Six Steps to Reinventing Enrollment

Six Steps to Reinventing Enrollment
During the recent economic downturn, for-profit educational institutions have experienced a dramatic rise in enrollment as people return to school seeking new skills and education. This boom has meant grand new opportunities for schools in this sector. However, despite the dramatic increase in enrollment, many institutions still aren’t engaging in optimal business practices when it comes to capitalizing on internet inquiries. These inquiries represent excellent opportunities to attract new students, but many schools continue to respond to these inquiries in ways that are inefficient and less than optimal. Leads360 has formulated six steps that any school can follow to boost their enrollment and convert more inquiries based on data analysis including thousands of inquiries and interviews with many industry leaders.
The first of the six steps in the process is to employ the best of both new and traditional multichannel tactics to generate inquiries. Bringing in new inquiries is essential, both a large quantity and of a high quality. This involves exploring every marketing opportunity possible, from building a strong website that promotes your school and builds interest to sponsoring local events.
Another important step in improving your enrollment is the incorporation of social media. A Facebook fan page, for instance, is an excellent way to spread word about your institution and give satisfied students a chance to communicate with their peers about it. It’s an easy way to develop your school’s brand and comes at minimal costs.
Another crucial step to improving enrollment is contacting inquiries faster. This has been proven time and again in a variety of different industries. The first company to contact an interested customer converts at a 238 percent higher rate, and this is true for your school’s inquiries as well. Not only does being the first school to make contact with an inquiry greatly improve the chance of conversion, it also improves the student’s view of the school.
The fourth step to reinventing enrollment is to strive for higher quality leads when in a high-volume environment. Unlike other businesses, for-profit colleges can count on a large number of inquiries. As such, it becomes much more important to identify the highest quality inquiries and focus your efforts on those. This also means engaging in the careful scoring and verification of each inquiry. Inquiry qualification is crucial and some companies have even opted to outsource their qualification efforts to ensure that they’re investing their time and energy where it will see the best results.
One more crucial stage of reinventing enrollment comes from carefully nurturing each inquiry. This means careful and thorough follow-up. One of the best methods of insuring consistent follow-up for every inquiry is through automation. Automated e-mail responses can assure that inquiries that aren’t immediately converted are worked and nurtured over time and given every chance to seek out more information about enrolling.
The sixth and final step to improving your enrollment comes from using a Lead Management System like Leads360. Lead management incorporates all of the above steps into a single, automated process that will allow you to respond quickly and fluidly to every inquiry and ensure that you’re maximizing on every opportunity. A LMS is crucial to getting the fastest possible speed to contact, automating your lead nurturing, and fine-tuning your lead scoring and qualifying to identify the most valuable inquiries.
Leads360 can offer an easy way to incorporate best business practices into your enrollment process and keep your school ahead of the curve. Your school can do more to turn inquiries into prospective students and Leads360’s six steps is an easy way to work harder and work smarter at maximizing your school’s enrollment.