Enrollment Management and Admissions Conversion Rates to Measure

Higher education institutions have a vested interest in knowing how marketing, recruitment, and enrollment initiatives are paying off. Oftentimes, the bottom line involves knowing how many students are taking steps to enroll. And while this is an important metric to consider, there are other valuable benchmarks to survey and monitor along the path to enrollment.

As school officials and leaders start to forecast new enrollment numbers, review quarterly reports, and look to get ahead of the downward trends in higher education enrollment, it’s important to see how specific actions are paying off. Resources, money, and time all matter in the race to reach the right prospective students and help them enroll in the best programs available. 

If you’re responsible for monitoring the conversion rates at your college or university, or if you simply want to gain additional insight into how these numbers affect other areas of post-secondary education, join us for a practical look at conversion rates.

What is a Higher Education Conversion Rate?

A conversion rate can have different definitions based on the specific context, but in general, conversion rate (CR) is a measure of how many actions occur based on a specific number of attempts. 

The actual “conversion” action is different, based on whether you’re talking about students, sales, customers, or something else entirely.

In higher education, decision-makers and administrators might look at a number like enrollment conversion rate. In this case, the conversion rate for an enrollment office would be based on the number of actual enrollments out of a defined number of applicants, or a specific number of contact points. Additionally, you can get as broad or granular as you prefer. 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is often launched when the parties responsible for conversion want to improve or enhance the results that they’re seeing. For example, a marketer might choose to make specific tweaks or changes to a website landing page in order to test the impact on customer conversion. If certain word or verbiage changes result in more clicks or submissions on that page, then the conversion rate increases.

It’s clear that optimizing the conversion rate will look different in higher education, because the contexts and units of measurement are unique. 

Return on Investment (ROI) Through the Student Lifecycle

What’s the true purpose of understanding your school’s return on investment when it comes to different marketing campaigns or initiatives? Without these valuable measurements, it’s incredibly hard to hit your targets and growth goals. In fact, the results of these tests and activities could have a major affect on future funding, staffing, and departmental budgeting. 

Most institutions need a way to drill down on specific numbers to see which campaigns produce the greatest impact for a certain number of students or in a specific period of time. That’s why Element451 enables conversion metrics around things such as:

These measurements, in addition to other metrics and KPIs, can help school leadership make better decisions when planning for upcoming academic years. Accurate results are also helpful when departments need to pivot, change strategies, or test a different type of campaign. 

Ways to Measure Conversion Rate with Element451 

Element451 offers multiple ways to measure conversion rates and gather a school’s true ROI throughout the student lifecycle. An example of this would be the ability to report on the application cycle to help schools more accurately measure true ROI. 

The platforms analytics tab, Insights451 equips institutions with the ability to analyze incoming sources by funnel counts and conversion rates. These numbers can be broken down even further to help decision-makers make the right choices when it comes to spending choices and initiatives related to incoming students.

Element451 also provides other measures of ROI to help college and university staff leverage the data that’s available to them. These metrics are valuable for viewing specific campaign activities and exploring how the results stack up when compared to others.

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For each new marketing or enrollment campaign that an institution starts and sends, staff will be able to view valuable performance stats. These measurements include:

How many messages were successfully delivered

Open rate percentage (a unique open rate percentage

Campaign metrics are valuable because they inform separate teams about the language and messages that work. Staff can make subtle changes and run tests based on new updates to gauge which campaigns are most effective for specific student populations.

For each event an institution hosts, department leaders will be able to view the event name, how many registrants there were, how many registrants attended or canceled, and the show rate percentage. With Element451’s event reporting metrics, it is possible to see how many of those registrants turned into a prospect, an applicant, an admit, made a deposit, or even enrolled.

When schools spend time, resources, and budget on hosting events, it’s important to see how those efforts pay off. For example, if event metrics illustrate that in-person events are a leading driver of enrollment deposits and admits, a college or university may devote more resources to hosting events in the future.

UTM reporting is a granular metric that shows funnel statuses by URL source. These sources often point back to new prospects, applications, admits, deposits, and enrollments. With Element451, administrators can view graphs and charts of top-performing URL paths, which can then be passed along to other teams (like marketing or even web design and development).

In a fast-moving digital age, does your school have an accurate grasp on which activities lead to the highest possible conversion rates? If not, now is the time to invest in a platform that increases visibility and helps you increase your enrollment metrics with tactics that truly pay off.

Not an Element451 customer year? You can secure a demo today. Start your journey with  a higher education enrollment management platform that helps you take more control over your school’s conversion rates and performance metrics.

Admissions and Enrollment Conversion Rates 101

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