A top 20 graduate program at a top 200 university should be able to fill its seats, right? That is what the thought of the Program Director and the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, but it just wasn’t the case. The program had seen a decline in enrolled students each of the past five intakes, and the program was worried it would drop in ranking if this trend continued.
School / Program
Graduate programServices
Student recruitment
Lead conversion
The challenge
Leads were being generated but just not converting into applications or enrollments
The Program Director had a lot of leads but they simply were not converting into applications or enrolled students. The database of leads was a good database collected from recruitment fairs, standardized-test providers, website forms, and lists provided of students who recently graduated with an undergraduate degree.
Tools
Microsoft Excel
Tableau
CRM automation tools
WordPress
The phone
Fun fact to know about Conversion
Students need an “omnichannel marketing” approach. This means using multiple marketing channels to engage with a potential student. This could include
- Emails from the admissions office
- Eblasts / newsletters
- Ads on social media
- Calls from recruitment
- Texts from the program
- Billboards
The solution
Converting students to leads to enrollments with a short window
We analyzed the outreach engagement coming from the graduate program and from graduate studies. We saw that there was little overlap because only one of these two teams was actually doing meaningful outreach. It was already January when we went into contract, so there were just a few months to convert leads to enrollments before the fall intake. Primary goals aimed at filling seats and secondary goals included demographic diversity, specialization diversity, and student quality.
Within two weeks of going into contract, we presented the Program Director and Dean a detailed plan of engagement. This included clear KPI’s that would be reported on weekly as the plan was executed. After a few minor adjustments, we had sign off from the Program Director and Dean.
01 Set KPI's
Set KPI's needed at each stage of the recruitment funnel to reach goals for enrollments, diversity, and quality
02 Research
Made a priority list of students who engaged with marketing, were recently generated, and have an incomplete application
03 Campaigns
Mapped out an omnichannel marketing campaign that engaged students regularly, included marketing automation, and assured applicants received meaningful communications
04 Outreach
Emails were sent, ads were placed, phone calls were made, webinars were hosted, and every lead was engaged
05 Adjustments made
Adjustments were made to assure secondary-KPI's were met including demographic mix
06 Reporting on success
A presentation and report were delivered showing how success was achieved
The results
Seats were filled and all primary and secondary goals were met
The enrollment targets were achieved and the seats were filled with quality students for the fall intake. One thing that surprised us was the success we had converting leads to applications, which told us that the program itself is quality and future success could be achieved through improvements on lead engagement.
We presented our closing report to the Program Director and Dean, and helped them achieve their goals for that intake and future intakes as well.
100
seats filled
24
conversion rate lead to application
45
converion rate application to enrollment