Griffith University wasn’t short on data. It was drowning in it.
Each year, millions of digital interactions, from course browsing to application enquiries, flowed through its systems. But despite strong engagement and heavy investment in marketing technology, one question remained difficult to answer:
What actually drives a student to choose Griffith?
Data was everywhere, but fragmented across web, CRM, and media platforms. By the time insights surfaced, the moment to act had often passed.
We couldn’t confidently say what influenced a student’s decision. Not because we lacked data, but because we couldn’t activate it in real time.
— Leanne Towerzey, Director, Marketing Technology, Griffith University
At the same time, the landscape was shifting. Students were researching across multiple channels simultaneously and expected seamless, relevant engagement. Privacy changes were reducing the effectiveness of traditional tracking, forcing institutions to rethink their reliance on third-party data.
Griffith realised incremental fixes would not solve the problem. It needed a structural shift, built on People, Process, Technology, and Data (PPTD), to move from campaign-led marketing to real-time, intent-driven engagement, supported by the strategic partner – WPP Enterprise Solutions.
From Fragmented Signals to Real-Time Intent
At the centre of the transformation is Tealium Customer Data Platform (CDP), implemented as a real-time behavioural layer across Griffith’s ecosystem.
Today, the CDP:
- Captures ~300 behavioural and contextual attributes
- Powers ~125 active audience segments
- Unifies anonymous and known users into a single profile
More importantly, it enables Griffith to respond to behaviour as it happens, while a student is still browsing, comparing, or considering their next step.
From Hindsight To Real-time Reaction: Capturing Intent in the Moment
One of the most impactful use cases has been Griffith’s adoption of Tealium Moments IQ.
Rather than inferring intent from clicks, Moments IQ captures zero-party signals directly from students at key decision points, such as application pages or course comparisons.
The scale has been significant::
- Hundreds of thousands of in-session impressions
- Tens of thousands of explicit intent signals captured
When students provide zero-party data through Moments IQ, those signals are captured in real time and used to trigger relevant next-step experiences within the same session, ensuring interactions are aligned to their immediate intent.
WPP Enterprise Solutions also supported the design and optimisation of these in-session experiences to ensure they aligned naturally with student behaviour and context.
And the behavioural impact is clear:
- Students who engage are significantly more likely to take the next step in the same session
- Follow-up experiences achieve double-digit engagement rates
Relevance and timing had more impact than format. When we aligned to real decision moments, engagement followed.
— Leanne Towerzey, Director, Marketing Technology, Griffith University
This marked a turning point, from inferred behaviour to real-time, high-confidence intent.
Reinventing Media with First-Party Data
Griffith also transformed its media strategy using Tealium Conversion API (CAPI).
Previously, platform-specific integrations led to inconsistent tracking and reduced confidence in optimisation. To address this, WPP Enterprise Solutions configured the server-side CDP events, while WPP Media aligned media channels to centralise tracking and improve signal consistency across platforms. By centralising conversion events and activating them server-side:
- Signal quality improved
- Matching rates increased
- Platform discrepancies reduced
The results:
- +50% year-on-year increase in registrations for key events
- Google Ads reports an average 1.5x improvement in cost efficiency when customer data is used.
One data definition. Multiple platforms. Consistent performance.
From Campaigns to Continuous Engagement
Technology alone did not drive the transformation. Griffith shifted from traditional campaign cycles to continuous, behaviour-driven engagement, where audiences update dynamically and activation happens in real time.
To make this scalable, Griffith introduced a CDP Champions model, embedding capability across marketing, digital, data, and technology teams rather than centralising it within a single function. These champions acted as both advocates and practitioners, helping to translate use cases into activation, maintain governance standards, and ensure consistent application of data across campaigns and channels. The model created a shared language around audiences and intent, reduced reliance on specialist teams, and enabled faster progression from idea to execution.
Once the data became trusted and linked to outcomes, teams started bringing forward their own ideas instead of waiting for direction.
— Leanne Towerzey, Director, Marketing Technology, Griffith University
This shift, from siloed execution to collaboration, turned the CDP into a true organisational capability.
Performance at scale
Across its Tealium-powered use cases, Griffith has delivered measurable results:
- +62% uplift in click-through rates for CDP-driven communications
- +46% improvement in paid media CTR using CDP audiences
- CDP audiences applied to:
- 60% of ad sets
- Driving 63% of spend and 50% of impressions
At scale, the University now delivers:
- 150,000+ personalised messages per month
But the bigger shift is qualitative.
Engagement is more relevant, better timed, and less intrusive. Students respond because interactions reflect where they are in their journey, not where the campaign is.
From fragmented marketing to connected experiences.
What comes next
Griffith is now extending this approach beyond recruitment into onboarding, progression, and retention, using data to support students at key moments across the lifecycle.
With a real-time data foundation in place, the University is also exploring how AI can enhance decision-making by prioritising intent, predicting needs, and improving engagement at scale.
This initiative helped us move from pushing messages to genuinely supporting prospective students.
— Leanne Towerzey, Director, Marketing Technology, Griffith University
In a sector where attention is limited and expectations are rising, Griffith University’s transformation offers a clear signal of where engagement is heading:
Not toward more marketing, but toward smarter, real-time, data-driven connections, built on People, Process, Technology, and Data working as one.
