7 Steps to Grow Your Online Enrollment

When I moved from four years as Director of Residential Recruiting to Executive Director of Distance Learning, I realized I was comparing apples and oranges in the recruiting cycle.  Here was the challenge I was faced with when I first came into the online industry:

Adult distance learners are a difficult demographic for colleges to attract. It’s not like targeting high school students within a certain radius and knowing that many of them will be interested in you simply because of your location.  I faced this dilemma when I became Executive Director of Distance Learning and Graduate Studies at Liberty University, about 2 1/2 years ago. I was charged with increasing the university’s online, adult learner enrollment, which was about 12,000 students when I stepped into the roll. At Liberty University, adult and distance learners are one and the same — 60% to 70% are 30 to 45 years old.

The recruiting cycle for adult distance learners is so short and quick, that you have to be able to make changes and decisions on the fly. Adult distance learners also can enroll at almost any time, unlike traditional college students who typically start in the fall. And there’s plenty of competition from for-profit colleges and universities, like The University of Phoenix, which offers courses to working adults online and in local learning centers nationwide. It is a very competitive field out there going after the adult learner and your admissions team has to be prepared for the aggressive nature of the enrollment cycle.

I think a core strength for me, is that I have recruited and marketed to resident students, blended students and the adult learner very successfully. Below are seven general steps I followed when I came over to the distance learning program to start the massive growth cycle. Within 2 ½ years, the below steps have taken our growth from 12,000 students to nearly 28,000 students. In the next 12 months we are looking at growing to 38,000 students.

Step #1. Analyze demographics of each degree program

We had a lot of traffic that we can’t effectively source back to any particular channel, I believe this is a strong indicator of Liberty’s strong brand identity.  However, for the ones we were able to source we analyzed who the students were, where they came from and other important census data that profiled our student.

Step #2. Leverage existing brand

Fortunately, Liberty University has a strong brand that we were able to leverage throughout the growth cycle.  However, there are plenty of strategies that can be used to expand your brand from local to regional to eventually national.

Step #3. Target online ads to matched websites

We are targeting a student who is potentially going to take classes online, so there’s already an affinity that they live online.  This includes cost per lead buys, CPM buys, SEO and trade name management.

Step #4. Qualify the leads

Qualifying these potential students was very important because adult learners are expensive leads to generate and nurture. On the back end, we do append some information (lead scoring) to the lead to try to tell us internally who’s most likely to convert more than others, and we’ll gear our strategy in-house to that.

Step #5. Invest in matching services

My team and I also spent some of the marketing budget on a service that matched programs with students to develop more qualified leads. We liked the strategic analysis they were willing to provide on the leads we were getting to help optimize and bring in better quality, as well as analysis they did with SEO and purchasing.

Step #6. Create landing page to capture the information and sell the university

The easier you make the lead form, the more leads you’re going to get, but there is a balance between quality and quantity. In addition, once you capture the lead, speed wins in this business. We try to contact the student within minutes via phone. I have set up an extensive “post lead” strategy that continues communication with the student long-term and through many different channels. I won’t get into exactly what they are or how often at this point.

Step #7. Data is everything… If we cannot measure it, we don’t do it.

I think through doing more target marketing and more demographic type research it’s really paid off in terms of what we were seeing on the back end as far as enrollments.  Step 7 crucial to our success. I will do whatever the data is telling me. The numbers do not lie. I always say to my managers, when they come in with a new idea… “show me the numbers”. They have to be able to back up their decision or idea with the numbers.  The data educates you, allows you to make decisions on the fly (educated decisions) and allows you the ability to change behaviors within your current sales cycle to optimize growth.

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