketing efforts, blog, website, and social media channels.
Throughout the week the platform also allowed the edX team to aggregate and display the submissions simply and effectively to drive engagement with the user generated content that was being submitted.
7.16 K
TOTAL CLICK-THROUGHS
4.42 K
TOTAL SCROLLDOWNS
(edX’s ran the #GlobalGraduation campaign for a week and saw an engagement continue after the promotion week ended.)
The Results: UGC = 2X’s Clicks in Email Promotion Than Blog Content
With TINT, edX effectively and thoughtfully drove engagement and demonstrated the strength of the edX community, even days after the official promotion period ended.
With over 500 well wishes submitted during the week-long campaign, 7K+ clicks to the #GlobalGraduation page, and high engagement on email and social media, Liz Joyce, edX’s Content Marketing Manager, says UGC helped reach their goals while the use of TINT made it an easy and turn-key experience.
“One of our biggest takeaways from this campaign was that it’s clear that user-generated content adds immediate and clear value in our marketing strategies. People were engaging, and that’s what we set out to do,”
The Takeaway: UGC is effective across marketing strategies
edX’s team also pulled valuable insights into how UGC is an effective strategy across their marketing channels moving forward through analytics from their #GlobalGraduation campaign.
“When we used messages of celebrating learners in our email marketing efforts — we saw 2x’s more clicks than our average blog clicks. This is an indicator to us that there is a future in utilizing user-generated content more,”
