Research has shown that non-first time degree-seekers have a graduation rate as low as 33%. The reasons begin well before the time that students enroll, back at the point where your marketing and enrollment efforts reach the market. This presentation will show specific, concrete strategies that your institution can pursue to ensure that your marketing and enrollment efforts attract, retain and create higher lifetime value from your adult learner audience.
What impact can marketing have on retention? Much more than you think! One of the main reasons that 2/3 of non-first time degree seekers do not graduate is that the marketing and enrollment process resembles an episode of The Dating Game. Our students tell us just enough to get in, and schools provide just enough information to get them interested.
The most effective marketing and enrollment strategy is based on maximizing lifetime value from each enrolled student. Lifetime Value is a formula that takes into account time in course, transfer credits, credit costs and discounts. As marketers, we are used to managing a ratio of quality, price and volume to generate prospective students. While quality typically defines the available volume and the appropriate price, what is the actual definition of quality? Simply put, quality should no longer be defined as the marketing tactic that produces most clicks or prospects or even the most enrollments, Instead, quality is defined as those methods that generate the highest lifetime value!
In order to understand how our marketing and enrollment strategy correlates to lifetime value we must understand the characteristics of each prospective student much earlier in the funnel. We do that by looking at the 3Ps - the Profile, Preference and Preparation of each prospective student. By defining and then tracking each element of those characteristics we can create correlations between a "score" and the corresponding lifetime value. Once we have an ideal score, we can then apply those to our marketing and enrollment strategies.
This presentation delves into each of these areas and discusses processes and methods used to drive lifetime value from the very first student interaction.