Classrooms, books, and the internet are great starting points for learning about the world, but nothing broadens a student’s perspective like living and learning in a foreign country.
For more than 50 years, the International Development Programme (IDP Education) has been matching students with study abroad programs and helping them prepare by taking the IELTS — the most trusted English exam in the world. With content for thousands of programs and scholarships spread across hundreds of webpages, IDP Education’s marketing team has a lot to manage — and it’s crucial that the information is accurate, regularly updated, and tailored to each region.
Unfortunately, IDP Education's content management system (CMS) turned routine content management tasks into a massive challenge. It was difficult to use and required technical skills to do so
To overcome these complexities, regional teams adopted alternative tools that were more user-friendly. While this made it easier for marketers to add and edit programs on their own, it also meant that IDP Education no longer had a centralized infrastructure to manage its brand or scale in the future. To set the large company and its marketers up for long-term success, IDP Education would need to consolidate these tools into a single, unified platform, which led to Contentful.
Traveling to a modular platform to improve brand consistency
When IDP Education began exploring new content management tools, it outlined two key requirements: a central repository to manage global content, and the flexibility for regional teams to localize their sites. A headless (structured) CMS was the ideal choice, but options were limited. While some traditional platforms were starting to adopt headless architecture, IDP Education needed a mature, proven solution, and Contentful delivered.
During the first three months on Contentful, IDP Education launched 60+ webpages, consolidating its most impactful content into one space.
Then IDP Education put Contentful to the real test with a brand refresh that would require the company to rework 27 of those websites. The team was pleasantly surprised by how simple it was to implement new UX, images, and content models and apply them universally.
Building a flight plan for efficient collaboration
Contentful has had other positive impacts on IDP Education’s content management, namely, clarifying roles and responsibilities with unique roles and permissions. These lay the foundation for effective collaboration.
"We were able to set up workflows and specific roles for visiting authors, which enables them to write content, but not publish it. This also ensures it doesn’t skip the review process," Nivedika shared. This is especially useful when a program host wants to update details about their study abroad offering or add a related article. In the past, IDP Education contributors wrote content in Word documents and handed it off to IDP Education, which then uploaded that content to the CMS, and staged and published it with help from developers.
Today, the process is far more efficient — Contentful empowers nontechnical users and third-party contributors to create and edit specific content independently, while safeguarding the rest from accidental changes.
Because Contentful is editor-friendly, regional marketing teams find it easy to learn how to use it. "Onboarding is no longer a huge deal," shared Muthuswamy.
The results speak for themselves. “Organic traffic increased across all websites after adopting Contentful. And conversion rates are improving year over year, ” said Emily Nicholson, Global Head of Digital at IDP Education.
Going global — with ease — using AI Actions
While Contentful helped IDP Education master a straightforward approach to brand consistency and collaboration, the tool is also helping them reach new audiences to secure new students and hosts.
To scale to new markets, IDP Education is using AI Actions. Now IDP Education marketers can quickly generate metadata, translations, and alt text, which makes their digital ecosystem more discoverable, more localized, and more accessible without added work.
While these metrics are exciting, they’re just a fraction of what is to come as the team continues pushing the boundaries of modular content and the latest technology advancements.
