Personalising connected student journeys.
RMIT University gains insights into the paths students take to enrolment with Adobe Data Insights Agent and Adobe Customer AI.
23%
enrolment conversion rate from personalised banner
15
weeks to implement data foundation
29%
improvement in website speed, boosting ease of use
“Adobe has helped us connect the dots across every stage of the student journey, from initial discovery through to enrolment, allowing for end-to-end reporting.”
Darren Boyle
Director of Digital and Experience, RMIT University
A mission that hits close to home.
When Darren Boyle became Director of Digital and Experience at RMIT University, he saw the opportunity to make a real difference. “I love the purpose of what RMIT stands for — educating students, fostering sustainability and engaging communities,” he says.
RMIT, a global university of technology, design and enterprise, serves more than 90,000 students from over 190 countries. With campuses in Australia and Vietnam, a research hub in Spain and partnerships across the Asia Pacific, its reach is vast. But its ambition to deliver seamless, personalised experiences to the next generation of students was limited by legacy systems and siloed data.
RMIT has a well-deserved reputation as a digital leader and provides tech innovation access to students as an Adobe Creative Campus Innovator. But with student journeys stretching from Year 10 through to final enrolment and touchpoints like open days, brochures and social channels remaining disconnected, the university needed a new foundation for digital engagement built on trust, speed and scale.
By building a digital ecosystem that incorporates a first-party data approach and agentic AI tools, RMIT unified its data and connected its once-fragmented systems, gaining end-to-end visibility into how prospective students move from early interest to application to deciding to attend RMIT. Just as importantly, Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics gave the team a level of trust in the data — with deep visibility and insights into the student application process — that had never existed before.
Competing for digital-first students.
The Australian higher education landscape is fiercely competitive. Universities vie for domestic and international students while contending with TAFE and other providers offering flexible education pathways. Policy discussions around caps on international enrolments only heightened the urgency.
RMIT recognised that academic reputation alone wasn’t enough. To attract the best students, it needed to meet the expectations of digitally native students through consistent, personalised communications across all channels.
“Our legacy systems and fragmented data made it difficult to deliver a connected, personalised student experience,” recalls Boyle. “We had to rethink how we interact with students from the very first touch.”
After evaluating multiple partners, the team chose Adobe Professional Services to accelerate the university’s transformation. Record speed, flexible contracting and a partnership approach that felt integrated rather than transactional were key decision factors.
In just 15 weeks, Adobe and RMIT successfully implemented a data foundation, unifying first-party data through Real-Time CDP. They also stood up a dashboard in Customer Journey Analytics to track prospective student journeys across channels and migrated RMIT’s environment to the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK to better support the process.
“Adobe Professional Services became part of our team,” says Boyle. “Their flexibility and expertise were pivotal in delivering the project on time and with immediate value. We’ve worked with plenty of vendors before, but this was the first time out-of-the-box integrations actually delivered.”
Making insights accessible across teams with a unified data and AI-driven ecosystem.
In addition to implementing Real-Time CDP and Customer Journey Analytics, the Professional Services team worked with RMIT to modernise and simplify its code bases and tagging. This effort led to a five-point improvement in website performance scores and a 29% improvement in speed, making the site cleaner and faster for users.
One standout achievement of the new ecosystem was the creation of the prospect journey dashboard in Customer Journey Analytics that integrates online and offline data. “The first time I saw that dashboard I spent two hours exploring it,” says Boyle. “We finally had a view of the entire funnel that shows where students engage and where they drop off. It gave us the clarity we’d been missing.”
With Adobe Data Insights Agent in Customer Journey Analytics staff can use natural language interfaces to query and update the prospect dashboard, making detailed complex analysis more accessible across the teams.
Boyle and his team also use the natively embedded Customer AI in Real-Time CDP to segment audiences into high, medium and low propensity to enrol for activation across online and offline channels. “These tools give us the confidence to concentrate our efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact,” he says.
“With Adobe as our innovation partner, we’re ready to harness AI and automation to redefine how we engage with the next generation of students.”
Darren Boyle
Director of Digital and Experience, RMIT University
A holistic engagement model.
The improved data foundation gives RMIT end-to-end visibility into the prospect journey, enabling admissions staff to intervene at critical moments.
As prospective students explore the RMIT website, built on Adobe Experience Manager Sites, their actions and interests are captured and unified in Real-Time CDP. This allows the university to tailor nurture campaigns based on individual interests, such as engineering or design programs.
Boyle and his team keep the university top of mind through email messages sent with Adobe Marketo Engage, tailored online ads delivered with Adobe Advertising and custom banners on the website served through Adobe Target. All of these communications present opportunities for individuals to progress toward becoming RMIT students.
“Adobe has helped us connect the dots across every stage of the student journey, from initial discovery through to enrolment, allowing for end-to-end reporting,” says Boyle.
A future based on personalisation and performance.
The new system quickly delivered results. A targeted website banner shown to students who had received an offer but not yet enrolled achieved a 23% conversion rate. Real-Time CDP integration with Adobe Advertising enabled real-time audience sharing across TikTok, LinkedIn and other platforms with a significant number of enrolments influenced by paid and social channels.
Boyle is now preparing for the next phase of RMIT’s digital transformation: connecting Adobe Experience Cloud with Adobe Creative Cloud to scale content creation, accelerate language translation and deliver hyper-personalisation.
“We’ve laid the foundation with trusted data and unified profiles,” says Boyle. “With Adobe as our innovation partner, we’re ready to harness AI and automation to redefine how we engage with the next generation of students.”
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