• by Tanya Gazdik , November 22, 2010

TIAA-CREF is teaming with Yahoo once again for a digital campaign targeting higher education employees through Yahoo Sports' popular college sports destination: Rivals.com.

Since higher education employees likely have a strong allegiance and interest in their college/university sports programs, TIAA-CREF turned to Yahoo to create a campaign that engages this demographic through the NCAA Football section of its sports site.

This follows Yahoo's March Madness Rivals.com campaign for TIAA-CREF, which was the financial service company's first online effort. It included display ads on the Yahoo Sports front page and the NCAA Tournament home page. Yahoo and Rivals NCAAB generated 124 million page views during March Madness, according to comScore.

"We saw numbers for the Yahoo campaign that were 20 to 30% higher than what we originally expected based on similar initiatives," says Kevin Seaman, senior marketing manager at TIAA-CREF. "This online campaign drove phone inquiries to the call center, brought existing customers online to sign in to their accounts and prospects online to create an account or call for an advice session."

In previous years, TIAA-CREF had invested heavily in TV during the NCAA March Madness. But the online campaign gave it the ability to reach a huge audience at a lower cost.

"We are finding more and more of our sweet spot customers -- affluent and highly educated employees of higher education institutions -- online," says Delia deLisser, senior director of marketing at TIAA-CREF. "And the beauty of investing in digital is that the frequency, reach and targeting of your campaigns can be very precise and cost-effective."

The new campaign, which is currently rolling out, specifically targets higher education employees in Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina and Washington. To reach this audience, Yahoo -- in partnership with TIAA-CREF's agency, TargetCast tcm -- created customized TIAA-CREF ads that are being showcased on the Rivals.com college football-specific pages for teams such as the Michigan State Spartans and Washington Huskies.