CCA Recap: Leads 360 – A New School Approach

One of the world’s largest and successful sales software and lead management companies had the opportunity to share their “new school approach” for successful student enrollment at CCA 2010 last week in Las Vegas.

Currently there are many factors positively affecting student enrollments due to the landscape and evolution in higher education.

• The increase in schools competition and growth.
• The growth in online courses.
• More adult learners than before.
• More platforms (mobile, online etc..).
• The economy – trigger events.
• Obama would like to have the world’s largest share of college graduates by 2020.

A best practice enrollment strategy ensures that schools are able to enroll more students by focusing on the three drives of successful lead conversion.  These three drives include the quality of demographics, enrollment strategy, and lead attributes.

Combining new and traditional ways of generating leads is essential for success. Social media is also very important in the recruitment process and for retention.  Schools brands have not yet mastered social media so there is a lot of opportunity for companies to help schools in recruitment via twitter, facebook etc…

Another crucial part of the recruitment process is contacting the leads faster and more consistently.   Companies have not stressed enough how important it is to get back to the prospect within minutes of an inquiry. It’s not only about that.  Other best practices for contacting inquiring prospects include:

• Calling a lead 5-6 times, not just 1-2 times
• Calling a lead between 4-10pm and calling a Saturday lead the same day
• Sending 2-4 nurturing emails

Lastly, when recruiting successfully you must stress quality and process.   There are 3 imperative parts to this including speed, process and persistence.

Speed.  A lead contacted within 5 minutes converts 22x more often than a lead contacted within 30 minutes.  If you do not get back to them, someone else will.

Process.  A lead conversion is determined 57% by lead quality and 24% by sales process.

Persistence.  93% chance of contact after 6 attempts verses 39% on the first attempt.

Schools continue to need more and strive for better enrollment process.  Before you can implement a new process, evaluate your current process.  Look at sales, conversion rates and marketing strengths and weaknesses.   You also want to make sure you have a blend of marketing mediums, a strong and effective consumer experience, and processes that motivate prospective students to graduate.   Examine your lead management process and once you have the best practices in place you can implement a system that will allow you to monitor performance.