How a Prestigious University Converted Student Applications With Video

About UCLA

 

UCLA Anderson School of Management is the graduate business school at the University of California, Los Angeles.

It offers The Fully Employed MBA (FEMBA) program, which is a top-ranked MBA program. U.S. News and World Report has ranked FEMBA “#1 in SoCal” for 24 years (and counting).

With the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, UCLA had to pivot very quickly to digital recruiting. 

The team was eager to find new ways to recruit prospective students beyond traditional in-person strategies.

 

UCLA website with StoryTap videos

 

The Challenge

Convert new student applicants solely through video.

 

UCLA Anderson was looking for new ways to convert prospective students into the FEMBA program. They wanted to have their current students act as ambassadors to attract a new cohort to FEMBA. 

With no face-to-face interaction permitted for the foreseeable future, video became an essential tool for recruitment. 

The UCLA team was searching for a way to produce authentic video stories to convert new student applications quickly and at scale.

 

The Solution

Produce authentic video stories by student ambassadors for the website.

UCLA partnered with StoryTap to produce and curate FEMBA student stories using StoryTap’s plug-and-play platform.The goal was to produce the student videos quickly and distribute them online to increase reach, with a plan of 10,000 views.

With StoryTap’s video solution, hundreds of student videos were embedded onto UCLA FEMBA’s website. 

StoryTap created Google search-optimized video landing pages, a unique playlist on UCLA’s Youtube channel and enabled students to share videos through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, SMS, and email.

customer stories from FEMBA students

The Results

A boost in website visitors to the FEMBA admissions page.

 

59% of StoryTap video watchers went to the admissions page on the FEMBA website after watching a video within 2 clicks! 

Since partnering with StoryTap, UCLA FEMBA has successfully ranked on the first page of Google search results with their videos (incognito mode). And in less than a year, the student videos became the top playlist on their YouTube channel, surpassing the 10,000 views goal by 79%.

UCLA FEMBA’s website saw an increase in engagement within the first two weeks of data collection; 

  • Website traffic increased for returning users by 122%
  • Average session duration increased by over 270%
  • Bounce rate decreased by 52%
  • Pages per session increased by 40%

 

With StoryTap’s video technology,  UCLA FEMBA successfully converted student applications and boosted web engagement with authentic video stories.