Meet Your New Study App: Your Textbook, Simplified.
Sharpen by McGraw Hill, launched in October 2022, is a mobile study app designed to transform the way students learn by making studying engaging, efficient, and enjoyable. Featuring bite-sized lessons, gamified content, exam-style quizzes, and personalized dashboards, Sharpen helps students streamline their study habits and achieve academic success. Entering a competitive market as a new brand, Sharpen faced the challenge of building awareness and connecting with Gen Z students in a meaningful way. To address this, the brand partnered with Response Media to implement a robust CRM strategy, leveraging creative, targeted email marketing and personalized messaging to drive app downloads and establish Sharpen as a trusted study resource.
Challenges Faced
As a new entrant in the competitive educational app market, Sharpen by McGraw Hill faced the dual challenge of building brand awareness from the ground up while connecting meaningfully with Gen Z students. The app struggled to drive downloads and foster student loyalty, hindered by initial email marketing efforts that lacked strategic direction. These campaigns relied on text-heavy, untimely messages that failed to align with students’ academic needs. Without a robust CRM program or audience segmentation, Sharpen’s outreach felt impersonal, overlooking key academic milestones and missing critical opportunities for engagement. Recognizing the need for a more tailored approach, Sharpen embraced personalized email marketing to deliver timely, relevant communications that could bridge the gap, strengthen audience connections, and foster loyalty.
Our Solution
Response Media tackled Sharpen’s challenges with a data-driven, personalized email marketing campaign. Notably, we transformed the CRM program into a vibrant, Gen Z-focused strategy by reimagining emails as engaging, interactive experiences. Incorporating animated avatars, emojis, GIFs, and eye-catching visuals, we reflected Sharpen’s youthful brand personality. This approach naturally guided students through the content. Furthermore, we aligned email content with academic milestones, such as the start of the semester, midterms, and finals. This ensured each communication was timely and relevant.
To elevate personalization, we integrated dynamic content and deep-linking capabilities into the emails. This enabled students to navigate seamlessly to specific app features. For students with a McGraw Hill purchase history, we customized emails to recommend relevant textbooks and resources. This reinforced Sharpen’s role as a trusted study partner. By segmenting the audience based on academic milestones, app usage, and purchase history, we delivered highly targeted messages. These messages met each student’s unique needs, driving app downloads, boosting engagement, and fostering long-term loyalty.
Results
Doubled Registration Rates: The email acquisition strategy achieved a 63% registration rate in Fall 2023, more than doubling the average registration rate of 28% across other acquisition channels.
Increased Active User Rates: Surpassed the April 2024 active user target by 5.6%, in Fall 2023, demonstrating strong user engagement and retention.
High Trial-to-Subscription Conversion: The trial-to-subscription conversion rate for Sharpen Plus reached 57%, reflecting success in converting free trial users into long-term subscribers.
Enhanced Student Activity Completion: Targeted messaging drove a 17% increase in activity completion rates over Fall 2023, showing higher engagement with the app’s features.
