This document discusses measuring the return on investment (ROI) of education marketing initiatives by universities and educational institutes. It highlights the importance of separating lead generation and student counseling processes, as both require different skills and have different economics. It notes that most online marketing contracts only incentivize vendors based on leads generated and clicks, without ensuring lead quality. The document then introduces the concept of "verified leads", where vendors would be paid per qualified lead rather than per click. This arrangement could achieve higher ROI through lower overall costs and higher conversion rates of quality leads to enrolled students. The white paper argues that a per-verified-lead payment model provides greater accountability for marketing vendors and lower risk for educational institutes.

1. A LeapEd Knowledge Solutions White Paper
112, First Floor, Mall Road
Delhi, 1100 09, INDIA
+91 9582777399 | +91 9582598276
www.leaped.in
Measuring RoI of Education Marketing Initiatives by
Universities & Educational Institutes
May 2011

2. Measuring RoI of Education Marketing Initiatives by Universities & Educational Institutes
A White Paper by LeapEd Knowledge Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Contents Introduction
Paper discusses the ways to evaluate RoI of
current online marketing initiatives.
Introduction 3
Counseling Process & Lead
Generation 3 Counseling Process & Lead
Online marketing 5 Generation
Concept of ‘verified leads’! 6 Elaboration on stages of lead processing and
conversion of a target audience into enrolled
student
Online Marketing
Discusses the typical contractual
arrangements with online marketers for
educational institutes
Concept of Verified Leads
Introduction to a new performance oriented
contractual arrangement to achieve greater
RoI and accountability
Benefit 1
Higher RoI, and achievement of desired
enrollment rates within budget
Benefit 2
Complete accountability of marketing
vendor
Benefit 3
Lower risk for the educational institute
May 2011

3. Measuring RoI of Education Marketing Initiatives by Universities & Educational Institutes
A White Paper by LeapEd Knowledge Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Introduction
It is that time of the year, when admissions officers across schools are busy chasing students
to apply for various courses in their institutes. Admissions officers are employing newer
methods every day to market their institute‟s offerings to the prospective students. Whether
it‟s the new generation online marketing tools like social media brand channels, internet
advertising, search engine optimization or the traditional print media, the key questions
remain the same:
a) Are you reaching the right audience?
b) Are you capturing the interest of the student in the form of an online lead?
c) Are you capturing a quality lead that is interested in your courses or institute and is
willing to listen to your counseling pitch?
d) Are you able to separately evaluate the processes of lead generation and student
counseling in order to incentivize each process owner correctly?
e) And finally and most importantly, what‟s the ROI on your enrollment marketing
spending?
Counseling process and lead generation
It is utmost important for an enrollment officer to differentiate between lead generation
process and counseling process. The two processes are quite different both in terms of skill
sets required to undertake the two and also in terms of economics. While the former requires
Good Good Good
Counseling Application
Lead
May 2011

4. Measuring RoI of Education Marketing Initiatives by Universities & Educational Institutes
A White Paper by LeapEd Knowledge Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
knowledge of science of online marketing the latter is a largely people driven1 process.
A good lead and bad counseling process thereupon or a bad lead and good counseling process
will bear no result in terms of getting applications. Most seriously, since the officer would not
have designed a framework to evaluate the two processes separately, he or she wouldn‟t
know where the problem lies, whom to incentivize and whom to penalize.
In an analysis of about 25000 online leads generated for a business school in India, the
admissions officer found the overall application rate to be 0.4% or just 1 in 250 which is
dismally low (or a total of 100 applications from 25000 leads). The officer understandably
couldn‟t realize where the problem was: Whether the leads were bad or the counseling was
ineffective?
After the admissions season was over, the officer did this analysis. He found that close to
85% leads (21250) had turned out to be unusable in the first call made to them by the
counseling team.
These unusable leads comprised of either leads that were not interested in hearing the pitch
of the business school in the very first call or were junk leads consisting of permanently not
answering or switched off numbers, wrong numbers or leads who were not even considering
an MBA in the current year. Out of the remaining 15% usable leads (3750), the counseling
team was able to convert 100 applications or a 2.5% conversion rate. Looking at 2.5% as a
standalone conversion figure from usable leads, it didn‟t appear that bad to the admission
officer. But since from the very beginning he wasn‟t looking at lead quality and counseling
quality separately, he calculated just an „overall rate‟ of 1 in 250 which of course left him
extremely worried and confused. Essentially he had no one to put the blame on for the low
application rate. The counseling team stood by the fact they did a good job given the quality
1
Counseling process can also be made process oriented to deliver superior and consistent results by capturing the entire
conversations with a lead in a good Academic CRM.

5. Measuring RoI of Education Marketing Initiatives by Universities & Educational Institutes
A White Paper by LeapEd Knowledge Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
of leads and online marketing vendor was obviously getting paid a fixed fees and payments
per clicks. Quality of leads was not objectively captured in his contract.
Online marketing
Online marketing is acquiring increasing importance owing to advantages like low or no
fixed cost (vis-à-vis print) and ability to target at right audience. However a non-optimized or
ill-conceived arrangement with your online marketing vendor can lead to drain on your
marketing budget without any significantly useful results.
The rule of the marketing game remains quite the same here as it always has been. If
admission officer is able to reach the correct target audience who is looking for his kind of a
course and institute, then most of his or her job is done to get an application. In marketing
parlance, this is called a “warm or hot lead”. While what an officer needs is a warm/hot lead,
his or her arrangement with online marketing vendor does not reflect that. The vendor is
generally paid “a per month” fixed fees for online ad design and administration in addition to
payments made to ad networks (on per click or impression basis). However, such an
arrangement does not incentivize the vendor to work hard towards optimizing the campaign
and generate right kind of leads, which is the main objective of all marketing.
In the figure below, this is explained quite clearly. The reducing size of blocks indicates that
leads get filtered out at each step and only a select few are counseled by counseling team in
1 2 3 5
6
4
Impressi
Clicks Leads Verification Counseling Application
ons
CPVL vendor is
Typical arrangements are paid here paid here

6. Measuring RoI of Education Marketing Initiatives by Universities & Educational Institutes
A White Paper by LeapEd Knowledge Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
true sense and converted to applications. In most contracts, the officer pays vendor at the
level 1 or 2. At level 1 or 2 not only the officer is not sure whether he will get usable leads
but also that since volume of leads generated is high, she has to employ a large counseling
team to verify whether lead generated is usable or not. Typically in such contracts, the costs
involved in getting applications are:
Ad Administration Fees (fixed) + Pay per Click + Counseling Costs = Total Costs
Assuming an administration fees of Rs. 5 Lac and that every click costs Rs. 20 and 10 clicks
generate a lead (this means for 25000 leads, 250,000 clicks were paid for), and that
counseling cost is Rs. 50 per lead, the total cost incurred by the officer for generating and
counseling 25000 leads would be:
Total cost (in Rs.) = 5 Lac + 250,000 x 20 + 25000 x 50 = Rs. 67. 5 Lac.
Move over clicks, come in ‘verified lead’!
The admissions officer wished he had better quality leads to handle so that his conversion
rate could be better. He also realized that with fewer but superior quality leads (just 15% of
the total leads!), he could have a smaller, more manageable and most importantly highly
motivated counseling team who would counsel quality leads (and achieve higher conversion
rate) and not just do the job of verifying whether the lead‟s number is correct, whether the
lead is answering the call or whether he or she is even interested in doing an MBA. He was
really keen to know if he could do an arrangement with a marketing vendor under which
he would only pay per verified lead and no fixed or per click cost?. Such a verified lead
would have been pre-qualified for correctness of contact number, would be a person who

7. Measuring RoI of Education Marketing Initiatives by Universities & Educational Institutes
A White Paper by LeapEd Knowledge Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
would already know something about his institute and its pitch and would be interested in
being “counseled” by the school‟s admissions counseling staff. The officer further went back
to his numbers and found that even if he pays Rs. 1000 as cost per verified lead or CPVL
(and no fixed or per click cost), he would reach a much higher ROI for the same number
of applications. He did this simple calculation to reach at a conclusion:
Zero (ad administration cost) + Zero (per click cost) + 3750 Verified Leads *
Rs. 1000 CPVL + 3750 * Rs. 50 counseling cost = Rs. 39.375 Lac or 40% lower
than earlier
Calculating „X‟ from this equation was of course a child‟s play for him!
If your story is somewhat similar and if you are wondering where can you find such a vendor??
Just call us over for coffee, and we would be glad to educate you and your team about the domain and
online marketing, and introduce you to this exciting new world of „Verified Leads‟!!
LeapEd Knowledge Solutions Pvt. Ltd.: LeapEd is a company formed with the idea to support education institutions, training
companies in their various enrollment processes and to connect with students through its various marketing channels. LeapEd has
worked with a bouquet of premium clients like Thapar University, NIIT University, School of Inspired Leadership (SOIL), The
Energy & Resources Institute, Ashok INLEAD-Gurgaon, University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (UPES), ICICI Direct
(Education Division), and a few premium universities of UK & Ireland.
Contact us: ambrish.bajaj@leaped.in | +91 9582 598 276