Stop Buying Leads and Lower your Cost per Enrolled Student

Most schools purchase prospective students' lists from 3rd party companies, but what's the true cost of this purchase? The amount paid per record is just part of the story. The lion's share of the costs and challenges start adding up when trying to reach and attract those prospective students to your institution. This is the case given that many other institutions purchased those same exact records and are spending just as much money as you are trying to recruit the same exact students.

Thousands of brochures end up in the trash, thousands of envelopes in the recycle bin, thousands of emails are deleted, and after exorbitant marketing dollars have been spent, what is the result? How many of those purchased records and money spent end up converting into enrolled students at your institution versus at the other hundredinstitutions that purchased those same records? There must be a better way, and there is!

Imagine if instead of prospective students coming to your website for only 2-3 minutes per visit with only 2% to 5% of them contacting you or converting into an inquiry, you could encourage them to stay for over 10 minutes with 8%-12% of them contacting you or submitting an inquiry. If you receive 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 prospective student visiting your website, that would mean 100, 1,000, or 10,000 quality inquiries for your institution, respectively.

Now instead of purchasing aggregated lists that dozens, if not hundreds, of other schools are purchasing as well, you are turning a prospective student visit to your website into a quality inquiry and a prospective student that is much more likely to enroll at your school. And best of all, you did it all yourself, without spending over-the-top marketing dollars.

So, how do you engage prospective student visitors for over 10 minutes and get over 10% of them to submit an inquiry or contact you? It's simple; provide them with highly engaging interactive content that's relevant to them.

For example, Yale University, Mississippi State University, Columbia College, Brandeis University, UC San Diego, Towson, Valparaiso, OIT, Illinois College, Ohio University and hundreds more like them across the country now offer, interactive virtual campus walking tours with personalized tour guides to prospective students visiting their websites. They are not flat virtual tours, but rather highly-engaging realistic walking tours complete with tour guides, available right on the school's website, the school's Facebook page, and on mobile phones and tablets.

Check out Yale University's Virtual Walking Tours: http://admissions.yale.edu/virtual-tour

Just as physical campus visits have proven to be critical in the admission process, so have these virtual campus visits. The hundreds of schools that have already implemented virtual campus visit programs have experienced up to a 120% increase in the number of quality inquiries generated via their own websites, a 30% increase in physical campus visits, and improved applications and enrollment conversion rates. As a result, they are experiencing a considerably lower average cost per enrolled student.

So, stop purchasing aggregated list of prospective students, and start lowering your average cost per enrolled student by offering highly interactive and engaging content to the thousands of prospective students that are already visiting your website.