Florida Virtual School

Back-To-School Campaign

How &Barr helped deliver a 41% increase in online school course enrollments.

After a year of mandatory virtual schooling due to COVID-19, Florida Virtual School tasked &Barr with maintaining high enrollment rates as brick-and-mortar schools reopened

What We Did

&Barr developed an integrated digital media plan designed to reach consumers across all areas of the funnel, engage and educate them on Florida Virtual School and ultimately influence them to sign-up for a course.

How It Mattered

The campaign successfully garnered over 75,000 course sign-ups from students and parents all over the state, driving a 41% increase in sign-ups from 2019 and providing an increase in flexibility for the lives of the families involved.

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School’s Out

The COVID-19 pandemic meant a number of major breaks from tradition—one of which, of course, being the closing of brick-and-mortar schools. For many families, Florida Virtual School was the answer. A surge of new sign-ups came in time for the 2020 school year. But as in-person schooling returned, we needed to continue sign-ups for Florida Virtual School courses.

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Top Of The Class

In order to encourage an uptick in sign-ups, our media team worked with a number of vendors in developing unique, interactive media units that ended up driving a 41% increase in sign-ups. The campaign went on to receive over 92 million impressions, a 6% increase from 2019, as well as over 10.5 million video views through to completion—an 84% increase over 2019.

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A Lesson In Strategy

The overwhelming success of the campaign is owed in part to the media strategy. By targeting both students and parents separately and running a number of A/B tests of various creative, we were able to find the most cost-efficient way to drive conversion. By utilizing unconventional units like a Hulu quiz and in-app ads, we were able to learn consumers’ behavior and serve them messaging at times deemed most receptive. This meant the ads we served were more likely to be viewed all the way through which helped drive qualified conversions.