A great guest post that was sent to me by Elizabeth Kraus of myusearch.com, the leading college matchmaking service!
thanks Elizabeth, marketmpb
A Secret Shopper’s Report: Inside Admissions at the Leading For-Profit Colleges
Our company, myUsearch.com, the Honest College Matchmaker, is in the business of generating leads for colleges and lately we’ve noticed that some of our college clients have far better luck converting our student leads than others. We started to wonder whether our student leads were not as qualified as we had assumed, but since all of our students are pre-qualified through the same 30-question college match quiz, it didn’t make sense that some schools would be receiving higher quality leads than others. Was it possible that it was the quality of the lead follow-up rather than the leads that was the problem? To find out, we decided to pose as a prospective student and call a sample of both for-profit and not-for-profit colleges. The results were astounding. We will be revealing the full secret shopper’s report in our upcoming free webinar (“free webinar” http://www.myusearch.com/Colleges/NewsandEvents/SecretShopperReportofForProfits/index.cfm), but here are just a few things we discovered.
We are still in the process of calling the not-for-profit colleges, but wanted to share the insight we’ve gained from the for-profit colleges first. This information should be valuable to both 1) for-profit colleges who can gain insight about their competitors and 2) not-for-profit colleges who – let’s face it – can no longer afford to ignore the marketing success of the for-profits. If you pay attention to what they are doing, you might just learn something.
The Experiment: We called six for-profit industry leaders: The University of Phoenix, Capella University, Westwood College, Keller Graduate School, Grand Canyon University and Everest University. In order to fairly compare these schools, the following constants were set in place:
1) All colleges were initially called at 10pm Eastern Standard Time
2) The fictitious student:
a. was interested in an online MBA program
b. received a bachelor of business in marketing from the University of Colorado in 2003
c. planned to pay for college with her own savings
d. was hoping to gain more operations and finance knowledge to secure a more central managerial position
While I don’t think it’s fair to name any names, my experience with two of the schools was excellent, fair with two schools, and absolutely atrocious with two schools. So what separated the good from the bad? Again, we will be revealing the complete report in our free webinar, but here are just a few things that made a big impact on my impression of the school:
1) Response Speed: With two schools, I was quickly pre-screened and connected directly to an admissions person who could answer my questions. With the other schools, I was put on hold for five to seven minutes only to find out that no one was available to take my call. Since response speed (“response speed” http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/New-Leads360-Research-Identifies-Speed-Call-as-Critical-Driver-Sales-Lead-Conversion-1157561.htm) is a crucial part of the process, this is a big issue.
2) Pre-Screening Process: Each of the schools responded to my phone call by fielding me through a pre-screening process in which they collected my contact information and asked me some quick questions in order to field me to the correct person. This pre-qualification is also an important success factor; however two of the schools were unable to access my information when I called back later. If you ask your student prospects to take the time to give you their information, you better make sure that you keep it.
3) Quality of Admissions Reps: The admissions reps at three of the schools I spoke with were intelligent, personable and positive people who seemed to actually believe in their product. The other admissions reps just wanted to move me through the process as quickly as possible and gave the impression that they were going through the motions to collect a paycheck.
4) Product Positioning and Differentiation: As I mentioned, I asked each of the schools to tell me why someone should choose their school over the competition and with three of the schools, I received very definitive answers without hesitation. The other schools struggled a bit and in one sad instance, the rep just stumbled around for a while and then told me she would need to do some research and get back to me.
To find out more about the results of my little experiment, consider attending our free webinar on August 3rd at 3pm Eastern: Secret Shopper’s Report: Inside Admissions at the Leading For-Profit Colleges (“Secret Shopper’s Report: Inside Admissions at the Leading For-Profit Colleges” http://www.myusearch.com/Colleges/NewsandEvents/SecretShopperReportofForProfits/index.cfm)This process was very enlightening and I think the information I’ve gathered could be very helpful for both the colleges that consider themselves to be peers of these schools as well as many of the traditional colleges who are slowly starting to re-evaluate their marketing practices. Oh, and as I mentioned, I will not be revealing the specifics of the experiences I had with each school, but if you are an authorized employee from one of these schools, I’d be happy to discuss specifics with you at ekraus at myusearch dot com. We hope to see you at the event!
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