The key to digital marketing is smart targeting – and in this case, targeting smart people.

Massey University has grown up; no longer simply a place to study agriculture or veterinary science, but New Zealand’s university of choice for bright, driven, young people destined for important roles in New Zealand’s knowledge economy.
Mogul’s brief was to create a digital campaign which would engage this demographic, pique their interest in Massey, and start a conversation.

We took Massey through the Mogul Methodology every step of the way.

Working with Massey’s External Relations Office, we first developed the idea of the Career Engine, an interactive web application which would take students on a journey through their possible future career based on their current interests and favourite subjects.
From the choices they made on The Career Engine, they would get a glimpse of how their future might progress, and the potential before them.
The objective was to build a database of highly engaged, prospective students which Massey could continue to meaningfully communicate with.

Implementation of The Career Engine (www.engine.ac.nz/career-engine) involved comprehensive planning and testing. The project presented a number of challenges around social media integration, front-end interface design and content management, and it had to be done in a short timeframe to coincide with a national TVC campaign.

The main Massey digital assets (massey.ac.nz, engine.ac.nz, Facebook, Twitter) and online advertising are used to drive traffic to the Career Engine. The key call to action to encourage interaction was: “What will you do in 2027?”
Because nearly every high school pupil is on Facebook, we designed the Career Engine to integrate with social media by enabling login using Facebook Connect, and encouraging sharing of the results with their friends and family on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Massey maintains regular contact with each person who has completed and supplied contact details providing targeted, relevant information to keep them engaged with the University and excited about their future career options.

Massey has nearly doubled its Facebook fans to over 10,000 since Mogul mapped out the social media strategy for the university at the start of 2012.
Massey has a fantastic Social Media Co-ordinator who has worked hard to exceed the goal expectations we set in January – 4 months early!
The Massey team has also been active in adding more content to the Career Engine, so there are more choices to appeal to a wider range of people and interests.


We set up the various stages of the Career Engine as a goal funnel in Google Analytics to ensure that we have a clear picture of how visitors are travelling through the different steps of the Career Engine, and where things can be improved.
The Career Engine has been very successful at targeting this tightly defined demographic and over 1000 prospective students have used the app since it was launched three months ago and 20% have given Massey permission to keep them updated via email. This is no mean feat – we’re talking about teenagers here!
The results and insights continue to be fed back into the app to improve it, with new features and functionality to improve the experience and the conversion rate.

This is what Massey had to say:

“We saw a gap in the university market for an online tool that could help students identify a course of study based on their interests. Mogul picked up what was really just a blue sky idea and developed it into a project and reality in a really short space of time! Now we’ve got a simple-to-use tool that will help prospective students open their eyes to the world of possibility and aspiration available through tertiary study. If you’re thinking about hiring Mogul for similar projects, don’t hesitate!”

– Tracy Pleasants, Marketing Manager, Massey University