Comments on: Doesn’t Matter What You Call It, An Inquiry Is a Lead

By: Herschel Sandborg

Herschel Sandborg — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 14:31:42 +0000

Fantastic article! I totally agree with you.

By: Julie

Julie — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:08:18 +0000

Great article! I didn’t realize that recruitment was all about the numbers.

By: About Face Image Consulting Inc.

About Face Image Consulting Inc. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:27:07 +0000

Interesting post! It’s all worth to read and to share. You really have great insights!

By: maryellen

maryellen — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:32:59 +0000

I couldn’t have said this better myself. In the last couple of wks. I’ve had a similar conversation with my College of Business dean. He was in agreement that an inquiry IS a lead and should be treated with an immediate action. Now to spread that gospel to the marketing masses. Great pc.

By: mike

mike — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:26:52 +0000

nice post…I guess it really is a numbers game ??

By: Kyle James

Kyle James — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:09:13 +0000

Thanks Rick,
I’m really talking about more than just web analytics though. I guess at the end of the day we all love to have 100,000 visitors to the site in a week but if you were truly measuring it wouldn’t 100 visitors and 20 applications be more valuable than 100,000 and 5 applications? Assuming that those apps were of the same quality. Targeted traffic that is measurable and quantifiable is so important.

Having a facebook page for your school is great but what is the engagement in those discussions worth? Do any of those conversations result in future students and how do you measure it all? We are still VERY much in the beginning of web analytics and lead nurturing on the web but it truly looks like a new wave of decision making made by data instead of a few conversations with selected students.

By: Rick Hardy

Rick Hardy — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:59:00 +0000

Kyle, when you put it that way, I understand. I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise to me that admissions/enrollment leaders look at analytics regarding how their promotional strategies are working when I see that nearly 4 out of 10 colleges/universities do not any social media strategies either on an external platform or on their websites. There evidently are a lot of admissions/enrollment leaders not on top of their game. They should know how effective that email campaign is compared to a direct mail postcard campaign, compared to that advertising, compared to college fairs, so on and so forth.

I always knew how our website traffic was experiencing our website. I didn’t have to justify it with anyone on campus (everyone agreed that the website was a huge strategy in recruitment), so I wasn’t quantifying the potential dollar amount of each transaction as you described in your post. While it’s surprising to me that any admissions director would have to justify website work to leadership on campus, I do understand that social media may require more effort to get additional university resources. But whatever the case, tracking the effectiveness of all promotional strategies should be part of the process of admissions/enrollment.

Thank you for the thoughtful exchange. Good luck with your presentation!

By: Kyle James

Kyle James — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:55:01 +0000

Rick,
I agree with, for the most part, that colleges and universities know a lot of the best practices and predictive modeling and the rest of the analysis for the processes that they have been doing since the beginning of time with years of data.

What I don’t believe, and please correct me if I’m mistaken, is that they factor in their internet marketing and truly leverage that channel with all this analytical information. From the number of individuals I’ve talked to that barely know how to use a web analytics solution to simply not understanding the importance of social media and how to put an ROI on it I’m very skeptical of the widespread understanding.

And looking back at the poll I probably should have termed that a little differently: “Do you know your institutes defined value for each application received?”. I absolutely agree that all applicants are not created equal. What I want to know is which channel produces the most applicants, specifically online. Are the email campaigns we send out more effective than the post cards, or how many students enjoy our interactive map?

Better understanding of the true value for each of these channels instead of student X said they enjoyed reading our blogs really isn’t that complicated if you really know what you are doing and have the right tools. More to come on this subject in upcoming blog posts.

By: wilhb81

wilhb81 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:43:47 +0000

What an amazing writing, Kyle. I loved the ways you calculating the formulas (Honestly, I guessed most of the colleges are using it as a standard).

By: Rick Hardy

Rick Hardy — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:21:04 +0000

Thanks for your thoughtful post, Kyle. Colleges and universities typically employ the latest best business practices for admissions. They may not know how much a catalog download is worth, but they know through predictive modeling who is most likely to enroll, and they focus their efforts on that group. That catalog download or student visit’s worth depends on who is doing the download and who is on campus for the tour. It varies. This is definitely the case with applications. All applicants are not created equal. What colleges do know is how much it costs to recruit a student, how much tuition is on the line with each one, as you mentioned. But believe me, higher education admissions is a big-time business employing the most competitive strategies that fit the profession.

By: Erik

Erik — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:05:34 +0000

Fantastic. The one missing component to our analytics has been attaching a dollar value to various conversions. Because of that, its been hard to impress upon people the actual value of the website. I’m very interested to learn more about this aspect.