A recent study from EduDirectResponse has shed some light on which people are interested in online education services and what they’re looking for.  With increased focus on marketing practices coming from the Government Accountability Office, enrollment teams need to learn how they can adapt.  In this effort, knowledge is power and understanding how to collect and organize demographic data about your inquiries is essential.  There are few if any better for this than an Enrollment Management System like Leads360.  By keeping better statistics on your enrollment process and then learning how to use them, an Enrollment Management System can help your institution become more metrics drive and see immediate results in your ability to close inquiries.

The EduDirectResponse study looked at 1000 inquiries who responded to a simple, straight forward ad reading “Take Online Classes Now” or “get an online degree,”  with no deception or offers for incentives.  There were some interesting results.  The data is broken down by several categories, asking the respondents about their gender, region, education level, subject they’re interested in studying, what additional information they would want, and how often students would be interested in receiving a news letter.  What’s more, the study also took note of how many inquiries provided invalid information and which information it was.  The results provided some clear results that were notable: over 60% of inquiries were female, 90% of potential students were interested in information about financial aid, 33.5% were interested in entering the field of Health and Human Services, 75% of students were interested in receiving a regular newsletter, and 69% of those people giving invalid information supplied a fake phone number.

The real question is: what does all this mean?  It’s clear that any of this information could be essential to closing in attracting a prospective student to your institution, but how can an enrollment team take data like this and use it to tailor their enrollment process to get the most students to select their service?  For an enrollment manager simply trying to wing it, attempts at changing their enrollment culture can be frustrating and chaotic.  However, with the help of an Enrollment Management System, enrollment teams can not only track data like this from their own, but they can immediately turn around and implement any changes that will help them become more data driven in their enrollment process.  Enrollment Management Systems like Leads360 are designed to help you automate your enrollment process so that demographic data is not only recorded but easily applied to future lead routing so that the appropriate shifts in your enrollment  process can be implemented at the speed of business.

With marketing practices utilized by for-profit education companies coming under scrutiny, the wisest course of action is to find ways to enroll inquiries by working hard and working smart.  In this pursuit, Enrollment Management is an invaluable tool in collecting and interpreting demographic data about your inquiries and then implementing the results of your analysis.

Tags: Lead Management