Customer Story

How Regent University uses CHEQ to divert
spend from invalid bot clicks to realprospective students.
--Executive Summary
Regent University (US), worked with CHEQ to divert spend from invalid bot clicks to realprospective students. With the help of CHEQ, Regent University saw a 21% decrease ininvalid clicks across their paid online student acquisition campaigns, which also contributed
to a 31% drop in their cost per student enrollment.

About Regent University

The Challenge: tainted student
acquisition campaigns and wasted
call center time

Consistently named one of the nation'stop Christian colleges, Virginia-based

Student acquisition by Regent University isRegent University serves 11,000 students.

through online campaigns: primarily

The school offers 150 areas of study fromGoogle, Facebook, and Bing. However, thecybersecurity to health, both at its 70-acreteam soon realized they had a problem ofcampus in Virginia Beach, and throughfake clicks and online form-fills driven byonline courses around the world. Core tobots. McGouldrick says: "We received

Regent University's growth is attracting

many junk fill-ins which did not makestudents through paid online acquisitionsense. Call center staff needed to callcampaigns. Jason McGouldrick, Regent

these leads straight away but sometimes

University's Director of Marketing, and his

noted poor call quality which was wastingteam is charged with an ambitious 10%

their time and energy."

annual increase in student enrollment.

The Issue: Initial monitoring phase reveals significant
rates of invalid users in student acquisition campaigns.

--Phase One: Scan Period
CHEQ scanned every Regent University
platform and campaign, including
multiple campaigns on paid search(Google, Bing) and paid social (Facebook).
CHEQ’s initial monitoring phase showed
exact levels of invalid clicks, platform byplatform, and campaign by campaign.

Initial Findings:
3% invalid click rates
The findings of the scan revealed that 3%of paid clicks entering Regent University’s“We knew there were invalid
clicks, but we were flying blind
until we were able to workwith CHEQ.

funnel were invalid. Bots were auto filling
lead forms. Some expensive campaigns
saw fake user engagement as high as 6%.
This issue was jeopardizing core metrics
including raising the cost of student
acquisition, driving up cost per student
enrollment, and draining call center
resources being used to contact junkleads. Given the centrality of improving
these metrics, urgent action was needed.

Jason McGouldrick
Director of Marketing@ Regent University

The Solution: Implementing CHEQ to replace fake user
clicks and form-fills with real prospective students.

--Phase 2: Blocking and Calibrating
After understanding its exposure to fakeusers, Regent University used CHEQ’sexclusion audiences and IP-blocking toblock high-risk invalid users. This madeuse of CHEQ’s 1000 real-timeResults:
Hitting core student acquisition
goals
Regent University saw vast improvement incore business goals after six months deploying
CHEQ.
Key results:

cybersecurity tests to protect acquisition●

31% decrease in cost per student
enrollment

quality over quantity,and deliver more●

21% decrease in invalid clicks

enrollments.”●

Reduction of call center time sorting andcalling junk leads

campaigns. McGouldrick says: “With afocus on efficiency, we can improve lead“

Regent University continues to rely on

Reallocating spend to reachstudents, not fake users, is reducing
our cost per enrollment, which is
our main KPI.

CHEQ’s customer acquisition security as
online customer acquisition spend
increases. “We have been intentionally
ramping up our efforts in search and paid
digital channels. As we do, customer
acquisition security provided by CHEQ is
an important piece of that.”

Darvin Muentes
Marketing Analyst@ Regent University

To learn more about CHEQ’s solutions visit www.cheq.ai

Working with CHEQ to eliminate invalid
users is a long-term play that requires
patience and calibration, but when themagic starts to happen, the value istremendous.