Each year, Campus Advantage employees submit ideas and vote on a theme to use portfolio-wide for move-in season. 2016’s theme drew inspiration from the colorful, upbeat atmosphere of music festivals.

Catalyst created a variety of pieces to build excitement for Move-In Fest 2016, as well as to help assist people moving in at each property. Collateral included a logo and branding for the campaign, door hangers, lanyards, a banner, table tents, stake signs, emails, landing pages, a concert T-shirt, a Snapchat filter, social media graphics, and a ticket-shaped fast pass. In addition to these pieces, Catalyst worked with Campus Advantage’s Students First^® team to create an “autograph book” to be used throughout the year at the properties. Throughout the year, different events would result in students earning signatures in their autograph book, providing added engagement at each community. Messaging centered around the excitement and anticipation of music festivals, with phrases such as “It’s Your Time — Live it Up!”, “Skip the Lines!”, and “Pack Your Bags!”

The 2016 Spring Campaign was a portfolio-wide integrated marketing campaign conducted across 25 Campus Advantage properties. Each property hosted a major event strategically designed to attract college students before the end of the semester while simultaneously reminding residents why they love living at a Campus Advantage community.

Catalyst created three main themes: Pool Party, Fiesta, and Barbecue. To keep emails clear and simple, each party theme had a designated weekend for the event. For example, properties hosting a Pool Party had their event on April 23, the Barbecue Party took place on April 30, and Fiestas were celebrated on May 7 (coinciding with Cinco de Mayo).

Each property received a poster, a flyer, a social media cover photo, social graphics, a 30-second promotional video, three emails, and a landing page. To encourage attendance, Campus Advantage offered a Summer Vacation Giveaway, which included round-trip airfare, hotel, and transportation/food allowances for the winner. To enter the sweepstakes, all you had to do was attend an event and provide your information. Across all properties, 935 students attended events and were entered into the giveaway.

Campus Advantage kicked off the 2016 renewal season with a refreshed portfolio-wide move-in themed campaign. The theme — Move-In Fest — was well received by residents and acted as a strong reminder of the brand that a resident was committing to upon renewing their lease. The campaign targeted college students between 18 and 24 years old at 24 properties nationwide and encouraged them to renew their lease as early as possible to take advantage of the best rates available. Some promotions seen throughout the campaign included “Early-Bird Specials” and “Live It Up,” both of which tied back to the Move-In Fest music festival vibe.

The campaign was made up of physical and digital deliverables including banners and bandit signs at each property, emails, property-specific landing pages, social media graphics, thank you cards, letterhead, door hangers, and more. Overall, the campaign resulted in 398 leads, and emails performed with an average click-through rate of 10.40%, well above the 2.5% industry average.

Catalyst was asked to create a Cyber Monday campaign and collateral for Campus Advantage, a student housing owner and operator based in Austin, Texas. The campaign was used to market student housing properties to students (18- to 24-year-olds) in over 30 markets around the United States. The campaign needed to be inclusive of all properties within the portfolio while being universal enough to be cost effective for each property to buy-­in without having to change each piece of collateral.

Catalyst completed a Cyber Monday campaign for Campus Advantage in 2014 that was very successful, and the client wanted this year’s campaign to surpass that of last year. The expectation was to be 100 leases ahead of where the portfolio was the previous year, a goal that was surpassed during the campaign.

Catalyst filmed a video around a “sit back and relax” theme. With holidays and finals right around the corner, students’ lives were already hectic enough without a big sale going on at their apartment complex. To accomplish this, we removed the hectic schedule and instead promoted a day of taking it easy and saving big when you live at a Campus Advantage community. In order to incorporate all of the individual communities participating, throughout the video, different swag items or imagery from each property were used in subtle ways and allowed properties to promote the video with a “have you found our logo” type of game.

In addition to the video, Catalyst created social media graphics, emails and associated landing pages, posters, and flyers to allow each property to tease Cyber Monday specials leading up to November 30 (Cyber Monday). Over 172,000 emails were sent to 37,305 unique recipients with an average open rate 53.33% and a click-through rate of 17.1%. A total of 780 leases were signed over the course of the campaign, leading to an average cost per lease of $44.87 for the portfolio. This left the portfolio 40% ahead in renewed leases from the previous year, and 76% ahead in new leases and significantly surpassed the goal of being 100 leases ahead.