Business School Rebranding Process | Success Story ESSEC

Client location

Paris, FRANCE

Business area

Education

Product

Web Platform

Delivery center

Cluj, ROMANIA

Project type

Growth & UX/UI & Development

About the client

ESSEC is a France-based business school with a mission to respond to the challenges of the future through a unique pedagogical approach. This approach is founded on the creation and diffusion of cutting-edge knowledge, academic learning, practical experience, and a multicultural dialogue.

A pioneer in the learning field, ESSEC Business School has 4 campuses around the world: 2 in France, 1 in Morocco, and 1 in Singapore. The institution has built their reputation on upholding high academic standards and a vast, digitally enabled network.

To expand their online presence, ESSEC’s representatives decided to focus on capturing the attention of separate audiences whose individual needs had to be addressed. The new strategy called for a major digital overhaul with the support of an experienced services partner.

Technologies used

The Challenge

The Pentalog Growth Factory’s teams recommended that ESSEC build a persona-oriented website by reorganizing all program categories and to leverage lead generation and cross-promotion between all business channels.

We thoroughly analyzed the client’s product and suggested unifying different business channel sites into one. To do this, the following actions would need to be carried out:

• Merging academic & executive education offers
• Simplifying the UI/UX access to all ESSEC programs
• Enhancing the mobile experience to cater to the young target audience
• Implementing a placement strategy for landing pages and CTAs

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The Solution

Our digital innovation bundles included the following steps:

• Review of the business analysis inspection
• Implementation of key touchpoints in the user journeys of students
• Workshops with client stakeholders and sales teams

To make sure all our clients’ challenges were addressed, the Pentalog Growth Factory team built different user scenarios and created interactive prototypes.

As a strategy to increase visibility of the website, we used social media (Facebook, Twitter) and back linking. We also launched different acquisition campaigns for Adwords, Facebook and Instagram – driven through Marketo’s marketing automation solution, where marketing and nurturing scenarios are set up.

As a continued project, the Pentalog team runs Search Engine Optimization campaigns for ESSEC so their site and programs continue to place on the Search Result Pages for the keywords requests that fit with the school’s acquisition strategy.

The results

ESSEC Business School’s rebranding process took period of two years to complete. The marketing strategies implemented during this period made ESSEC stand out as one of the business schools with the highest digital ranking and social following in the continent. At the present time, ESSEC’s Twitter account is one of the most influential among major business schools in Europe.

In terms of capturing the interest of new audiences, ESSEC managed to consistently increase student leads, improve efficiency in lead generation, and boost their online ranking among the top 5 schools in terms of digital, mobile and social experience.