Mentor Recruitment Strategy Decreases CPA 30%

Overview

iMentor believes in the power of relationships to transform a young person’s life. By matching high school students with successful, college-educated mentors, iMentor is opening up opportunities for young people to succeed in high school and become the first in their families to attend college.

Our team at Media Cause worked to recruit more mentors that would serve as role models for iMentor students. This consisted of a 3 part process: discovery + analysis, testing, and tracking.

The Outcome

Using a robust mentor recruitment strategy, iMentor was able to drive over 400 mentor leads and reduce acquisition costs by 30%—ultimately supporting their mission to opening up opportunities for young people to succeed in high school.

20%

Of Leads Became Mentor Applicants

52%

Decrease in Cost Per Mentor Application

88%

Reduction in Cost of Accepted Mentors

The Implementation

Discovery + Analysis

Identifying iMentor’s target audience was a crucial first step in our process. We wanted to know:

Who are they? What do they do? Why do they want to become a mentor?

After an in-depth discovery process, we were able to develop five persona groups, differentiated by demographic factors, such as age and ethnicity, as well as interest level factors and even specific life events. We then customized our ad, website and email messaging to reflect each of these individual persona groups.

Testing Great Ideas

Testing and analyzing the results helped us to identify which targeting and messaging was most successful but we didn’t stop there. We identified three additional audiences to test:

Remarketing: targeting people who previously visited iMentor’s website.
Look-a-Like: using Facebook’s tool, we created an audience similar to current mentors.
General Interest: a broader appeal audience of NYC males with an interest in volunteering.

Track Everything

Given the tight targeting parameters of our strategy, we were able to quickly identify the audiences with the best ROI. For audiences with a lower CPA, we were able to reallocate budget to ensure these best performers were at the forefront. Identifying target audiences with a higher CPA allowed us to conserve budget by quickly finding alternative targeting solutions.

Through the creation and testing of multiple persona groups, ad variations, and targeting parameters, we were able to continually analyze and reinvest in techniques that worked.

The Results

Know your audience

Our team was able to achieve such strong success by tapping into the most successful iMentor members to find passion points, insights, and targeting factors that would best shape a digital advertising campaign. The resulting insights were leveraged into a digital advertising campaign and automated lead nurturing email series.

In total, we were able to drive over 400 mentor leads and reduce acquisition costs by 30%.