Helping Renaissance Support Education Worldwide: Case Study

Renaissance came to us with an unconventional request — increase their global reach through both inbound (social media, ads) and outbound (direct marketing) channels.

As a global education provider in partnership with over 40K schools in the US and the UK, they were looking to expand their existing presence in the EMEA and Asia region.

The UMG team worked with Renaissance to establish an active social media presence and an outbound marketing channel. At the end of the 4-month cooperation Renaissance gained 500+ new followers and 45 new opportunities.

The outcomes

About Renaissance

Renaissance is a global learning platform that provides cloud-based assessment, teaching and learning programmes to over 45K schools in 90 countries.

Goals and objectives

  • Limited capacity for global SMM activities in-house
  • Outsourcing marketing activities with the goal of increasing brand awareness in the EMEA and Asia regions
  • Fresh perspective outside of company boundaries

What we did

Prospect Engagement

Cold emails are one of the most effective ways to connect to potential customers and close deals. According to Hubspot, 89% of marketers use cold email for lead generation.

Do not mistake it for spam — a well-thought out cold email strategy can fill up your funnel with bookings in no time.

There’s 4 main ingredients to a successful cold outreach:

  • Highly targeted audience
  • Relevant personalised messaging
  • Delivery and anti-spam mechanisms
  • Smart follow-ups

Our Account Manager working with Renaissance identified the relevant schools in the MENA region. We then segmented the target audience by seniority:

1. School administrators, principals and board members

2. Teachers

People in different segments deal with different problems. That’s why our team of copywriters created separate personalised messages that address individual pain points and offer relevant solutions.

Cold emails that include 3–4 follow-ups are 25% more effective than one-time emails. Our sequence included 3 automated follow-ups — until the prospect responds.

We used a mix of LinkedIn automated messages and cold emails. The IT team ensured that the emails get delivered straight into people’s inboxes.

The Account Manager took on the role of nurturing and answering people’s questions to drive them to book a meeting with Renaissance’s Global Marketing manager.

What we did in a nutshell:

  • Identified the relevant schools
  • Segmented the target audience by seniority and role in the school
  • Created compelling email and LinkedIn message copy tailored to each group
  • Engaged decision-makers in a continuous 4-step sequence
  • Nurtured potential leads through to a call
  • Collected lead and campaign data

As a result of our team’s efforts Renaissance acquired 45 interested leadswith relevant teachers, headmasters and school administrators over 3 months.

Social Media and Content Management

Social media marketing played a big role in introducing Renaissance’s brand on the global market. Renaissance already had an established presence and a team of marketers for the US and UK audiences.

Yet, the engagement on the global side, such as European, African or Middle Eastern schools was lacking.

Our team, headed by Account Manager and Head Copywriter focused on 3 main SM channels — Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Their activity on the existing Facebook and Twitter channels and was sparse and disconnected.

As for LinkedIn, we had to create and grow a completely new company page from scratch.

After analysing the market, the target audience, Renaissance competitors and industry trends, our team created a content strategy for all 3 channels.

This included original content pieces and SM campaigns prepared in full, including visuals by our team. One of these was the Winter Holidays campaign giveaway. It focused on building brand awareness and engagement, which was a success.

Another involved a weekly post series that was also well-liked by the audience.

What we did in a nutshell:

  • Created a new LinkedIn company page for Renaissance International
  • Boosted organic engagement across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
  • Built a content strategy for each SM channel
  • Produced original content for social media, including visuals

Overall, at the end of 4 months SM stats increased across all channels.

LinkedIn Paid Ads

The UMG team used LinkedIn Paid Ads to support activities on social media. The 2 goals were to:

  • increase brand awareness
  • boost engagement

We did this by promoting a series of regular webinars. Renaissance organises these webinars to go over certain aspects of their platform and how to implement it in classrooms.

Other webinars included interactive talks with special invited guests.

In 4 months we launched over 15 different ad campaigns, all of which were a success, resulting in audience interaction and signups.

Here’s what our partners at Renaissance had to say about the outcomes:

I’ve been very satisfied with the results. The communication with the UMG team is impeccable, and the Account Manager always has great fresh ideas for how to increase engagement with our audience on social media. Looking forward to a further fruitful cooperation with the UMG in 2021!

Marc Nutt, Global Marketing Manager at Renaissance


Looking to jumpstart your digital presence and connect with decision-makers directly? Get in touch to see how the UMG team can help.