Tomsk Polytechnic University (master's admissions): 230 leads, 1483% ROMI

The task

Bring in applications for admission to TPU master’s programs. The niche is hard for paid traffic: the audience is narrow — bachelor’s graduates choosing specific programs — the decision to enroll takes a long time, and the admissions campaign is strictly limited in time. Every applicant brought to a formal application is expensive by definition.

What we did

Targeted advertising on VK and Instagram with traffic to an admission application.

Results

• Ad budget — $2,580
• Admission leads — 230
• Cost per lead — $11.22
• Formal applications for admission — 19
• Cost per formal application — $136
• ROMI — 1,483.33%

Insights

• Of 230 leads, 19 (8.3%) reached document submission — a realistic funnel for a decision at the level of “enroll in a master’s program”, where weeks pass between first interest and the application.
• $136 per formal application at 1,483% ROMI — the cost of acquiring an applicant is covered many times over by the income from their tuition; the admissions economics add up with a large margin.
• The case shows that a university can manage admissions to specific programs with paid targeting rather than relying only on its brand and the organic flow of applicants.