A Strategic Enrollment Partnership Expands Adult and Graduate Growth

+19%

enrollment growth from 2022 to fall 2025

+10.7%

increase in applications YoY

Through an integrated partnership spanning paid digital media, Clarity, SEO and copywriting, and Contact Center support, Carnegie helped St. Kate’s sharpen its adult and graduate enrollment strategy, increase application volume, and build a scalable model for long-term growth.

Building a stronger path to adult and graduate enrollment

St. Catherine University serves a distinct mix of learners across its College for Women, College for Adults, and graduate programs. For adult and graduate audiences especially, St. Kate’s saw an opportunity to grow by reaching prospective students with greater precision, supporting them with more consistent engagement, and focusing its internal team’s time where it mattered most.

The university’s partnership with Carnegie began with digital marketing and evolved into a broader enrollment relationship, including paid media, Clarity, SEO and copywriting, and Contact Center support. Together, these services helped St. Kate’s strengthen how it attracts, engages, and supports adult and graduate students — contributing to measurable enrollment growth and greater operational efficiency.

The Challenge

St. Catherine University was navigating a familiar but urgent enrollment challenge: how to grow in a crowded market while staying true to its distinctive mission. As a small Catholic women’s university, St. Kate’s needed to stand out in a crowded, niche market—expanding its reach without sacrificing its distinction.

A major opportunity was emerging in adult and graduate education—both as a new source of revenue and a way to expand their programs on a small footprint. St. Kate’s had strong programs and a mission well aligned with adult learners, especially those seeking degree completion, online, hybrid, and career-connected pathways. Reaching this audience meant moving beyond broad lead generation toward a more disciplined approach: reaching well-matched students, improving movement from interest to application, and creating a more sustainable model for supporting learners through the admissions process.

At the same time, internal capacity was limited. St. Kate’s needed support that could help reduce the burden of chasing leads, allow staff to focus more deeply on relationship-building, and bring greater consistency to the work of turning prospective student interest into enrollment.

Our Approach

Carnegie’s partnership with St. Kate’s began with performance-based digital marketing and evolved into a broader enrollment strategy for adult and graduate audiences. Rather than focusing only on lead volume, the work centered on attracting higher-quality inquiries, improving application movement, and building more consistent support across the student journey.

The strategy brought together paid digital media, SEO, and copywriting support. Carnegie also helped St. Kate’s expand from front-line inquiry response into deeper enrollment support, with admissions-trained specialists helping prospective students move from inquiry through application completion and enrollment steps.

Over time, this gave St. Kate’s a more scalable model: digital strategy to reach learners with personalized engagement, content support to improve visibility and conversion, and contact center support to create timely, human follow-up at scale.

What Worked

A strategic shift from lead volume to student quality, prioritizing adult and graduate prospects who were more likely to apply, enroll, and align with St. Kate’s programs and mission.
Paid digital campaigns built around priority adult and graduate programs, including BSN scholarship, nursing, MBA, and admit-focused campaigns designed to reach prospective students with more relevant messaging.
Audience strategy focused on adult learners and degree completion, helping St. Kate’s better reach prospective students without a degree and connect them to online, hybrid, and career-connected pathways.
Contact Center support that extended the admissions team’s capacity, first through front-line inquiry response and later through deeper application and enrollment support for key programs.
Timely, persistent outreach at scale, including a 97.5% DMC contact rate, 58% conversion rate, and average speed to first contact of 1.4 days across three attempts.
Clarity campaigns that personalized engagement for adult and graduate audiences, helping move prospective students toward key actions like applying, completing applications, and registering for events.
SEO and copywriting support that strengthened St. Kate’s digital experience, with the partnership beginning to evolve toward AEO as prospective student search behavior changes.
Ongoing optimization across campaigns, including refined targeting, updated audience lists, keyword adjustments, and mid-flight changes that helped improve efficiency over time.
A partnership model with deeper visibility and shared ownership, giving St. Kate’s support that functioned like an extension of its team while preserving institutional control and alignment.

Seven young women sit and stand together outdoors, smiling, with a tall brick building and blooming trees in the background, purple graphic accents on the side.

The Results

St. Kate’s partnership with Carnegie helped make adult and graduate enrollment growth more scalable, measurable, and efficient. By combining digital strategy, Clarity, SEO and copywriting, and Contact Center support, the university strengthened how it reached prospective students, supported them through key enrollment steps, and freed internal teams to focus on higher-value relationship-building. The impact showed up across the student journey: inquiry volume grew while CPL decreased, applications increased while CPA improved, and expanded enrollment support helped drive meaningful Spring and Summer enrollment gains. This progress reflected the value of a sustained partnership built around smarter audience strategy, operational efficiency, and continuous improvement.

+19%

enrollment growth from 2022 to fall 2025

+10.7%

increase in applications YoY

–28.6%

lower cost per lead

+13.4%

inquiry growth YoY

-17.5%

cost per acceptance YoY

Carnegie has been a major partner in helping us turn our enrollment trajectory around. They bring the expertise to understand our audiences, create the right message at the right time, and continually optimize based on what we’re seeing. The relationship is incredibly collaborative and built on trust. If something isn’t working, we figure it out together and try something else. That combination of expertise, flexibility, and partnership has added up to really big results for St. Kate’s.

Lauran Hundshamer Vice President of Enrollment and Marketing St. Catherine University

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