Through an integrated marketing campaign, Boston College Law School far exceeded its recruitment goals.
Boston College Law School had its sites set high for its 2020-2021 enrollment cycle, aiming to recruit a more diverse JD class and grow its LLM program. An LLM is a Master of Laws, and international LLM students play a critical role in school revenue, both at BC Law and generally. I was hired as Assistant Director of Marketing to support these objectives, bringing about a rewarding collaboration that would unfold over the next year. Discover how our marketing efforts yielded the most diverse JD class in BC Law history, and grew our LLM class by 300%.
BC Law has long held social justice as a foundational value, advancing equity on the national stage while providing free legal representation to disenfranchised communities across Boston through its clinics. The school has also directly benefited from the rich experiences and perspectives that JD students from varied backgrounds have contributed to its legacy and learning environment, however diverse applicant pools were becoming increasingly competitive. Furthermore, BC Law had to increasingly contend with the city of Boston’s checkered history of racism and segregation, which often deters many applicants from relocating to the city.
Meanwhile, LLM recruitment presented its own challenges. International applicants had trended downwards nationwide in recent years, with the new generation increasingly less likely to opt into the debt that comes with an American education. In the marketing team, it was now our task to help increase student yield through these rather stormy headwinds.
I wanted to help BC Law tell its story, but I did not feel messaging would suffice in achieving the resonance we needed to make a difference. I asked to meet with diverse students and alumni so that I could better understand their experiences, and get to know the school culture. I organized my findings with clear documentation to share my insights, but quickly came to two conclusions.
First, I was impressed by the connection that students and alumni felt to BC Law. One alumni explained to me that there might be some “self-selection” among BC Law students, because the school tends to find itself replete with genuine, smart, and big-hearted individuals dedicate to things bigger than themselves. I was so taken with the community, that I was almost ready to take an LSAT and apply myself by the end. A couple years later, when I departed back to corporate tech, this impression was confirmed to me by a colleague from our legal department, who stated frankly, “I never met anyone I didn’t like from BC Law.”
My second major takeaway, was that authenticity was paramount. We needed our community to speak for itself, so I recommended that we invest effort in video case studies. Our director agreed, but we had a limited budget and we were in the throws of the covid-19 pandemic. I offered to edit the videos myself, and proposed that we attain the footage through our subjects’ smartphones, which could capture a superior image quality to online meeting recordings. We soon ordered tripods and microphones to the homes of our interview subjects.
This approach not only enabled us to create enduring video case studies, but the interview process served to inform the broader messaging of our social media campaign.
"Mark quickly became part of the BC Law team, providing a high level of expertise in strategic thinking and planning, design and video production, website editing and data analysis. Working under tight deadlines and with relatively limited resources, the content Mark produced was always excellent and delivered on time, every time. Our campaigns were a huge success, and ultimately helped bring in a class four times the size of the prior year."
Just as we had done for our JD campaign, we also conducted a discovery process for our LLM initiative, which produced several informative insights.
First, after meeting with the LLM program director and various students, we were able to sharpen our understanding of what differentiated BC Law to international prospects. We isolated several primary value propositions, including the deep level of integration that BC Law offers between LLM and JD students. For many schools, LLM programs are an afterthought, but at BC Law, LLM students are thoughtfully folded into the broader learning community, and the critical connections that it has to offer.
Building on the momentum from our JD video strategy, we decided to augment our creative messaging with a new program overview video to help inform prospects’ decision making processes as they moved down the funnel. This time, we didn’t need smartphones. We setup a small studio environment in the school library and recorded students and staff on site.
For lead generation, we decided on an ad campaign across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Google. Audiences were segmented with strategic criteria that will remain confidential. I was personally responsible for leading campaign creative, producing the following assets:
Planning our drip campaign required us to collaborate closely with admissions, but it also required technical support. The team was dissatisfied with the email automation system in place, so I was tasked with conducting an in-depth assessment of alternative platforms. Once we agreed that MailerLite was better suited to team needs, I led our wholesale migration, enabling us to enhance our email list management and schedule our newly developed nurture campaigns.
By the time the enrollment cycle completed its course, our campaigns greatly exceeded expectations. Our efforts yielded the most diverse class in BC Law history while also growing our LLM program by a factor of four. These campaigns also produced creative assets that will help BC Law tell its remarkable story for years.
Most importantly, I had the privilege of getting to know the amazing community at BC Law. The school’s community spirit is infectious to the point that I nearly sat down to study for the LSAT’s myself. I reflect on those relationships and experiences with enduring fondness, especially on particularly poignant moment at the school’s graduation ceremony.
One reflection at the tail end of a professor’s commencement speech has remained etched into my thoughts. Looking over at the graduating class, she assured them that just because they had attained their degrees, their diplomas were not mandates to pursue legal careers. She pointed out many of the worthwhile things that one can do with a life, and succinctly framed how they might consider the decisions that would surely follow their departure from BC Law. “Can you remember the first day you came to BC Law as a student? if you really think about it, it didn’t take you very long to graduate did it? Well I have something to tell you. A life doesn’t take very long. Use it the best way you can.”
Boston, MA
