Case Study: Akademos increases UGC by 10X

Akademos Overview:

Akademos is an online bookstore and course material management platform that partners with 170+ higher education institutions. Through the platform, schools and faculty can support their students’ success by providing the most cost-effective textbook materials available, all by the first day of class. To date, Akademos helped students and faculty save nearly $150 million. Akademos has had a brand ambassador program for many years but was looking for ways to take it to the next level and provide more structure to students and provide more visibility into student activities. Launching Socialladder for the Fall 22 term helped Akademos increase its User Generated Content by 10 times.

Problem:

As a digital bookstore management provider and platform for many schools nationwide, creating a physical presence at each of their school partners takes time and effort. Since Akademos does not have brick-and-mortar locations, they rely on their student ambassadors to act as the ultimate resource for their platform and services within each campus community. 

As a result, their ambassadors hold multiple responsibilities, such as educating students on campus about their bookstore, hosting information tables at school events, and promoting the bookstore through multiple physical and digital channels. 

For Akademos to successfully maintain a physical presence across their partner schools and keep a pulse on each of their audience, they needed a platform that could:

• Travel with students on the go
• Streamline communication and provide structure to student ambassadors
• Encourage content creation and boost activity engagement
• Hold students accountable
• Quantify the number of tasks completed
• Give insight into the value of each task students completed

Solution:

SocialLadder makes it easy for Akademos to communicate with their ambassadors and track their activity. Instead of focusing on keeping all their ambassadors in the loop by email or text, Akademos can do everything in-app. This saved them hours daily and gave them the visibility they needed to adapt their marketing strategies in real-time.

Example of SocialLadder’s Ambassador Overview Dashboards

The highly configurable compensation methods offered by Socialladder allow Akademos to reward each student ambassador with their preferred method. Akademos benefits from building a strong bond with students and keeping them engaged. Akademos student ambassadors complete various tasks like these to unlock exclusive bonus points and gift certificates:

• Hosting back-to-school help tables
• Educating their peers on their university’s online bookstore
• Taking photos of Akademos’ presence at campus events
• Creating Instagram stories 
• Distributing flyers on campus

Now that Akademos has the tools to scale and refine its ambassador program, they have the power to keep its student ambassadors accountable. As a result, they have turned their program into a predictable marketing channel and assigned each task that ambassadors complete a dollar value. This will allow them to make educated decisions in the future on what activities are the most valuable in terms of ROI. 

Akademos’ Results:

Akademos now has the tools to grow and enhance its student ambassador community by keeping them engaged and motivated year-round. 

Through the SocialLadder platform, they have gained 10X the UGC from their ambassadors and reduced the time needed to run their program successfully. Our platform is a one-stop shop full of automation tools such as creator search and social media integrations. Akademos can communicate with their reps and track their activity on the go. As a result, the process it takes to mass assign different tasks to each of their ambassadors has been simplified. 
Finally, the power of the SocailLadder platform allows Akademos to be present at up to 30+ different campuses simultaneously without their team having to leave the office. Due to our platform’s segmentation features, their student ambassadors can accomplish hyper-local marketing tasks distinct to each of their campuses. This allows them to keep a pulse on each segment of their markets and build relationships within their communities.