True Student

True Student runs premium student accommodation, and it was opening new buildings in Sheffield, Nottingham and Leicester. These were new cities where it had no reputation and students already had providers they knew and trusted.

As Marketing Manager, I led the launch in all three cities, and every room that was ready to sell was filled in time for opening.

Finding the right audience

I analysed 30,000+ bookings from six years of data to see where students actually came from and what each property’s ‘feeder cities’ were. Liverpool’s residents came mostly from nearby towns like Warrington and Wigan, Birmingham residents came from Manchester, and London appeared as a feeder city for every property.

That told us where to spend, where to geo-target, and where to host local activations. Every ad was then aimed at the places and people most likely to book.

We treated every event as research too. Students in Leicester asked about the gym more than anything else, and found us far more easily when we said we were next to the Curve theatre, which are the kind of details that made the next message land better.

Showing up at the most important moments

When they visit a university

We showed up at university open days and events with a gamified stand including a spin wheel and prize draws to set True apart from its competitors. It collected 883 sign-ups in one month.

WHEN THEY ACCEPT A PLACE

We partnered with UCAS, the UK’s university admissions service, to email students and parents directly. We designed our emails in UCAS colours and branding, so they felt like part of the application rather than another advert. They recieved 27k+ opens from students and parents and brought in £130k revenue from an £7k spend.

Out on the streets

Localised activations garnered on the ground attention. Such as in Leicester, a coffee cart, smoothie stand and free KitKats branded with the new opening brought in 856 sign-ups.

The biggest night of the year

Varsity is the biggest sports fixture of the year between rival universities, and in Nottingham and Sheffield it meant an opportunity to target every student in attendance. For one night in each city, we made sure true student was everywhere they looked.

We handed out branded foam fingers in the crowd, the arena bars served drinks in our branded cups, and our advert played on the arena’s jumbotron screen during breaks in the game. By the end of the night, we received 900+ sign-ups from students who wanted to hear from us.

We filmed the whole night too, so one event gave us a list of interested students, plus a set of videos showing the brand at the centre of student life.

We took the same approach at Sheffield’s varsity, which brought in another 389 sign-ups and interviews with students on the night.

Never letting interest go cold

Filling a building was only half the job, the other half is getting residents to stay for another year. Across one year, our campaigns brought in £4.75m of bookings.

The biggest win for this cost nothing. We ran an exclusive campaign for current residents, giving them a week to choose next year’s rooms before they were put on the website for general sale. This brought in 181 bookings worth £2.3m, in a single week.

Other methods included regular social media content creation and posting, multi-channel marketing campaigns, room dressing and professional photography, plus PR and news coverage in construction and B2B channels.