Higher Ed's Big Lead Lapse: Why AI is the Only Solution for Marketing & Enrollment

There’s something that I like to call the “Big Lead Lapse” in higher education. 

It refers to the fact that many times, it can seem as if higher ed enrollment professionals — from marketing to admissions — pursue tactics that I like to characterize as throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. In other words, they lack a strategy for generating, scoring, and nurturing leads in a way that promotes higher conversion rates, and instead frenetically and randomly pursue tactics they hope will work. This is especially true for smaller universities with limited manpower and constrained budgets — the very institutions who really cannot afford to take the “spaghetti toss” approach.

The “Big Lead Lapse” is comprised of three separate issues that build upon each other. Chronologically, it goes like this: first, universities struggle to generate leads; second, universities struggle to effectively score the leads they do manage to generate; and third, universities struggle to then convert those leads as they guess which ones are actually ready to convert.

That last part there — the inability to convert leads — is the single most detrimental enrollment issue universities must contend with, and the issue goes deeper than merely not knowing which leads are worth the limited time of a limited team. University enrollment teams also suffer from leaky funnels. Some leads are never even nurtured — or they could be improperly segmented so that they receive irrelevant communications (in either case, you can confidently say goodbye to those leads).

Let’s look a little closer at each of these issues so we can understand how to correct them — and how leaving them uncorrected no longer has any viable excuse given the rise of AI.

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Problem #1: Generating Leads 

Generating leads is the central task of university marketing departments across the globe. Yet doing so is becoming increasingly difficult, and if we put ourselves in the shoes of any prospective student, we can see why. Between name-buys, geotargeting, cookie tracking, and more, students become inundated both digitally and physically with marketing materials from universities. They’re possibly less likely than ever to fill out a form on your website or contact you for information — let alone apply — if all you do is slap a “Request Info” button on your website, landing pages, and social media, or paste “Apply Now” CTAs all over your ads.

Problem #2: Scoring the Leads

Lead-scoring is, perhaps, the most underestimated tool when it comes to enrollment. In higher ed, you must remember: the price tag on your “product” is rivaling that of B2B companies, but we are D2C. Instead of tapping into a company’s cash reserves to foot the bill, students and parents must dip into their own savings accounts or take on years’ worth of debt to come to your school. It’s not as simple as adding a Kindle to your Amazon cart and thinking it over for a week. The decision students must make about your school will affect their life in every way, and because of this, the funnel is treacherously long and fraught. When we don’t know where a prospective student sits in the funnel — because we don’t score them or we score them incorrectly — it means we’re likely going to waste our time applying the wrong tactics to the wrong people; something that almost certainly drives your leads away.

Problem #3: Lead Waste

This is the pinnacle of the “Big Lead Lapse,” and to understand it, it’s critical to remember that universities don’t sell a single service or product, or even a related bundle of services and products like many corporations do (corporations with far bigger marketing budgets and teams, I might add). Instead, in their complexity and breadth of offerings (undergraduate, graduate, adult, corporate partnerships, athletics, etc.), universities must target vastly different audiences, sometimes about vastly different “products” and services in a way that’s not altogether dissimilar from the complex offerings of large organizations. 

Because of this, universities market far and wide, blending traditional and digital tactics, employing vendors every which way, all in an effort to generate leads. What this creates is a massive twist of tentacles, with leads streaming in from an innumerable amount of outlets. Oftentimes, many of these outlets are created through the initiative of a team other than the marketing team itself. 

So what does all of this translate into? Lost leads. Leads that go cold because they are never followed up on. Poor ROI. Missed goals. Low enrollment. The list goes on. When you have an unmanageable amount of outlets, many of which aren’t initiated or monitored by the marketing team, that means your efforts aren’t targeted, there isn’t a sufficient process and system in place, and the “spaghetti toss” approach is in full effect while your budget steadily runs out. Hence, the pinnacle of the “Big Lead Lapse.”

Solve the “Big Lead Lapse” with AI (No More Excuses!)

At this point you’re probably wondering what can actually be done about this problem? Before I get into that, let me issue a disclaimer: whether you’re a marketing associate, marketing director, or VP of marketing or enrollment at a university, fully solving this problem is unlikely, because at the end of the day, universities aren’t corporations. They’re bureaucratic non-profits and creating true change is difficult. 

But AI has given us the power to revolutionize how we generate and nurture leads because of its ability to cut through bureaucracy. Things become automated, simplified, and streamlined, typically not requiring more than one or two parties' participation. AI can tackle the “Big Lead Lapse” by customizing experiences, adding value, and providing insights to generate many more quality leads; it can integrate with your CRM and auto-segment your leads for immediate, customized, relevant, and consistent communications; and it can free up the time of your marketing and admissions teams to work on strategy-oriented, goals-driven initiatives that will translate into the one thing we are all looking for: increased enrollment.

In part 2, I’ll get into some of the AI tools I recommend universities try if they want to tackle the “Big Lead Lapse” head on. A little preview: they leave no valid excuse for universities to keep on tossing spaghetti.

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