Charles Darwin University (CDU) is consistently ranked among the world’s best universities despite being a young, dual-sector institution. But while their academic reputation was world-class, their digital marketing performance was not.

Their previous agency had promised student applications at a $50 CPA—but ended up delivering at $220 per application. That failure became the benchmark for Involve Digital’s takeover. The goal wasn’t just traffic or engagement. This was about one thing: student enrolments.

Every one of CDU’s 17 faculties had its own goals, budget, and creative requirements. The complexity was high. The expectations were higher.

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Involve Digital took over all digital media buying and performance strategy for CDU. Our first step was to rebuild from scratch. That meant:

• Deep audience research and segmentation
• Custom campaign structures by faculty
• Funnel strategies aligned with student decision cycles
• Cohesive but tailored messaging across each department

We used Google Search, Google Display, Facebook, Instagram and remarketing — with strict adherence to on-brand creative, faculty-specific messaging, and enrolment intent.

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Creative testing was non-negotiable. We rolled out:

• A/B-tested headlines, images and ad copy for each faculty
• Programmatic retargeting sequences
• Dynamic budget pacing to maximise returns within each channel
• Consistent design language across banner, social and search ads

Every asset was tied back to faculty goals, prospective student intent, and the core promise of CDU’s academic excellence.

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Each CDU faculty operated its own budget with no cross-department flexibility. This meant our optimisation model had to work within tight budget silos. There was no room for error. Performance had to be exceptional everywhere, not just in aggregate.

Despite this constraint, Involve Digital:

• Lowered average CPA from $220 → $27.08
• Delivered 9,187 applications with a conversion rate of 7.24%
• Drove over $54M in attributed revenue, based on application acceptance and student lifetime value

This was not just a campaign. It was a university-wide digital performance transformation.

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• 17 unique faculty funnels built and launched
• Data-driven messaging matched to micro-audiences
• Weekly optimisation by campaign, audience, and creative variant
• No cross-budget flexibility—required surgical precision on a per-faculty basis
• Custom reporting dashboards delivered directly to university leadership

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• 23 million+ impressions served
• 126,000+ clicks to application landing pages
• 7.24% conversion rate across all campaigns
• 9,187 student applications submitted
• $27.08 CPA, down from $220 (an 8.12X improvement)
• Attributed impact: $54.01M in enrolment-linked revenue, up $12.7M YoY

This campaign became the gold standard for university acquisition performance in the region.

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