Portals Drive College Student Recruitment
Chancellor University is one of many schools turning to the Web to recruit new students.
The Cleveland school offers campus- and online-based programs in business, criminal justice, health services, liberal arts and other areas. Online is where the bulk of the school’s marketing budget goes, says Angela Siegel, CMO.
ROI is gauged ultimately by the number of students who enroll, with that broken down to leads generated, how many of those leads were qualified, and then whether they actually enrolled and attended classes.
Thanks to the economy, many prospective students looking online for a school aren’t high school seniors, notes Siegel. Rather, they’re adults going back for enhanced or new skills.
“The online and for profit educational space is interesting right now, because there are so many people who didn’t follow the traditional path and now they find themselves in their late 20s or 30s and needing an education they didn’t get the first time around,” says Karen Francis, executive chairman of AcademixDirect, an online educational search portal that has worked with Chancellor on student recruitment.
Close to 500 schools work with Academix Direct and have a presence on their search engines, which match students to schools based on their demographics and what they are looking for, and compare their profile to the previous behavior of students who enrolled in certain schools.
Potential students enter their information into the system, which comes back with suggestions on what schools might be best for them. Students then opt in and say which schools they’d like to hear from. The leads are then passed along to the schools, which contact them directly.
About 500,000 students cycle through Academix Direct’s sites—including searchbydegree.com, nextscholar.com and freeeducationguide.com—annually, says Francis.
Other than some outdoor advertising like bus and billboard signage in Cleveland, marketing for Chancellor is online. In addition to portals like AcademixDirect’s, the school also drives traffic with online display ads and search. Still, on the major engines, broad terms like “online MBA” can be outrageous on a cost per click basis, with price tags like $40 to $50 not being uncommon. Branded terms tend to net a better ROI for the school.
Social media is also utilized. To promote classes in the Jack Welch Management Institute MBA program , which began in January, the former General Electric CEO has taken to Twitter, tweeting about the school.
