About the Client
A corporate-promoted institute offering specialised, postgraduate-level programmes in technology, data and artificial intelligence. Backed by a large industrial group and built around emerging, high-demand fields, it had a strong parent brand and a differentiated academic proposition, but a young admissions function that was struggling to fill its seats.
Objective
To build and run an admissions engine that could fill the institute's programmes to capacity. The institute needed a partner to own outreach, branding direction and the entire admissions funnel end to end, not simply advise on it.
Challenges
- Admissions had stalled at around 20 enrolments a year, well short of the programmes' capacity.
- The institute had not been able to find or retain the right in-house team to run admissions.
- Outreach and branding lacked clear direction, so the right prospective students were not being reached.
- Strategic plans existed on paper but were not being executed on the ground.
- There was no real focus on lead conversion, and the process was not set up to turn interest into enrolments.
Solutions
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Owned the admissions function end to end
UniMarg stepped in as the institute's dedicated admissions team, taking responsibility for the full cycle each year rather than handing back a strategy to an under-resourced internal team.
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Set a clear outreach and branding direction
We defined who the right prospective students were and built targeted outreach and messaging to reach them, widening the funnel well beyond the local market to draw applicants nationally.
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Executed on the ground
We moved plans off paper into disciplined execution across the outreach calendar, so the right activity actually happened, on time and in the right places.
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Built a lead conversion focus
We put structure around lead capture, follow-up and counselling, shifting the emphasis from raw enquiries to conversion, so more of the right leads became enrolled students.
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Rebuilt the end-to-end process
We fixed the funnel from first touch to enrolment, closing the gaps where prospective students had previously dropped off, and ran it as a repeatable cycle year after year.
Result
UniMarg turned a stalled intake into a national, full-capacity admissions cycle, run end to end.
- Annual admissions grew from around 20 to a full intake of 120, a sixfold increase.
- Applications came in from roughly 100 universities across 20 states, widening the pool and lifting applicant quality.
- The enrolled cohort was drawn from 12 states, giving the institute a genuinely diversified student body.
- UniMarg has managed the complete admissions function end to end, every year since December 2022.