Every business needs more customers to grow. This is perhaps no more apparent than in the business of higher education. Since most students are not lifetime “customers”, it’s of utmost importance for schools to continue to fill their pipeline with new prospects.
This is especially important for schools with programs that last two years or less; because without continually filling that new student pipeline with new student leads, It’s impossible to “convert” them into actual students…
And difficult to achieve long-term success as an institution.
Clearly, if you’re in higher education, you know this already. But if you don’t know how to precisely measure the six important conversion metrics we highlight below, your enrollment efforts could be falling flat, you may be spending your budget incorrectly and… you may be wasting a lot of money.
Conversion Media Group, a national leader in higher education enrollment initiatives is here to help. Our daily deep-dive into the data analysis of lead generation, lead nurturing and lead conversion gives you a leg-up when it comes to actually turning leads into students in an economical way.
Now, every business, Edu included, has different funnels and different definitions of what a conversion is, but the metrics offered below should help you better understand your leads, how and why they convert, where to concentrate your marketing spend, and how to increase your enrollments and ROI.
The six “must know” lead gen metrics, and how to calculate them:
1: Time to Generation – How long does it take for an initial website visitor to convert into a lead? To estimate this, simply take the total time on site by visitors, and divide by the number of leads generated. To reduce time to generation, dissect the data and find areas where you can improve on your lead capture or content.
2: Conversion Rate – How effective are you at converting site visitors or call verified leads/live transfers into students? Divide the total number of leads generated by the total number of conversions over a given time. Then, optimize your site and enrollment pitch and test regularly to improve.
3: Cost Per Lead – This incredibly important metric shows you exactly how much money it costs to turn a visitor into a lead. Take your advertising and marketing budget and divide by the number of leads generated. By knowing this number, you’ll find weak points in your advertising or messaging that you can address and optimize to help lower costs.
4: Lead Value – What is the value of your leads? Take the total number of new students and divide by the total number of leads from each source. If you’re paying more for leads than they generate in revenue/tuition from a particular channel, you’ll want to focus on channels that are profitable.
5: Lead to Sales Rate – How effective are you at turning a lead into a student or customer? Divide the number of converted leads (fully converted) by the total number of leads. You may find that you need to optimize your sales funnel to get this metric boosted. The higher your lead to sales rate is, the better you are at converting. This metric will also show you just how “quality” the leads you’re generating or purchasing really are.
6: Lead-through-Funnel Rate – This rate measures your success at moving leads through your sales funnel/prospective student journey funnel. To get this rate, divide the leads that have moved to a further point in your funnel by the total number of leads, then multiply by 100.
A good lead-through-funnel rate (depending on how large your funnel is and which vertical you operate) is roughly 12%, meaning 12 out of 100 leads should get past the initial entry. With this metric, you can work on improving your funnel and messaging to help motivate the lead into a student.
Once you establish a baseline on your current efforts, these calculations can help you pinpoint areas of advertising, content and funnel weaknesses, and areas of strengths.
If you’re looking for advice on how to economically generate high quality Edu leads that convert into actual students, and how the granular data you’ve collected on your website visitors can be better analyzed, give Conversion Media Group a call.
Contact us at 1-800-419-3201. Our enrollment experts will quickly go over what your goals are and what you’re looking to accomplish as far as increasing your institution’s student enrollment.
Once we know precisely what you need, we can connect you directly to prospective students who are looking for precisely what you offer via life transfer.
These are prospective students we’ve already generate and nurtured for you… All you have to do is talk with them on the phone.
Again, call us at 1-800-419-3201, or contact us HERE, and an education enrollment expert will walk you through the process of how Conversion Media Group not only assists you with your internal efforts…
But how we can economically generate, nurture and drive qualified education leads, applications, and enrollments to your institution.