Digital Advertising for the ASU/Thinkful Partnership

Iterative design, programmatic banner ads, paid and organic social

Arizona State University (ASU) and Thinkful partnered to offer online bootcamp courses that could be completed in short, intensive timeframes with the goal of users landing jobs in the tech field. As Senior Art Director on the Enterprise Performance Marketing Team, I lead the creative strategy to adapt Thinkful's style to fit the ASU brand. My workflow ensured creative was adaptable and scalable, allowing for A/B testing and quick adjustments to optimize ad performance.

Highlights

Art direction and design
Design System
A/B testing
Process implementation
Project management

Tools

Adobe XD
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Illustrator
Google Suite

The Performance Marketing Team was created to work on transactional products to leverage data and to efficiently iterate on campaigns to improve performance. In my work on the ASU/Thinkful partnership, I collaborated closely with my highly-optimized team of a senior copywriter, audience specialist and key university stakeholders to quickly launch this campaign.

The multi-channel digital campaign included programmatic banner ads, paid and organic social, with clickthroughs to dedicated landing pages. I adapted Thinkful’s illustrative assets to work within the ASU brand and sourced photography to test a more ASU-approach. The design library was shared with the UX-UI Lead Designer and close collaboration ensured visual consistency and efficient pass-off of creative.

Visuals and copy combos were A/B tested and iterated on-the-fly as data came in. Our collaboration and iterative process allowed us to achieve:

• 4.92% conversion rate
  
• 20% average increase in conversions month to month.

Process

Experimentation — research and development — is an integral part of my design and management process. I make time for experiments and play during the week and slow periods of work and then use these insights in real projects. I had been experimenting with using Adobe XD for digital graphics and decided to use this campaign as a test case for the process. The results were great.

I created libraries and templates and was able to quickly develop creative with many variations for A/B testing. Co-editing access allowed me to collaborate closely with junior designers and provide real-time, actionable feedback. The process I implemented also ensured consistency across all the iterations of the digital graphics.

Results

As of March 2021, the campaign garnered over 1.1m impressions with a conversion rate of 4.92%. A/B testing and rapidly responding to the data led to an average of 20% increase in conversions month to month in paid media as the best graphic and copy variations were optimized for the campaign.

Due to the success of the campaign as well as my process, I was asked to lead a session at the annual marketing conference for the university. I shared tips and resources for using XD for digital marketing:

Collaborators:
Aubrey Badger, Associate Director and Channel Strategist/Planner; Renae Hintze, Senior Marketing Copywriter; David Gould, Senior Director Performance Marketing; Alex Estrella, Digital Designer; Allison Perlis, UX-UI Lead Designer

Contact

hello@hannanorris.com

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© Hanna Norris 2023