Education, by the numbers
Growth in applications for Southern Cross University
42.86%
Cost per enrolment via Google Search for The Hotel School
$848
CPL for James Cook University international
$110 → $20
More registrations from withdrawn leads at Builders Academy
500%
Why education is different
Long consideration, hard deadlines.
The Garden is an integrated marketing agency with teams in Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland, working across education, property and aged care. Education compresses the hardest version of the high-consideration problem into a calendar: The Hotel School’s students take 252 days to decide, and every one of them decides against a census date.
That’s why fragmented student marketing underperforms. Awareness runs with one agency, open day with another, nurture in-house, and nobody owns the pipeline number. We run recruitment as one loop: media, creative, UGC, nurture, CRM and a call centre that qualifies at scale, all pointed at enrolments rather than clicks.
Enrolments, not enquiry counts
UGC and student-voice creative
Intake-calendar campaign planning
Trusted by Australia's education providers
Universities & higher education
University marketing across the whole student journey.
University recruitment spans school leavers, non-school leavers, postgraduates and international students, each with a different journey and a shared deadline. Winning takes full-funnel coverage: brand and UGC where students actually look, search for the moment of comparison, and nurture that keeps an applicant warm through offer and acceptance.
Southern Cross University’s “Time to Reset” campaign targeted non-school leavers during COVID and grew applications 42.86% and offers 42.76%. ANU’s Crawford School lifted postgraduate applications 60% and acceptances 40%. James Cook University’s international campaigns across eight countries cut cost per lead from $110 to $20. Flinders paired lead scoring with call-centre qualification and converted 20% of applications to enrolment in postgraduate ICT.
School leaver, postgrad and international- Student-voice UGC at scale
Application-to-enrolment nurture
RTOs, TAFEs & private colleges
RTO marketing built around enrolment deadlines.
Vocational providers live closer to the revenue line than any university: intakes are frequent, cost per enrolment is the only number that matters, and a withdrawn student is money already spent. The playbook is aggressive qualification, fast follow-up and systematic re-engagement.
Builders Academy re-engaged withdrawn leads by email, SMS and social for a 500% increase in registrations from that segment, and 810+ registrations with 3,500+ callbacks through Marketo and Calendly. Endeavour College doubled its lead target, cut CPL by $15+ and converted 58% of applications to enrolments. The Hotel School holds a $848 cost per enrolment through Google Search with 57% of enrolments attributed to paid media, on the same budget as the year before. And Melbourne Polytechnic’s SEO programme lifted organic traffic 25%, hitting its targets six months early.
Cost-per-enrolment accountability
Withdrawn-student re-engagement
Organic and paid working one funnel
Key services
The system behind every education engagement.
Student recruitment draws on the whole Marketing Operating System. These carry the most weight.
Lead Generation
Campaigns qualified to course level, scored before admissions sees them.
Media Buying
Full-funnel media planned to intake calendars, domestic and international.
Social Media Marketing
Student-voice organic and UGC where the decision actually starts.
Creative Strategy
Campaign platforms and video built to cut through to Gen Z and career changers.
Marketing Automation
Nurture from enquiry through application, offer and enrolment.
Phone Sales
Call-centre qualification that turns enquiry lists into enrolment pipelines.
How we work
One loop, run to the intake calendar.
The Loop, The Garden's growth loop, ships improvements weekly against the only calendar that matters: yours.
Sense
Application, campaign and admissions signals in one pipeline view per intake.
Decide
The bottleneck this week: enquiry volume, application starts, offer acceptance.
Create & activate
New creative, audiences and nurtures live in days, inside the intake window.
Learn & improve
Every intake teaches the next, so cost per enrolment falls year on year.
The proof
Education results we can put a number on.
A 12-year partnership engineered Kangan Institute's acquisition engine: 10,000+ FY25 leads under $45 CPA, and the first TAFE to advertise on Meta.
The Avotar campaign took TAFE Queensland to school leavers on Snapchat and Instagram: 4.5 million impressions and a 10.37% Stories conversion rate.
A global HubSpot implementation for Crimson Global Academy influenced $100M+ in closed-won deals within four months of go-live.
A multi-channel, student-led acquisition campaign lifted ANU Crawford School applications 64% year on year, with offers up 24% and acceptances up 15%.
Quality-first campaigns generated 556 applications for genU Training in a year, spanning 4 states, 7 channels and 10+ courses.
Student-made content for Flinders Business School drew 3,000+ international leads in three months, with 35% meeting qualification benchmarks.
Answers to the questions we hear most.
What does an education marketing agency do?
An education marketing agency recruits students: it generates enquiries, qualifies them, and nurtures them through application, offer and enrolment. At The Garden that runs as one system across media, creative, UGC, marketing automation, CRM and phone-based qualification, measured on enrolments rather than clicks.
How can universities improve application-to-enrolment conversion?
By treating the post-application window as a campaign, not an admin queue. Nurture, scoring and human follow-up carry an applicant to acceptance: Flinders University converted 20% of postgraduate ICT applications to enrolment using lead scoring plus call-centre qualification, and Southern Cross University grew offers 42.76% alongside its application growth.
How do RTOs re-engage withdrawn students?
With a structured multi-channel sequence rather than a one-off email. Builders Academy’s withdrawn-lead programme across email, SMS and social produced a 500% increase in registrations from withdrawn leads and lifted monthly registrations 39%. Students who almost enrolled once are the warmest audience a provider owns.
What works for international student recruitment?
Market-by-market campaigns with local relevance and honest student voice. James Cook University’s campaigns across eight countries reached a 9% click-to-lead conversion and cut CPL from $110 to $20, while Bendigo Kangan Institute’s UGC video for onshore international students lifted click-through 63% against static creative.
When should marketing start for an intake?
Earlier than feels natural: the average student decision at The Hotel School runs 252 days, which means the recruitment campaign for an intake starts the better part of a year before census. Providers who only spend in the enrolment window are bidding for the students everyone else warmed up.
What our clients say
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