April Tales from the Trail: Students Love Paper Materials – Even in the Digital Era

There’s nothing easier for a college admissions representative than grabbing a USB memory stick, handing it to a prospective student, and sending them home with all of the information they could possibly need…

But are students leaving with digital materials that they can’t even use?

In our travels, we’ve been noticing that quite a few schools have jumped at the chance to modernize their materials and have started to hand out digital catalogs, either on CDs/DVDs or USB memory sticks. As part of a collection of materials, our field agents have liked the memory sticks as a backup for the information if they lost the information sheets they received. However, most of the evaluators reported that CDs and DVDs were essentially unusable to them – most laptops no longer have disc drives, so they’re little more than shiny donut-shaped coasters.

Recently, two evaluators reported that when they asked representatives about key topics, they were directed to the school catalog. They were discouraged when they found out that they couldn’t access the information that they needed, mirroring many students who may not have the resources they would need to be able to access digital files:

Brian told me that I would not have to worry about their accreditation status and that I could read all about it in the school catalog. He did not show me the catalog during his presentation, but he assured me that it was already packed in my materials folder. I also asked about tuition and he just smiled and pointed to the folder and stated, “It’s all in here.” When I opened the folder after the interview, I saw only one program course list and a CD that was labeled “Catalog” with a Sharpie. I tried to access the info, but I didn’t have a CD drive.

—

Jim gave me a USB memory stick to take home with me. He said it would have the information I asked him for regarding jobs. However, I couldn’t access the information since I only have a tablet. I had to find a library that would let me use their computer and that allowed USB sticks to be used on their computers.

Our evaluators develop a keen eye for collateral, which includes how representatives use the materials to provide info, answer questions, and showcase the school. It also includes looking at the resources they send home with prospective students.

Using a presentation or website to present info is a fantastic idea, but if the student can’t find it on a website later or doesn’t have a handout, even the fondest of interview memories can only last so long.

Kelly navigated to a page title ‘Consumer Disclosures’ on the school website by clicking on various links. She did not explain how to navigate to this page. She pointed out the total tuition cost, the retention and job placement rate, and a link to BLS on the disclosures. However, she did not provide any printed information, nor did she write down the link to this page. I was unable to find this page on my own.

Certain sets of materials can be especially beneficial. Like receiving printed documents to look over later with family/friends as they consider school options, and digital resources to use/send as well. For example, on one of our recent visits we left with one set of documents that included printed tuition information and financial aid estimates, with a sheet outlining all of the other pertinent data. This sheet not only outlined current information, it also provided permanent links to the information on the school website, where we could seek out updated information about the program if we decided to enroll in a future term. The representative also emailed a PDF of the sheet.

David told me that the sheet contained all of the links that I would need to learn everything about the school. He said that my questions were excellent, and I would not need to worry about remembering any of the information he had given me, since I could access all of it online. He said that he would email me a copy, just in case it ended up getting lost in my car. I was able to access all of the information later by using the email that he sent.

Another set of materials with which our evaluators were impressed was a single program information sheet, a financial aid guide customized to the school, and a catalog. No digital materials were provided, but students reported that all of the summarized information about the school and program on the information sheet was enough to make an enrollment decision.

I was able to relax during my interview, since Toby had a program information sheet that he used to present all of the information about the program and school that I needed. I did not have to ask him any questions because he then used a catalog to show me more detailed information, including a tuition breakdown. When I met with Financial Aid, they provided an estimate sheet for me to take home that outlined what I would have to pay, assuming that I reported my information correctly to them. The materials were more than enough to make a decision about enrolling since any questions I had could be answered by using the catalog (or the various website links printed in it).

Although it may seem like progress to stop providing printed documents to potential students, many students who are attracted to career training schools may not have the resources required to access key information.

Based on our evaluators’ experiences, we have seen that digital resources tend to be a backup means of looking up information about the school, and many of the digital materials provided can be useless unless they have the right tools to open the files. Most students rely heavily on phones or tablets to do things. With this in mind, maybe it’s too early completely write off printed materials…or at least too early to offer zero printed takeaway information.

Are you hoping to transition to 100% digital for your Admissions team? Do you think printed materials are still worth their weight in…paper? Share your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page!

If you’d like to see what our incredible covert assessment evaluator team will learn at your school, Vince at Vince@nortonnorris.com is ready to put together a customized program!

The post April Tales from the Trail: Students Love Paper Materials – Even in the Digital Era appeared first on Norton Norris.

source https://nortonnorris.com/april-tales-from-the-trail-students-love-paper-materials-in-digital-era/

January Tales from the Trail: Defrosting Icy Admissions Interviews

As we’ve watched the temperatures here in our beloved Chicago go from ridiculously frigid to reasonably frozen, we’ve seen plenty of representatives with demeanors just as chilly as our trademark wind! From snarky compliance answers to refusing to provide ANY information during phone interviews, we’ve seen a flurry of bad-mannered behavior.

We totally get it here at Norton Norris – when you’ve read through thousands of college evaluator reports, all of the interviews start to blend together! We can’t imagine what college reps go through when they meet with hundreds of potential students each month. All of the students’ questions must start to sound the same, to the point where you feel you can end their sentences before they’ve really asked anything.  But interrupting can break the conversation flow and cut off interesting student questions… and sometimes, the student just might be our evaluator!

I felt a bit rushed during our conversation, as Miranda did not wait for me to finish my thoughts and sentences before starting to answer them. She interrupted me several times.

George tried to pressure me to enroll for 13 minutes. He kept interrupting and explaining that I was starting the process so I could meet with Financial Aid to see if I was eligible for grants and loans. I told him I wanted to speak with my uncle first and he said my reasons didn’t make sense. He abruptly ended the conversation and hung up.

Another thing we can understand: when you have a lot going on at work, it can be so tempting to say, “That’s not my job!” We encourage representatives to keep in mind how prospective students may be weathering their college search, which can be tough when you’re trying to balance other responsibilities. Will students come back to a school with representatives who don’t want to do their jobs by introducing students to the departments with the answers they’re seeking?

I asked about the placement rate and whether students were usually hired after their externships. Courtney replied that it depended on student performance and openings. She informed me that keeping track of students getting hired wasn’t her department.

We’re not saying every student should be treated like the rays of sunshine that Chicago could use right now, but they should definitely take precedence over braiding hair or discussing the faculty pizza party that’s happening in 20 minutes!

When I completed the student information form and tried to return it to the receptionist, I stood at the counter as she was far across the area behind the desk, braiding the medical assistant instructor’s hair. She asked me if I was finished and said she would let my rep know. She did not return to the desk so I put the clipboard on the counter and went back to my seat. It took her another five minutes to get up and call anyone.

The receptionist took a personal call and discussed rental car arrangements for ten minutes. Instead of calling a rep to let them know I was waiting, she called a nearby pizza place and let the person on the line know that they were having a pizza party soon. She proceeded to order the different pizzas in front of me. I waited 35 minutes in total before she looked up and said, “Oh gosh, I forgot about you,” and called a representative to the lobby. She did not apologize and rolled her eyes as she spoke to the rep on the phone about me.

We are hoping that with incremental weather, representatives will go to work with sunnier dispositions!  Our evaluators are looking forward to their visits – will they be able to report sunshine and rainbows at all of the campuses they visit in February? Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook how you plan to trickle good customer service and compliance on students this month! Please do not hesitate to reach out to our Assessment team for help from our covert operatives who can let you know how you can make sure to turn gloomy students into luminous enrollments today!

source https://nortonnorris.com/january-tales-from-the-trail-defrosting-icy-admissions-interviews/

Why SEO Needs to be Part of the Digital Marketing Mix

Search engine optimization. SEO. It’s important because it helps you make the most of your web presence by drawing more traffic to your website. SEO is paramount to the success of your digital marketing. You want your business to be one of the top search results when internet users enlist the help of search engines to find what they’re looking for and perhaps things they didn’t even know they needed.

Your business may already have a website and a certain degree of social media presence. But how do you know if it’s working the best it can? With Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), of course. But which one? Therein lies the problem. There are a great many, perhaps too many, metrics you can use to track the progress of your SEO efforts. So which way is the best way?

To figure that out the most effective way to monitor your SEO’s performance, you first need to take a few different questions into account:

• Do you value SEO based on the keyword (KW) positions?
  • How do you determine the value of those KWs?
  • Is it based on what you would pay for it to be a PPC ad?
  • Would you even necessarily be paying that much for the PPC ad? Do PPC Ads necessarily even bring in the same audience as organic?
• Do you value it based on how much organic traffic is coming to the website in total?
  • How do you determine if that organic traffic is relevant traffic?
  • What good is a million website views if you end up with the same amount of conversions as 1,000 targeted views?
• Do you value it based on the number of conversions you see coming in as organic traffic?
  • Can you be certain that conversion came from your SEO efforts or did they stem from other marketing efforts?

 

To help answer some of these questions, we’ll provide some insight on SEO that might help you view your website and the value of SEO.

When you first launch your website it’s often like starting a business out in the middle of nowhere. The only people visiting your business are the people who are going out of their way to find it, either by typing your website URL in a browser or searching for the exact name of your business in hopes of finding it.

SEO is building paths and roads for people to easily pass by your business.

You begin to increase your search engine visibility by ranking for different keywords. As you build these keywords, you’re adding paths for people to start seeing your business. The more keywords you rank for, the more paths and roads there will be for people to take to find your business.

It is important to keep in mind that not all keywords are equal; some paths will be frequently traveled, while others will bring in only a few a visitors each month.

The other thing to keep in mind is that not all visitors are equal. Some have no interest in buying what you’re selling. Some are lost – not quite sure what they’re exactly searching for. Some visitors, however, know exactly what they’re looking for and they fully intend to spend money on your product or service.

Sometimes web surfers come across your website even if they were searching for something not quite related to your business. The lesser-used paths (the ones that bring in a few visitors to your site every month) result in unexpected visitors. This is precisely why you want to avoid writing off less popular keywords. They are what brought the added traffic to your site, which can lead to higher sales.

Implementing the right SEO efforts may result in thousands of paths leading to or near your business. With the right tactics you’ll not only have these paths in place but the right types of travelers: travelers who are interested in what you’re selling.

How do you determine those leads are coming in strictly through SEO efforts and not other forms of advertising? People could be searching for your site after hearing about it through referrals, TV ads, radio, or even a billboard. Obviously, SEO isn’t your only medium of advertising. Those other forms of advertising are also effective. If they weren’t, you wouldn’t be shelling out the money for them.

But how exactly do you calculate the value of SEO? As a marketing agency, determining the value of SEO is a conversation we have frequently.

There are far too many constantly changing variables to determine an exact dollar amount. Google, for example, utilizes more than 200 different ranking factors in their search engine algorithms. Instead, think of your website as a brick-and-mortar store, with SEO buildings roads for travelers to discover your business on the web.

While you’re building your roads, it’s still important to monitor your KW Positions and overall organic traffic as indicators of your SEO success.

It’s also worth noting that SEO applies not only to web searches using engines like Google but to social media and online stores as well. Users on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can search for content using keywords, hashtags (which also contain keywords) and specific names of businesses.

The number of social media users, both personal and business accounts, will only continue to increase, making social media platforms worth your time as far as SEO is concerned. Social media may not yield the number of conversions as your blog or website, but it does help generate sales. All sales are good sales, especially when most social media platforms are free to use.

Online shopping is more popular than ever, as people are more likely to make purchases through online businesses than to go to a physical store. With this fact in mind, it’s important for you to value your website as much as, if not more than, your physical location.

In both of these situations, it’s important to hone in on keywords to help potential customers find you. What’s one way for you to create the optimal online search presence for your business? If you don’t know much about the intricacies of SEO, there are plenty of skilled professionals who do. These knowledgeable individuals are SEO specialists.   

Having a good SEO specialist on your team can shape the world for your business. They will help place you as the first stop any relevant visitor will see. They’ll do this by compiling a list of keywords that will be put to use on your web pages, optimize them to most relevant pages and link support to ensure your website rises to the top of the SERP list. An expert SEO specialist can prove to be invaluable to the success of your business.

As businesses become increasingly digitized, SEO will continue to be one of the biggest factors in the success of your company’s digital marketing mix. No matter how you decide to use SEO to enhance your business’s digital marketing, it will undoubtedly improve your web traffic if implemented and measured in ways that are best for your business. Increased traffic can easily translate into higher conversion rates and ultimately a stronger bottom line for your business.

The post Why SEO Needs to be Part of the Digital Marketing Mix appeared first on Norton Norris.

source https://nortonnorris.com/importance-of-seo/

Digital Marketing Trends to Shake up 2018

A look at the digital marketing trends poised to shake things up in 2018

The one constant in life is change. It may be an old and somewhat overused cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

And in a world where marketing and marketing-related initiatives are being shaped by digital technology at a pace that couldn’t have been imagined even a decade ago, it’s more important than ever to understand what’s on that digital marketing horizon.

It’s no surprise that for institutions of higher education, marketing budgets remain tight. At the same time, it’s crucial to milk as many inquiries, applications, acceptances, deposits, and enrollments as possible out of every marketing dollar spent.

So as the end of 2017 nears and budget planning for 2018 moves ahead, here are some things to think about in terms of digital marketing trends and tactics that could impact your bottom line.

Talk to Us

We’ve all seen them. The quizzes, polls, and puzzles on Facebook and other social media platforms that will tell you which celebrity you were in a former life, or what European city is the best fit for you, or whether you’re in the top 1 percent of all humans who are able to see a particular shape in a picture first. It’s called interactive content, and it’s a great way of actively engaging readers or visitors to your website. Think about ways to incorporate interactive content into your digital marketing efforts, such as a personality quiz to determine the best healthcare career for you, or a survey about campus technology.

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

There’s no denying it—the use of mobile technology continues to rise and it’s not going to change anytime soon. Couple that with the fact that everything is trending toward video, and it becomes clear that mobile video will continue to rise in popularity. In fact, many reports indicate that while video consumption on computers and laptops has started to decline, video views on phones and tablets will rise by 25 percent. So whether it’s a video about a particular academic program, learning facilities, student outcomes, or whatever, make sure it’s properly rendering on mobile devices. And if you’re not taking a “mobile first” approach to your digital content strategy, it’s time to start.

Stream It

As video continues its powerful presence across most social media platforms, expect more and more users to want, and in fact expect, live video content. Not only did video streaming constitute a solid majority of all internet traffic in 2017, studies show that viewers will watch live streams three times longer than pre-recorded video content. Look for events and activities around campus that would make for good live streams, like athletic events, social gatherings, extracurricular activities, visiting speakers, etc.

How Can We Help You?

Forging an immediate, personal connection with viewers and visitors to your website and social media channels should be a high priority in anyone’s strategic marketing plan. One way of doing just that is through artificial intelligence (AI) tools and chatbots. And all indications point to the use of this type of technology gaining steam. Chatbots are ways for a school or business to interact with visitors in real time, helping to personalize the experience of its interface, and direct them to information that’s most relevant to their needs right then and there. This technology is being used by schools currently; look for it to become even more present and to offer expanded capabilities.

If You Hack It, They Will Come

There’s a good chance your institution has already engaged in growth hacking, a digital marketing tactic that will continue to help organizations shape their online presence. One of the more common forms of growth hacking is search engine optimization (SEO), which is all about increasing the odds that someone who’s already expressed interest in your offerings will find his or her way to your digital interface. Other examples of growth hacking include offering incentives for someone to spread the word on your organization. Creativity is the name of the game in growth hacking, and that game is about increasing your brand awareness across a broader audience.

Get to the Point

This one isn’t necessarily limited to digital marketing, but it’s too important to ignore. There’s power in brevity, especially when it comes to your audiences and the amount of time they’re willing to devote to your messaging. When it comes to your mobile content—whether that’s website copy, photo captions, or videos—it’s crucial to keep it short.

The post Digital Marketing Trends to Shake up 2018 appeared first on Norton Norris.

source https://nortonnorris.com/digital-marketing-trends-poised-shake-up-2018/

October Tales from the Trail: Eclipsing Noncompliance

Did you know that compliance best practices drop by 35% during a solar eclipse based on our studies?

Well, not really! But we sent out a staggering amount of exception reports this quarter, all of which just happened to align with the eclipse. From grumpy FA reps to overly aggressive admissions reps, everything was just a little bit crazier this quarter!

We all have our “off” days at work, no doubt — however, professionalism should still be key when dealing with potential students! We ran into this Grumpy FA Grinch who couldn’t sit still long enough to provide the most basic financial aid information, and an Admissions rep who made the situation worse by confronting the Grinch in front of the student.

Jack was slouched back in his seat and repeatedly readjusted himself, and his facial expressions made it seem like I was wasting his time before he rushed me out. When I returned to Mary, I told her that he wasn’t very helpful as he gave only short answers and provided no actual explanation of the financial aid process, so she left me in the hallway while she spoke with Jack, telling him that I felt uncomfortable with him, which made me even more uncomfortable. We both sat down with Jack again, and he confirmed that my financial aid would pay my tuition in full, although he had an aggravated look on his face.

How do your reps address uncomfortable moments that come up during a tour of the school? Like the Admissions rep above, do they just make the situation worse by engaging too aggressively with the source of the conflict? The rep below not only made our evaluator uncomfortable, but he also directly told a current student that he smelled! Did the eclipse make everyone lose all inhibitions?!

Michael gave me a quick tour of the school, which did not last long since it was late and the school was virtually empty. He took me into the nursing classroom and emphasized they use the latest technology. At one point on the tour, I noticed the smell of marijuana. Michael saw me sniff the air, and he laughed and said, “Yeah, that is really strong.” We entered a computer lab, where a student was working and the smell was quite strong. Michael looked at the student and said that he needed “to do a better job of covering that up, like buy some air freshener or Febreze.”

Our last nugget is almost unbelievable! Rather than engaging in a quick 15-minute phone interview with our evaluator, he spent almost half an hour arguing with the evaluator about why he couldn’t provide information over the phone. We can only hope that mystical forces of the sun were affecting this rep, and he usually provided stellar customer service to students who called in hopes of learning more about the school!

Alfredo said that I had to come in, even when I explained that my baby was misbehaving. He said, “I already made it clear to you that you don’t have to worry about your child. You gotta understand if that’s going to be a huge concern, how are you going to attend school?” He later said, “All you’re coming for is information. If it’s going to be that hard for you, I don’t know. I’m not trying to sell you a car. I’m not a commissioned worker.” As I kept trying to ask questions, his tone grew increasingly annoyed. He said, “I’m trying to explain to you, this is all part of the tour.” After I asked about transferring credits, he said, “I can’t speak for other states, I don’t know. Everything you keep asking me, like I said before, we’ll talk in person. I’m not trying to trick you or nothing. If you’re interested, I’ll help you, but I’m not going to tell you a bunch of stuff over the phone because that’s not how I do business. If we talk about this stuff on the phone, there’s no point to taking a tour.”

As we move into the fall season, we hope that we see that these grim attitudes are shed and we can begin anew this quarter. We love reporting good news to our clients, so we celebrate any time we see superb school representatives bewitching our evaluators! Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook how you plan on changing your approach to admissions in this new quarter! Please do not hesitate to reach out to our Assessment team for help from our covert operatives who can let you know how you can start enchanting students into enrollments today!

The post October Tales from the Trail: Eclipsing Noncompliance appeared first on Norton Norris.

source https://nortonnorris.com/october-tales-trail-eclipsing-noncompliance/

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The post t appeared first on Norton Norris.

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Bad News – Beware of Buying Education Leads from Vendors

I’m not sure when lead vendors surfaced in the educational vertical. Was it before or after insurance and mortgage? Or was it around the same time when “credit repair” and “work from home” offers started surfacing. Maybe it was in the late ‘90s after Google and search engines gained traction. At any rate, their inception and early years aren’t important. It’s what they do today that bothers me. And apparently I’m not the only one who is troubled by lead vendors, as both the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau along with state regulators have started watching their activities. And last year the Department of Education issued warnings reminding lead-generation firms that they cannot use Department logos.

In similar fashion, Veterans Education Success has published a lengthy report in an effort to help veterans “understand misleading websites and lead generators.”

I wonder if 2000+ Leads Con attendees in New York last week even know what goes on?

And, how do I know the real truth? Good question. I own and operate a mystery shopping firm – and we shop lead vendors. I bet that after reading this blog you’ll want to shop your vendors, or you may just want to stop using lead vendors altogether.

Why Pay Per Lead (PPLs)?

For the uninformed reader, here’s how it works: Lead vendors sell inquiries to schools on a pay-for-performance model. Over the past several years many schools abandoned their traditional advertising (TV, radio, outdoor) and moved to the lead-vendor diet. Although contact rates are low – normally under 50 percent – and the conversions from inquiry to new student are abysmally low and average just 2 or 3 percent at most institutions, the attractive feature of scalability and paying only for what you get hooked many schools. At first it was just another tool in the marketing toolbox. But then the savvy operators discovered that coupling a call center with pay per leads (PPLs) would yield predictable numbers that could be “modeled” and the race was on. Once they perfected the model they could add more PPLs to the mix, increase call center staffing and grow enrollments – especially in the online learning environment. It was magic. But many enrollment managers never knew what was really happening. And they still don’t.

How it works for a prospective student

From the student’s perspective, using an education matching system could seem like a good idea. I mean, if you aren’t sure where you want to attend but you know you want to pursue additional training, then browsing the web and finding a solution that matches you to schools – or lets you pick from a few select schools might make sense. And that’s how many of these services work – or are supposed to work.

The prospective student often begins their inquiry journey by simply entering their zip code in response to the offer to “find schools in your area.” The less scrupulous vendors may be trolling with a scholarship or sweepstakes offer – but we’ll talk about that later. After entering their zip code and/or address, the prospective student is taken through a few questions:

• What level of degree or training are you looking for (certificate/diploma, associate degree, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree)?
• When would you like to begin education/training (immediately, 1 to 3 months, 4 to 6 months, etc.)?
• What is your highest level of previous education?

The slick sites always insert some sort of teaser along the way… “just 2 more questions and we’ll match you with schools that meet your needs.”

• What areas are you interested in (health/medical, business, criminal justice, information technology, graphic arts, welding, etc.,)?
• How would you like to study (online or on ground)?

And then “poof!” after hitting submit, the website reveals schools that are a match. It sounds logical and makes sense. Or does it? You see, the search engine driving the selection of schools isn’t a search engine at all. The website isn’t selecting from the universe of schools at all. Instead it’s serving up suggestions of schools that have contracted for leads. So the listing isn’t inclusive. It’s limited to a short list of institutions that have agreed to buy inquiries. But how would the student know that? They wouldn’t. And that’s just one problem with this product line.

But there is one more wrinkle. It sounds innocent enough too, and even well intentioned. After the student selects a school from the list to learn more about and hits “submit”, the next screen  is typically something to the effect of: “Vince, students who research and inquire to more than one school make better and more informed decisions. We’ve also matched you with these schools in your area or that offer online instruction. You may also get information from them by clicking “yes” below.”

And then it happens. The poor prospective student’s phone implodes under the duress of multiple and incessant calls. Under the scenario outlined above, the lead has now been sold to multiple schools. And they all have the same intention: Call immediately and get this student in for a campus visit – or, if it’s an online school, get them on a phone interview ASAP and get them committed to completing an application.

How the Enrollment Managers and Marketing Managers at Colleges See the Process

Unfortunately, many schools that are buying leads from lead vendors are naïve and uninformed as to how the inquiries are really being generated. Because the inquiry comes in via a form that is emailed to the school or posted into their CRM, the school officials believe that the inquiry was submitted by the student, like the scenario described above. Sometimes this is true, as prospective students complete the process explained earlier. But sadly, over half of the inquiries that schools are buying don’t come from a student completing a form. Nope. The inquiries come from a call center.

Here’s how: The lead aggregators contract with downstream affiliates to generate leads. These affiliates buy data that resemble potential students based on socio-economic factors. Then the data goes into an auto dialer at a call center, and when the potential prospect answers, they are talking with a call center agent. The pitch can vary, but often it centers around a training opportunity, a job opportunity, or financial aid to go to school. If a positive response is received, the call center agent – not the student – completes the form and hits submit. 

As a side note, if you are a college administrator and considering buying leads from a vendor, ask the vendor for costs and counts based on your programs of study for exclusive, non-call center leads. The response you get could be interesting and range from “we don’t do exclusive leads” to “let me check and get back with you” – but I know the cost per lead will increase.

Okay, back to the real story – what happens when we shop lead vendors. These results are based on a sample size of 100 shops spread across 20 vendors. The school we shopped offered online courses, so the geography was unlimited. The degree level was associate degree.

Problem 1: 40 percent of the lead vendor inquiries submitted were never delivered to the school.

Ouch. Think about the student’s perspective on this. They took time to research schools, found a program and school they were interested in, completed a form, hit submit, got a message back that the school would contact them – and then radio silence. No call back. No email from the school. Nothing.

How could this happen? Well, that’s easy…. If a lead vendor has reached their cap, and the school didn’t have budget for any more leads, then the lead would either go into a black hole, or worse yet – be sold to another school. Both of these options are terrible, but they continue month after month, in our shopping.

Problem 2: 10 percent of the lead vendor inquiries were told that school X wasn’t accepting inquiries.

Wow. What would you think if you were the student? Worse yet, if you are in charge of enrollment or marketing at a school – your lead vendor has just told a prospect that you basically aren’t enrolling. Really? Wait; it gets better.

Problem 3: 10 percent of “your” lead vendor inquiries were referred to another school.

Unbelievable. As an enrollment or marketing manager, I would be furious. And it continues. Each month we inquire about school X – only to be directed via the computer and even by call center reps, that we could inquire to school Y. To me, it’s worse than #2 above – it’s one thing to say a school isn’t taking inquiries, but it’s worse to blatantly direct them to a competitor. Not good. NOTE THAT BOTH SCHOOLS OFFERED THE SAME PROGRAM. And, it gets worse. One of our inquiries specifically made for school “X” was contacted by the lead vendor’s call center and then warm transferred to school “Y.”

Problem 4: Immediate re-sale of data

15 percent of our inquiries immediately got a call from another party other than the school they submitted their information too. How ironic, right? You request information from school “A” and kaboom – you immediately get calls from school “B” or from an-unrelated entity like “Rewards Redemption.” I got a call from XXX-XXX-1234, which was from Julie at Rewards Redemption. The recording stated that I recently was on one of their affiliated websites and I had won a $100 voucher that could be used at popular stores like Walmart, etc.

Final Thoughts and Recommendations

• Shop your lead vendors to keep them honest.
• If lead vendors must be part of your mix, manage them diligently.
• Track the number of voice to voice calls you have with the inquiries from each vendor – remember, if you never talk to the prospect you can’t invalidate them or begin the recruitment process.
• Consider asking your lead vendor for exclusive, non-call center leads.
• Ask your lead vendor to explain and detail how many inquiries come from:
  • Student-generated from submissions
  • Call centers
  • Warm transfers

Finally, consider going to a marketing mix that uses traditional media to drive traffic to your digital properties. A well-balanced advertising mix will fuel your organic website inquiries and your PPC inquiries. Changing the mix of leads will result in driving up contact rates, with a smaller staff. Ultimately you’ll increase enrollments and reduce cost.

About Vince Norton
Managing Partner, Norton|Norris, Inc.

Since 1979, Vince Norton has worked in higher education administration, marketing, admissions, and enrollment management, for both not-for-profit and proprietary institutions. His 35-plus years of experience include 19 years in admissions, marketing, and administration at non-profit colleges, and three years with for-profit colleges. For the last 16 years, he has served as Managing Partner of Norton|Norris, Inc. Vince is regarded as an expert on college marketing and mystery shopping and has delivered presentations on this topic for numerous associations.

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