New student enrollments are the lifeblood of any institution of higher education. Because without continuously filling the pipeline with prospects, enrollments are likely to decline… which could lead to catastrophe.
In fact, catastrophes are already happening.
This year alone, it’s estimated that one college or university is closing down, every week.[1] Now, there are a number of factors that point to why, but generally speaking, the main issue many failing institutions are facing is a lack of new, incoming students.
You see, like all businesses, institutions of higher learning offer a product, and if that product is not marketed to new consumers, the product can, and likely will fail. Unfortunately, as the data show, fewer prospective students are buying that product.[2]
Now, as you already know, there are a number of reasons as to why fewer people are enrolling in college, including rising costs, additional technical education choices and an overall smaller pool of prospects, but these facts should not deter your school from marketing its products…
However, you shouldn’t market your school blindly, and the shotgun approach to advertising educational programs doesn’t work. It hasn’t really worked that well in years.
Instead, you should consider marketing your school and its programs more wisely, and perhaps more cost effectively, by cutting out the noise and going directly to highly qualified prospects.
This is where contact centers come in. Now, you may be familiar with call centers and their operations, but contact centers are a different beast all their own. You see, EDU focused contact centers, especially US-based ones, like those owned and operated by Conversion Media Group (CMG) aren’t simply a big room filled with agents waiting for their phones to ring… so they can answer some questions. No, that’s what inbound call centers do.
Contact centers, on the other hand, do both inbound AND outbound calling… Generating both types of calls (calls to and from highly interested, highly qualified prospects) through their various marketing efforts. Efforts, designed and deployed by their team of expert EDU marketers.
Now, because of its targeted, highly effective digital marketing efforts, CMG, for example, can generate a massive number of calls from, and to, prospective students every day of the work week.
We’ll have more on this in a moment.
First, EDU centric contact centers are not only a far better option for generating leads than call centers but separate themselves from call centers by the quality and focus of their agents. Simply put, EDU contact centers specialize in pairing future students with an education, and nothing else. They are the prospect pipeline fillers.
However, not all contact centers are created equal. As mentioned above, it’s important to know for sure, before partnering with one, that they specialize in EDU. That their sole purpose is pairing students with colleges, online or otherwise.
You’ll also want to be certain that the agents at the contact center are well versed in “selling” education as a product, that they are highly sophisticated and have fantastic over-the-phone communication skills…
Are optimistic FOR the prospective student, are on-the-fly problem solvers and are empathetic to the needs of the prospect. I.e., they treat every prospective new student like a person, not a number.
Perhaps the best way to know if the contact center is qualified to do your lead generation or not, is to actually call an agent, disguising yourself as a prospect to see how you’re treated. If you do this, you’ll know pretty quickly what you’re dealing with.
Now, we mentioned earlier how Conversion Media Group can generate a massive number of prospective student calls from its digital marketing efforts. But here’s where partnering with CMG could really pay off…
You see, once a caller, generated by CMGs marketing efforts, is deemed to be a high intent “buyer” of your EDU “product,” the live phone call with that prospect can be transferred directly into the hands of one of your enrollment department representatives.
This means CMG can do the digital marketing to find the leads, screen the leads during our telephone “interviews” with them…
Then hand them off to you, when they’re truly ready for what you have to offer.
So…
If you’d like to learn more about how we generate high quality EDU leads, how we can transfer them to your enrollment department as live transfer leads, and how we can help boost your enrollments, simply call us at 1-800-419-3201.
Or you can contact us HERE.
When you partner with Conversion Media Group, we’ll help fill your pipeline with new prospective students. We’ll help sell your product!
[1] Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students? – The Hechinger Report