Reconnect Digital Marketing Campaigns
Reconnect Marketing Efforts
2021 Campaign
The Michigan Center for Adult College Success, with support from the Michigan Office of Sixty by 30, began airing a series of Reconnect 21 digital ads to encourage program enrollment.
The Reconnect 21 digital marketing campaign serves as a compelling case study in the effective use of data-driven outreach to engage prospective adult learners.
Leveraging insights from multiple partners and a diverse set of digital platforms, the campaign reached over 319,000 individuals aged 21–24, resulting in nearly 40,000 expressed interests and more than 22,800 completed applications.
These outcomes represent a significant lift from pre-campaign engagement levels, where monthly applications averaged fewer than 2,000. Following the campaign’s launch in July 2024, application volumes more than doubled and remained consistently elevated through the end of the year. The strong application-to-enrollment conversion rate—estimated between 43% and 57%— demonstrates the campaign’s effectiveness in not just raising awareness, but in guiding individuals through key decision points toward actual enrollment.
Enrollment data further reinforces the campaign’s impact. Between 9,462 and 12,511 individuals from the targeted marketing audience ultimately enrolled in Michigan community and Tribal colleges through Reconnect 21, accounting for between 60% to 80% of total enrollees during the campaign period.
These students were heavily concentrated in Michigan’s largest counties and most populated regions, suggesting that the Reconnect 21 digital ads effectively reached high-density areas where enrollment potential was greatest.
Performance metrics across platforms and demographics also revealed important insights: in-district messaging significantly outperformed out-of-district efforts in terms of engagement and cost-efficiency, and Spanish-language ads showed exceptional promise—particularly among Hispanic/Latino audiences.
These findings highlight opportunities for future campaigns to build on what worked, refine strategies for underperforming segments, and continue using real-time performance data to guide adaptive decision-making.
2024 Campaign
In 2024, Michigan expanded its Reconnect program to include adults aged 21–24, offering tuition-free or reduced tuition access to community college. To maximize reach and impact, the Michigan Center for Adult College Success teamed up with MiLEAP, CollegeAPP, and 25th Hour Communications to launch a fast-tracked Reconnect video ad campaign—initiated immediately upon winning the grant in mid-2024.
From July through December, the Reconnect video campaign ran across Meta (Facebook & Instagram), TikTok, and Snapchat. Weekly planning meetings evolved into biweekly strategy sessions, enabling real-time optimization.
Using CollegeAPP’s proprietary data systems and Media Prefs insights from 25th Hour, the team developed targeted audience profiles and custom messaging—differentiating between in-district and out-of-district learners and adapting creative assets rapidly under tight timelines. Results were remarkable. Engagement rates soared—on Meta platforms, ads achieved around 16.5% engagement at a CPC of $0.94; Snapchat saw nearly 19.7% at $0.92; and TikTok clocked a 13.0% engagement rate with just $0.58 CPC—significantly outperforming the typical benchmarks of ~0.8% engagement and $2.11 CPC.
This high-performance outreach translated into real enrollment impact: between 9,462 and 12,511 young adults enrolled thanks to this Reconnect video campaign—accounting for up to 80% of the Reconnect 21 age expansion enrollments during the campaign window.
Overall, the campaign delivered more than twice as many enrollments compared to the previous ten months combined. This effort reflects how smart, data-driven collaboration and creative digital strategies can rapidly scale outreach and overcome barriers to access. It serves as a blueprint for effective adult learner engagement and represents a significant stride toward Michigan’s broader Sixty by 30 goal: increasing working-age adult attainment to 60%.