How Florida Atlantic University's Transfer program grew by 33%

The approach

Cordelia Labs built a full-funnel paid media program structured around two distinct objectives. At the top of the funnel, YouTube video campaigns delivered affordable, high-impression reach to students near partner campuses, using video to communicate the Link2FAU value proposition in a format suited to awareness. Paid social on Facebook and Instagram extended that reach and kept the program visible as students moved through their daily digital routines.

At the bottom of the funnel, Google Search captured high-intent traffic from students actively researching transfer options, using tightly targeted keywords like "transfer to FAU" and "Broward College transfer to FAU" to reach prospects at the moment of decision.

Geographic targeting placed ads within a five-mile radius of each partner campus, keeping spend focused on the relevant student population rather than a broad regional audience.

In the 2025-2026 cycle, Snapchat was added to the channel mix as a test, expanding reach among younger community college students on a platform where CPCs came in at $0.85. The campaign launched in September 2025, roughly two months earlier than the prior year, giving the program a longer runway to build awareness before peak enrollment periods

The results

The 2025-2026 campaign produced 1,117 total form submissions by early June, a 33% increase over the prior year's 842. Paid Search drove the majority of conversions, delivering 890 submissions at a 19.7% click-through rate and a $2.80 cost per click. Both figures reflect improvement over the prior year benchmarks of 18.63% CTR and $2.69 CPC, with volume rising while efficiency held steady. Facebook CTR nearly doubled year-over-year, from 0.10% to 0.19%, with CPC dropping from $4.75 to $2.39, a sign that creative and audience targeting improvements were compounding over the life of the engagement.

For a program like Link2FAU, each form submission represents a prospective transfer student who has raised their hand. The campaign's ability to grow that pool by a third, while maintaining cost efficiency across channels, means FAU's admissions team has significantly more qualified leads to work with heading into the next enrollment cycle. The channel diversification built into the program also established durable benchmarks across Google Search, YouTube, Facebook, and Snapchat that will inform future campaign decisions.

The bigger picture

Florida Atlantic University needed a single media partner capable of running coordinated paid campaigns across multiple colleges, programs, and recruitment audiences simultaneously. One media partner, every FAU audience: transfer, graduate, online, and beyond.

Now in their second consecutive multi-year contract, FAU is Cordelia Labs' longest-running higher education partnership. We run coordinated paid media across 40+ programs, colleges, and institutes simultaneously, transfer recruitment, graduate enrollment, online degrees, public affairs, and more, with performance accountability at the program level, not just the institution. Year over year, we've consistently improved outcomes, reduced cost per acquisition, and increased efficiency across every program in the account.

Florida Atlantic University first engaged Big Sea's media services ( now, Cordelia Labs) roughly eight years ago. They are now in their second consecutive five-year contract. That kind of sustained commitment from a major public research university reflects a media partnership that has proven capable of growing with the institution, adapting to new programs and audiences, and delivering accountable performance year after year without requiring FAU to rebuild institutional knowledge from scratch with a new agency.

The account today spans over 40 unique programs, colleges and recruitment audiences running simultaneously: transfer student recruitment through Link2FAU, graduate program awareness and inquiry generation, online degree program acquisition across Social Work, Nursing, Exercise Science, Sociology, Criminal Justice, and more, public affairs and institutional visibility campaigns reaching audiences across the state of Florida, test prep program promotion, M.Ed. graduate recruitment, and open house registration drives. Each program has its own campaign structure, its own performance benchmarks, and its own audience, but they share a single strategic layer managed by Cordelia Labs, which means budget allocation, channel decisions, and optimization insights flow across the full account rather than sitting in silos.