This document provides guidance on relational student lead management strategies. It discusses how today's prospective students, who are largely millennials and non-traditional students, value authentic exchanges, personalized communications, rapid responses, and individual attention. It recommends targeting, personalizing, nurturing, and being responsive to leads in order to yield the best results. Specific best practices include optimizing captured student data, using data to qualify and personalize communications with students, and keeping responses immediate. The key is developing relationships with prospective students by communicating with them personally throughout the admissions process.

1. Keeping Hot Leads Hot
Relational Student Lead Management 101
May 1, 2014
Bob Barlow
Presented by

2. What brings you here?
What is your current lead
management strategy?
How successful has it been in producing
strong, qualified leads?
What is your typical attrition rate from
initial lead to enrollment?
How cost effective are your current
efforts?
If your current efforts are yielding less
than passing grades, take notes!

3. Who are your
prospects?
Today’s students are a combination of
Millennials
The challenging generation born wired and resistant
to being treated as a herd
AND
Non-traditional students
Older, veterans, returnees, second- or third-career
students looking for very specific academic and
vocational needs
As prospective students, both Millennials and Non-
traditional students share similar values.

4. Who are your
prospects?
Today’s Students Value
• Authentic exchanges
• Personalized communications
• Rapid response
• Individual attention

5. Prospective
Students Value
Authentic Exchanges
Use the language students recognize and the media they trust.

6. Prospective
Students Value
Personalized Communications
Approach them who and where they are,
not as addresses on a mass mailing list.

7. Prospective
Students Value
Rapid Response
Today’s students expect response with no downtime.
Letting them hang while they wait for a follow-up
communication is the easiest way to turn a hot lead into
a lost lead.
A hot lead can cool in the time it takes to send a text.

8. Prospective
Students Value
Individual attention
Not only do they want to know you know them—
they want to know you. Fortunately, keeping in
close personal touch doesn’t have to mean
spending a lot of money or staff time.
Today’s lead generation and management
technologies, including personalization and
automation, can make the connection quickly and
cost-effectively.

9. If you remember
only one thing . . .
Relationship Is Key!

10. The FundamentalsRelational Lead Management 101
The best lead management is…
Targeted
Personal
Nurturing
Responsive
And yields the best results.

11. The Fundamentals
Targeted
Focused on capturing
and nurturing the best
leads for you

12. The Fundamentals
Personal
Tailored to let
prospective students
know you know who
they are

13. The Fundamentals
Nurturing
Keeping the personal
connection engaged
throughout the
application funnel

14. The Fundamentals
Responsive
Nimble and timely in
responding to
prospective students’
needs, inquiries, and
changing status

15. The Fundamentals
Yields the Best Results
• Leads that are truly qualified
• Relationships that grow stronger
all through the cycle
• Cost-effective
• High rates of conversion
• Positive ROI

16. Best Practices
Start with where you are and
what you know.
Review recent enrollees
Trace the lead management process
back to the original lead source
Tally the costs along the way.
Calculate your ROI
(return on investment).
Note what works—and use the information in this
presentation to revise and re-launch.

17. Best Practices
Check your sources.
Leads may come from
Email
Website Visits
Direct Mail
SMS
Make sure you’re capturing leads from reliable sources
that will offer you as much data as possible.
Social
Media
Phone Calls
Talking to Parents

18. Best Practices Don’t fear the data
The data you capture from initial leads will be
your most important tool in qualifying and
continuing to personalize the lead relationship
throughout the funnel.
The more individualized the data, the better your
chance of establishing a personal relationship with
your best prospects.

19. Best Practices
Optimize the data
From first contact to enrollment, what you know about
your prospective students makes the difference
between leads that are hot and leads that are not.
Never settle for one-size-fits-all name and address lists.
Make sure you are asking the right questions of your
lead capture efforts.
What programs might the student be interested in?
Is the student willing to look beyond the home city or state?
What does the student care about?
What extra-curricular activities, hobbies, career goals, and
values excite the student?
What are the student’s expectations for campus life?

20. Best Practices
DON’T sweat what you can’t control—
institutional realities such as:
Your location
The programs and degrees you offer
Cost
These may automatically disqualify some leads, making a
scattershot approach to recruiting unproductive and costly.
But don’t lose sight of these factors. For the right students,
they’ll be major attractions.

21. Best Practices
DO pay close attention to what you can control—
a combination, studies show, of two key factors
driving quality leads:
The mindset of the individual prospective student
The process that the individual goes through before
inquiring--and all through the funnel

22. Best Practices
As an example of mindset, learn what motivates
prospects to seek higher education in the first place.
Getting to know why your prospective students want to
be students, and how well your institution will meet
their goals, is one key way to make sure your leads and
follow-up are targeted.

23. Best Practices
It’s not overwhelming.
Here’s a portrait of one prospective
student that can be generated using very
simple lead generation coding:
Is male
Family income level $120K
Lives in Pennsylvania
Interested in pursuing Engineering
Preferred college location is Southeast US
Responds to Instagram and Direct Mail

24. Best Practices
Use smart data in two key ways:
1. To help you qualify leads
2. To help you personalize your
communications with prospects

25. Best Practices
There’s no more effective way to communicate
with prospective students than by making them
feel you’ve known them all along, that they’re not
faces in a herd or numbers on a list but individuals
who are welcomed by name for who they are.
Apply what you’ve
learned to the whole lead
nurturing experience.

26. Best Practices
Always communicate personally, whatever the medium
Communicate through the prospective student’s
preferred means
Keep in touch frequently throughout the cycle, with
messages tailored to where the prospective student is
on the journey
Drive opportunities for in person, one-on-one interaction
Lead nurturing

27. Best Practices
And most importantly,
KEEP YOUR RESPONSE IMMEDIATE!

28. Best Practices The quick, personal response so vital
to today’s prospective students
requires you to be nimble, so hot leads
don’t have a minute to cool off.
Automating your response systems can be
one of the most cost-effective ways to
make sure you never lose by snoozing!

29. Wrapping It Up
RELATIONAL LEAD MANAGEMENT 101
What NOT to Do
Don’t mass mail.
Don’t communicate with a one-size-fits-all approach.
Don’t let time elapse between inquiry and response!
Don’t waste money your money.

30. Wrapping It Up
RELATIONAL LEAD MANAGEMENT 101
What to Do
Capture good data, and lots of it.
Use data smartly, to personalize your communications.
Respond quickly and personally.
Save money with cost-effective data management and
communications technology solutions.
Evaluate your results, revise, and relaunch.

31. Learn how StudentSource —
A Division of Cathedral Corporation can be your resource for powerful,
cost-effective relational lead management solutions!
Bob Barlow
888.466.4711 toll free
518.221.3515 direct
bbarlow@student-source.com