The challenge
A top-100 regional university in the Northeast needed to move Fall 2026 admitted students to pay their enrollment deposit; and to know whether outreach was actually driving that behavior, rather than just coinciding with it. The college wanted a rigorous way to isolate the impact of outreach on deposit conversion, not just track raw deposit counts.
The solution
The paid social campaign ran across the core channels on the Motimatic platform, delivering 29 unique GuidePosts across YouTube, Pinterest, Meta, and Snapchat. Motimatic designed a randomized holdout test to measure outreach's true impact:
- Treatment group: 1,999 admitted students received Motimatic outreach across the campaign window (May 15–Aug 31, 2026).
- Holdout group: 83 admitted students were held out of all outreach, providing a clean baseline for natural deposit behavior.
- The outcome measured: whether each student paid their Fall 2026 enrollment deposit.
This structure let the university attribute any lift in deposits directly to the outreach itself, isolated from seasonal or population effects.
Additionally, the campaign used motivational science to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time, based on their funnel stage and desired action.
The results
By the end of the campaign on August 31, 2026, treated students had deposited at more than three times the rate of the holdout group:
| Metric | Treatment | Holdout |
|---|---|---|
| Students in group | 1,999 | 83 |
| Deposits paid | 224 | 3 |
| Deposit rate | 11.21% | 3.61% |
| Lift over holdout | +210% relative, +7.59 pts absolute | Baseline |
The result is statistically significant at a 95% confidence level. The campaign passed its initial goal well ahead of the deposit deadline.
