Another graduating class is heading out into the world, well-equipped and full of anticipation for their future. Congratulations to all the graduates—and to your institution for supporting their success.
Guiding students from their first day in class to graduation day is a long but rewarding journey. Before students reach that milestone, your institution—in partnership with a trusted, experienced partner like Apollidon Learning—must not only attract prospective students but also identify and engage those who are the best fit for your programs.
Apollidon leverages data analytics to help universities reach the right leads and guide them through a personalized process that increases the likelihood of enrollment. Here, we examine how data analytics supports this targeted approach and drives meaningful enrollment outcomes.
How Does Data Analytics Help Turn Leads Into Students?
Data analytics offers a framework for identifying your ideal student and nurturing them from the initial school research phase through application and enrollment.
Apollidon’s work is informed by a suite of advanced analytic tools, including:
- Business intelligence and data visualization software
- Web analytics services that track and report website traffic
- Software that monitors and maintains website presence in search results
- Customer relationship management application
- Marketing automation platform
We also leverage market data from respected industry sources. This approach enables us to deliver the impactful marketing and support strategies that transform good leads into students that truly shine.
Starting With the Right Student
Who are the ideal students for your institution’s online degree programs? Are they recent high school graduates, working professionals, or career changers?
Data analytics allows us to aggregate and analyze a large volume of proprietary data, from both our in-depth market research efforts and leading data analytics firms. This analysis provides demographic and occupational information for students who’ve earned similar degrees at other institutions. With this insight, we can construct a detailed profile of your ideal student, including potential career pathways, and tailor our outreach strategies accordingly.
Like most aspects of marketing, this is an evolving process that requires making our best data-driven decisions, then adjusting them over time based on results.
Meeting Prospects Where They Are
Where are your prospective online students spending time? Instagram? Reddit? Bluesky? To reach them effectively, your marketing efforts must be directed to the platforms and online spaces they use the most.At Apollidon, we rely on a combination of in-house and market data for our answers.
We evaluate market data, such as social media reports, to determine where prospects are most active. In the process, we can see the demographics, age ranges, and interests of users on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or Reddit and tailor our marketing to the audience we want to reach.
Our data analytics tools also show us what prospects are searching for and which pages they’re seeing. We use different persona data to anticipate their interests and determine what kind of student they might be: Do they have a passive interest, or are they ready to apply?
Gathering an Effective Email List
Despite the popularity of text messaging and social media, email remains an effective way to reach prospects. It allows us to conduct drip campaigns that nudge prospects at regular intervals—with increasing urgency—to take the next step, whether that’s to apply or enroll.
An email campaign is only as good as the list that drives it. At Apollidon, we work from valid lists, built from interested parties who have opted in, and we scrub our lists regularly for unsubscribed, duplicate, invalid, or inactive addresses. By monitoring email open rates, click-through rates, and response rates (among other metrics), we’re better able to gauge prospects’ interest level and refine our marketing efforts.
Planning for Success With Predictive Analytics
Emails must break through inbox clutter to make an impact. To increase the likelihood that an email will be opened and read, we use predictive analytics. This advanced form of data analytics helps us determine the best days and times to send emails based on each recipient’s previous open and click-through patterns.
Providing a Good User Experience (UX)
Digital ads, emails, and other marketing efforts typically drive leads to your website. But once they get there, what’s the experience like? Is the site easy to navigate? Are answers or assistance easy to find? You must make a good impression, and quickly, if you want prospects to stay and fill out that all-important Request for More Information form.
We rely heavily on data analytics tools, including those with heat map capabilities, to determine if a visitor is staying on the site, navigating intuitively, or leaving quickly. With that data, we can recommend and implement website improvements that keep visitors engaged and lead them to take meaningful action on your site.
Key Takeaways
Data analytics can:
- Help you identify your target students.
- Enable outreach to prospects on their favorite social media sites.
- Build an email list of viable candidates.
- Email prospective students when they’re most likely to open and read messages.
- Provide a better website experience.
You provide a world-class education. Apollidon Learning is ready to assist you with data-driven student acquisition tools. Contact us today for a tailored consultation.