Best Practices In Education Lead Generation

Patrick Sutton

April 5, 2007

Advertisers have been making money by generating and selling education leads for quite a while. Some advertising agencies seek to have the consumer relinquish his information by "incentivizing" him. While "incentivizing" consumers may be a good way to capture information, it is not well suited to academia, as most schools do not want to be associated with questionable marketing practices.

Below is a simple diagram that shows the process of how an advertising agency captures consumer information by using material incentives:  

From the prospective of the consumer, this process is frustrating because he only signed up to receive a free i-pod.  He never expected to be contacted by a school, and he certainly never wanted to be contacted by a school.

From the perspective of the school, the process of buying leads from an advertising agency that uses incentives to capture consumer information is frustrating and expensive. In addition, the fact that a schools may be following up with people that did not request information may make the school seem "pushy".

The simplest way to add value to both the school and the student, is to provide a means for distributing education related materials to students that are interested in learning.

It isn't a complicated idea.

By distributing rich content in the form of course catalogues, virtual campus tours, etc., the problem of the "incentivizied" lead simply disappears. Students that see content and request information based on the content are more likely to apply. This adds value to the student, and the school.

Direct Response Enrollment Marketing does just that: the prospective student sees content, makes a decision to follow up, and calls into an academic advising center for more advice. Simple practices like improving marketing content, and eliminating monetary or material incentive can go a long way to helping accredited institutions connect with students that want to learn.