Improve Enrollment with Better Lead Nuturing

“Speed to lead” was a rallying cry when I managed a lead generation company years ago. The thinking was that students’ contact information was being sold to multiple schools. Therefore, the schools that responded the fastest would have the best chance of enrolling a student. Although many schools have scaled back their lead buying and are emphasizing generating inquiries on their own websites they still need to contact the prospective students that express interest. Schools that handle this contact well are likely to have higher conversion rates than those that don’t.

I recently completed request for information forms (RFIs) on the websites for 12 schools. I then sat back and watched what they did to nurture my interest in their school. I wasn’t surprised to find out how fast the schools responded, but I was surprised by the wide variation in the quality of their responses.

You would recognize the names. Many are large, national, publically traded, for profits. Others were the state school versions of a national online university. One was a Christian, non-profit, private school.

Three things amazed me about what I saw. First, all but 2 of them responded immediately with both an email and a voice call. I wondered how those 2 that didn’t intended to compete.

The second thing that amazed me was that one and only one sent a text. I gave them all of them my cell phone number. Some asked for permission to text. Only one did.

The final thing that amazed me was the wide variation in the quality of the responses. This variation was evident in both the voice calls and emails. Some left voicemails. Others didn’t. The better calls were earnest, polite, and clear. Some seemed overly casual or were tough to understand because of regional accents. In one, the women who called sounded like she was reading a script for the first time and her supervisor was standing over her shoulder watching. There is no doubt in my mind she was scared by what she was doing.

The emails also ran the gamut. Some were perfect. They had a look and feel that matched the RFI, led me to more information on the program I selected and had an 800 number to call to get personal support. Others were abominable. The worst ones must have been created by individual enrollment counselors because they looked like grade school art projects. In one case I got emails from a school that were unrelated to my expressed interest. It appears that they added my email address to their general list. Needless to say, I unsubscribed.

In my study a few schools did an outstanding job. The others had room for improvement. To compete with state of the art lead nurturing programs you need automated call routing and email systems with professional enrollment counselors. They need to be supported with well tested and designed scripts, creative and contact strategies. If you are missing any of these things, adding them might represent an opportunity to improve your enrollment performance.