Raritan Valley Community College (RVCC) is an accredited two-year public community college located in New Jersey. Founded in 1965, RVCC offers Associate Degree programs that develop critical thinking and promote leadership.
At eDesign, we believe in education; especially a solid, affordable, “real life skills” kind of education. It’s been an honor to be RVCC’s agency of record for several concurrent efforts, from a site redesign, to content marketing, to a robust, multi-season digital campaign.
Campaign Strategy, Audience Planning and Research, Media Planning and Buying, Campaign Creative, Graphic Design for all advertising channels (Banners, Display, Social), UX/UI Design, Front-End Development, Animations, Campaign and Social Media Management, Drupal Integration, Project Management, Copywriting.
RVCC needed to boost student enrollment and market all the newest programs available at the school while also modernizing the look and feel of the RVCC brand. They needed a lighter, faster and cleaner-looking website that would better appeal to prospective and current students. Their former site had a complex navigational architecture that wasn’t the most intuitive, along with excess copy and an out-of-date SEO strategy that wasn’t driving optimal search engine results.
We were inspired by Pantone’s 2018 Color of the Year, Ultra Violet. It’s a color representing invention and imagination, lighting the way to what is yet to come. RVCC couldn’t agree more that this meshed with the evolution of their messaging.
We mobilized our entire 20-person team to reimagine the RVCC site and create digital campaigns that would authentically resonate with Generation Z. Putting real-life students front and center, we interviewed and photographed a diverse range of current and former students and featured their first-person stories on the “hero slider” and across the site, regularly refreshing student content to feed the narrative. We also initiated a program of campaign analytics in order to periodically adjust and optimize each month’s activity.
Keeping the “need-it-now” nature of the target demographic in mind, we implemented marketing strategies that would appeal to prospective and current students. We put together engaging messages and created over 650 visuals. We built 4 landing pages, and designed 580 banners for search ads (Google and Bing) and Facebook ads. We delivered 67 social posts for Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, and 4 billboard campaigns.
Our team produced biweekly blog posts loaded with strategic SEO keywords in order to drive traffic to the site and promote key initiatives. We also delivered animated bumper ad videos for YouTube, and designed over 20 Snapchat filters and lenses for geo-targeted places around the campus (ex: sport events, exams, graduation, etc.). We even launched a unique chatbot named Arvee (“RV”) to engage prospective students who had applied but not yet enrolled, adding an additional touchpoint via text message—the preferred method of communication for teens and young adults.
A digital campaign is not just about creating inspiring visuals; it’s about generating results. In the case of RVCC, this means a substantial increase in student applications and enrollments, including a 145% increase in attendance at campus events!
Built with the latest front-end JavaScript for fast loading across all devices, the new RVCC site delivers a modern look-and-feel along with a simplified user experience that truly makes the grade. In fact, the site won silver at the prestigious NCMPR's Paragon Awards for 2019, recognizing outstanding achievement in design and communication at community and technical colleges. In addition to a vastly improved SEO ranking, RVCC experienced a substantial boost in student applications and enrollments, along with a 145% increase in attendance at campus events over the past 3 years! We look forward to continued success as RVCC’s agency of record.
We even launched a unique chatbot named Arvee (“RV”) to engage prospective students who had applied but not yet enrolled, adding an additional touchpoint via text message—the preferred method of communication for teens and young adults.
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