Boler School of Business
How We Helped John Carroll University Increase Part-Time MBA Admits By 27%
In a crowded market full of online alternatives, Boler needed marketing that matched the strength of its program.
Boler had a strong part-time MBA program, but the marketing wasn't making that case clearly enough.
Prospective students were weighing fully online options, better-funded peer institutions, and their own doubts about whether the degree was worth their time. Boler had good answers to those questions. The marketing just wasn't giving them.
We worked with the team at John Carroll University's Boler School of Business to sharpen the program's positioning, generate more inquiries from prospective applicants, and convert those prospects into enrolled students.
Services provided:
Marketing Audit
Competitor Benchmarking
Website Optimization
Email Marketing
What the Interviews Kept Saying
We started by talking to leadership, faculty, current students, and alumni to find out what actually made Boler worth choosing. What we heard was consistent. The program had smaller cohorts, stronger faculty relationships, and a career network that students described as unusually accessible. None of that was showing up in the marketing. Those interviews shaped everything that followed.
Closing the Gap Between Interest and Application
The audit and benchmarking work confirmed what the interviews suggested. The website, email nurture sequence, and messaging weren't working together to move a prospective student from interested to applied. None of it reflected what made Boler different from better-resourced programs.
We rebuilt the email sequence around the specific objections prospective students raised in the interviews. We rewrote the website to lead with what the program actually delivered rather than how it was structured. And we tightened the messaging so that what made Boler different came through on first contact, not after a campus visit.
The numbers followed.
27%
increase in MBA admits
15%
increase in MBA applications
37%
increase in web inquiries
“Deep Varnish was a great strategic partner and provided valuable insights to shape our MBA enrollment marketing strategy. Their understanding of higher education marketing resulted in recommendations that helped fuel our admissions efforts. We are already experiencing an encouraging improvement in enrollment and the overall MBA grad experience.”