Target Student Profiling &
Competitive Education Pricing Analysis

Patrick Sutton

May 3, 2007

In the past few weeks we’ve seen a number of clients express concern regarding the value of Enrollment Management Consulting prior to initiating a Direct Response Enrollment Marketing campaign.

On the one hand, it makes sense why schools that are used to buying education leads would not be interested in contracting a consultant: what’s the point?

This attitude has arisen—I think—because for the most part, schools don’t see how consultant work can be applied to generating college applications or education lead generation.

What these schools may not know, is that there are many benefits to contracting a consultant prior to initiating a Direct Response Enrollment Marketing campaign. Consultants that have experience generating more applications and enrollments are particularly well suited to this type of work. Further, consultants that work in conjunction with Direct Response Enrollment Management agencies have access to critical market data from campaigns that have been successful in the past.

When Innovation Ads’ Enrollment Management Consultants work with colleges and universities, they are able to create a “target student profile”. This profile allows Innovation Ads’ consultants to estimate the number of applications and enrollments that a college or university can expect to attract for a given program, and the cost that the school can expect to incur.

In addition, enrollment management consultants are able to offer advice on Competitive Education Pricing Analysis (CEPA). The purpose of CEPA is to identify the existing market share that is available to a college or university looking to generate applications or enrollments in a certain area. This is done by studying historical data that is relevant to the current intentions of the college or university. Once this information is collected and studied, consultants work with enrollment specialists to develop a telephone survey.

Enrollment Specialists create phone surveys in order to determine how prospective students view the particular programs that are being offered, and how prospective students view similar programs that are offered by other universities. Enrollment Specialists are able to identify how a change in tuition may affect the opinion that a prospective student has regarding the university.