Charles Darwin University

Charles Darwin University, ranked among the top 100 universities in the Asia-Pacific, was preparing for a major intake cycle with student application targets across 17 faculties. The previous agency had delivered applications at A$220 cost per acquisition, 4.4× more expensive than the A$50 they were originally engaged for.

The brief was direct: rebuild the entire digital recruitment programme, hit the application targets, and demonstrate commercial return that the university's executive could actually use in board reporting.

Most digital marketing reporting stops at clicks, conversions and cost per acquisition. Those metrics matter, but they do not tell a Vice-Chancellor what the activity is worth to the institution. The work had to be measurable in the language the executive uses: dollars of attributable revenue against a known top line.

The campaign was rebuilt across paid search, paid social, display and retargeting, with separate budgets, audiences, creative and conversion paths for each of the 17 faculties. Cross-faculty optimisation was not permitted because faculties owned their own budgets. The campaign had to make its margins inside each faculty's allocation.

The revenue attribution model was built on two figures the university already published: the historical 59% acceptance rate from submitted application to confirmed enrolment, applied to every measured application as a conversion multiplier; and the stated A$10,000 lifetime value per enrolled student, used as the revenue multiplier.

The result was a board-reportable revenue figure rather than a CPA-only performance dashboard. Every faculty's spend rolled up into a measurable contribution to top-line revenue.