Transcript
Speaker: Marketing has one view, admissions has another view.
Speaker: Welcome to r ROI University. a higher ed marketing show for people turning big ideas into real results. Join Rustem Arani and Chris Shepard as they explore the strategies, stories, and technology shaping how institutions connect with students. From marketing and enrollment to data and AI.
Speaker: Every conversation brings a fresh perspective and something you can put to work. This is ah ROI University. Which view is correct? Chris. This is something that actually came up this week in a conversation with one of our clients where we were working on
Speaker: The 2027 budget, and obviously on our end, we were involved on the marketing piece of that budget. So we're building out channel, ah you know, channel projections across each of the channels, and then also performance expectations, right down funnel kind of metrics. and ultimately building out even kind of a ah waterfall of when we anticipated those leads to actually end up enrolling. Right. Yeah. But.
Speaker: When admissions was on the conversation, they showed their budget and. It looked different. Because admissions, they're worried about. their cohorts. They're worried about their fall, their spring, their summer. or whatever their starts are happening. so That's what today's topic is. Let's dig into that. I'm excited to kind of talk a little further about that because I can't tell you how many conversations. How many discussions I've had over the years where.
Speaker: Marketing and admissions, when you look at both budgets, when you look at both targets and both goals. is very difficult. to you know just look at one without understanding there's another component there.
Speaker: right yeah That's right. it Well, it is like. truly the million dollar conversation or billion or whatever it might be. It's it's up there. And... It's like What services? And every single conversation, I think, especially if you work internal in a higher ed or.
Speaker: agency like we do, it always comes up in like, which one's right? What do you follow? How are you comparing apples to apples or year over year? How are you looking at the data? How are you reporting the data? How are you forecasting on the data? So I guess to start, we should ask, what's the difference in the two views? And like, if we looked at a marketing and an admissions views and like the cohort and the period type of views.
Speaker: What's the difference between those two, Rustem, and how do they both align? Accordingly. Yeah, so... Basically... Marketing. Bills out. What? they're investing in, especially from a monthly perspective, you got a monthly marketing budget, right? Let's say you're spending $100 ,000 on Google Ads, $50 ,000 on meta ads.
Speaker: For that investment, that $150 ,000 investment. What are your anticipated inquiries? You're anticipated. Let's say your funnel has applications. Maybe it has enrollments. It might have other things there, but let's just say it's a simple funnel.
Speaker: Inquiry, application, enrollment. So for that. $150 ,000 investment, let's just say it's in October. What are my anticipated...
Speaker: down funnel. Conversions. and numbers that I expect. from that investment, right? That's marketing view. Looking at that number and looking at what are my expectations, I expect to get 150 enrollments out of that investment. and That is the marketing view.
Speaker: Now the key there is... those 150 enrollments are not all going to happen in October. When they happen. is where admissions comes in. that's right And so when admissions is looking at. October targets. Admissions is saying Hey.
Speaker: We've got a target of 150 enrollments for October. But. For us. We really don't care when those leads came in. They could have come in October, September, August, July.
Speaker: It could even go back. We've seen leads convert after four or five years when that initial inquiry came in, right? That's the admission side. Admissions budgets are built off of.
Speaker: what the anticipated enrollment numbers are. for that cohort. and then even on a monthly basis how they're tracking to the goal of that cohort. Now there's maturity. There's a lot of other things that maybe we can touch on that a little bit. But. That's kind of the big difference Marketing, you've got your investment. What do you anticipate? for that investment.
Speaker: But that's not always going to happen in that month. Whereas admissions has targets that they're going after. And they do have monthly goals. And that's irregardless of when those.
Speaker: actual inquiries or leads came in. so That's the way I would explain it. Right. And so like admissions view might be, if you're looking at this from a visual perspective, might look like counting events that happen in a particular date range for so a month, if we're looking at a month. So it's leads created, applications submitted, starts recorded. So regardless of when they came in.
Speaker: essentially, right? correct Regardless of when the lead came in. The cohort view might actually look like. A lead came in. this month, if we're looking at a month a cohort. A lead came in this month. Out of those leads, if we had 100 leads, how many of those actually have turned into an application, an enrollment, and a start in that actual timeframe?
Speaker: So that's kind of what we're talking about, those two differences, right? Yep. Exactly. And a lot of times Chris, like. Folks do call it marketing view versus admissions view. That's how I grew up.
Speaker: Yeah. That's how I grew up calling it marketing versus admissions. But that's that's really cohort period. Right. I think that's how we are starting to look at things. That's how the dashboard that we built kind of reports on things. But yeah.
Speaker: That's kind of it in a nutshell, like the marketing view versus the admissions or cohort period and so on, right? youre Right. Yeah. So how how do you, what's the recommendation? Do you think looking at both is beneficial from a marketing perspective? Or like, to me, I think.
Speaker: It is because you're able to see maturity and like the full life cycle of a lead. And then you have to understand how to forecast and predict like what leads you're generating in August, how those actually fall into the months moving forward. so Why use one over the other and how do they kind of.
Speaker: play along with each other. that Does that make sense? Yeah. A hundred percent. Yes. And I. Do think you need to look at both. But, you know, from a marketing standpoint.
Speaker: Your targets and your. goals should factor in maturity. It should factor in, hey, I know this month I should expect this out of the investment because it's going to mature out. So I don't expect all 150 leads.
Speaker: to or 150 enrollments from my marketing efforts that come in this month. But I do expect 40 % of those to come in. And so you do need to look at it at that view, where you understand that, hey, how am I pacing to that, knowing that
Speaker: All of these inquiries from this investment should mature out over the next seven, eight months for grad programs, sometimes it's even longer. And so that's exactly what, you know, you need to be looking at. And I think looking at both views is very important and switching between the two to understand, is it?
Speaker: Flowing the way that we thought it would there are some schools that we've seen and that we work with where Like a lot of there's a big lag between all of the interests and the awareness and the campaigns that are being run and the inquiries coming in. And then right before, you know, a start or right before the. ah Yeah.
Speaker: you know, the start for the term, all of a sudden. people start converting. and and enrolling. But understanding that is so key because otherwise. You'd have no clue if your investment's working or not.
Speaker: That's right. Yeah. And I think. Like. To go along with that. It's super important even to look at these from a very granular level, I would say. program.
Speaker: Channel, so marketing channel, what channels are the leads coming from? What programs are they for if you're multi multi location? What location are those? you know being ah those leads coming in for and being able to kind of track that all the way down through that whole entire funnel. So if you were to say like.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean... If we're starting to track some of this stuff like channels, programs, locations, the leads, and then all the way down into the applications, enrollments, the starts.
Speaker: From a marketing perspective, we're kind of looking at it in a marketing view. um Are we kind of trying to understand then like that whole waterfall? So it's kind of that waterfall. like we might get 40 % of the exact enrollments. Yeah. From the the month one, 20. percent month two, and you kind of see this fall off, right?
Speaker: Yeah. Oh. exactly And I think you nailed it. You've got to be able to look at it. in in different buckets, right? I can tell you that Meta... has a different maturity curve than a Google lead or than an organic lead, right? Coming off of your website. Absolutely different. And not only that. But it also differs based on the program and even a program type. So obviously, I mentioned the the master's program versus a bachelor's degree.
Speaker: completely different maturity curve on that, right? And then even if you go... Further and look based on the program type. allied health versus a trade program. We've seen maturity curves differ between different programs.
Speaker: even within the same school. So like, you nailed it. campus, channel. Program. All of those things are so critical. Because you have to build be able to build out the maturity curve. Otherwise.
Speaker: you're going to be off. you're You're not going to be able to project out how you're pacing to your actual term goal or your admissions goal. Yeah. Well. Lucky for us. and ah you know, for anyone who might use this, but we actually built out a tool called pennant. together that we Kind of lay out some of this.
Speaker: detail, and data. but To be able to help us kind of align and understand those two different views, what they mean, why they matter, how we actually back into them, how we use them to forecast. And it's called Pennant. For those of the you that don't know, you could visit Pennant.
Speaker: dash .com P E N N A N T. dash h dot com And check it out. We also have a free demo ah where you can sign up and we could walk you through this. But I did want to get a chance to share the screen just to show you kind of what we're talking about. And for those of you that are listening. ah Love the plug, Chris. Love the plug. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For those of you listening, I'll be sure to be detailed in what I'm saying here. But I did want to share. so
Speaker: That is not the screen that I wanted to share. No, but but this is helpful. Like, I think and this is where when we were building out Pennant, right? Obviously, this is just such a critical.
Speaker: part in. understanding your marketing planning, understanding how. It impacts the overall goals. So I know like this was one of the first things you and I talked about.
Speaker: yeah Was this marketing versus admissions or cohort versus period view? Because like having that in Snapshot like tells you right away how how you're pacing this month to a specific term or target.
Speaker: So, yeah, this is cool that you're going to share a little bit about you know how this platform shows it, because I think that'll be helpful for people who are following us on YouTube to be able to kind of look at that and see it visually. And if you're not, we'll try to explain it as well as some of the key components.
Speaker: Yeah, I think just like. A quick overview for those of you. Listening, so I'm showing the dashboard here and we do have an overview tab in the dashboard that kind of just shows all the top level KPIs.
Speaker: um And there's an actual... an option to be able to show period view or cohort view. um And then obviously we can show some year -over -year data as well. but What is nice about this quick... Glances you could actually see as in a period type of view where the leads, the applications, the enrollments, the starts, all of those that have come in during the period selected.
Speaker: or And then i'll so i obviously then it could show you like total ad spend, cost per lead, cost per start based upon the view that you're looking at. And then the other thing you could actually do is switch over to cohort view and see.
Speaker: All the leads that have come in and then of those leads. how many have turned into applications, enrollments, and starts. And then you get Dave. be able to see kind of like your cost per lead and some other metrics around. Only. those details. And so you kind of start seeing those.
Speaker: a little bit more granular Grainer, Larry. Well, excuse me, granularly. And. And like dive into some of that. But. the The real sweet spot of like.
Speaker: what this dashboard can actually show. And we're talking about like cohort view is we actually have a cohort tab. And this is kind of where you can really start digging into some data and start looking at these monthly cohorts these windows so for instance you can see here May 1st through 31st, June 1st through June 30th, you could see that we actually have set a 12 -week maturity.
Speaker: ah curve on these 12 week maturity cycle on these. And so as you start moving through the months in these last six months, you could see that. Some are in certain weeks and some of them them are mature. And so now you can start digging down into, for instance, July of 2026. It's mature. We see that it has 564 leads, 119 applications, 50 starts.
Speaker: And that was about 8 .9%. Lead to start. Our spend was $59 ,000. But if you click into this, for those listening, you can actually start. seeing the details of our our actual lead to application.
Speaker: Days, 11 days lead to application for this particular cohort. the medium days to application to start and you could even start seeing application to enrollment. For instance, this This.
Speaker: This tenet. And in the and our. dashboard is set up to be able to track and understand starts And so it's kind of... Showing that data you can show enrollments as well, but 41 -day application to start. So now you're seeing...
Speaker: some of this data here. And then now you get to see kind of how this progresses over that 12 -week cycle. Go ahead, Rustin. I can tell you, Chris.
Speaker: Again. When we've... Had this conversation and we've shown this data. How clean and clear it is to be able to see this in one spot just like clear as day I can't tell you how many Excel spreadsheets.
Speaker: I've built out in my in my time yeah taking CRM data. exporting it out starting to pivot it and then create date versus actual enroll date and starting to kind of create out maturity curves based on that i mean yeah it was is crazy, but like This literally, like...
Speaker: A simple calculation, simple way to kind of pull that in. And again, you determine when those different. triggers are for the enrollment, the application, whatever. But to be able to see that right away, like, you know, this month is.
Speaker: ah You know, X percent mature and, you know, you've got X amount of months left before it gets fully baked. And, you know, your average lead to enroll rate is X amount of days in one click. Like that's powerful. Right. When you're having that conversation with admissions and they're like, well, we only have 20 enrollments this month or whatever. Like what's going on? Because you're marketing.
Speaker: Your marketing budget showed 100. And it's like, well. Take a look at this. We're actually right at where we need to be because when this thing matures out, we're actually probably going to be above the 150 that we projected based on the maturity. cycle.
Speaker: and And you would never have known if you didn't have the data. like you just What? No. Unless... To your point, you're pivoting all this information out on a daily basis. And...
Speaker: I'll tell you, I used to do that, Chris. Yeah, same here. Yeah. that was one ah One of the first things I would do, walk into the office, okay? I'd get my coffee. Oh yeah. And then I would sit down. I remember this. I'd sit down. Plug my laptop in, open it up.
Speaker: And. I go right to the CRM and I would just export the data out of the CRM. the full You know, year to date data that's typically otherwise it was way too big.
Speaker: And then I would just grab that. Get all that data. I had a couple of charts and stuff that I had built out. I'd export that. I'd put it into it. and then boom, I'd start pivoting and I'd start looking at.
Speaker: And a lot of times it was this. This is what I was looking at, like how we pacing to our. cohort targets or our term targets. And then how are we doing month to date from a marketing view?
Speaker: Feed pacing, app pacing, enroll pacing, or whatever that is, right? Yeah, right. This is amazing to be able to do this now in a couple buttons, so... This is just awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, and again, for those of you listening, it you so if you're... you know We're showing really the cohort. And so we're looking at June right now and now you can actually expand.
Speaker: If you're multi -location, you can expand the campus, you can expand the programs, and you can expand the channels to see how everything played out. Like what what did paid search look like? 19 leads, five applications, two starts. I mean, you can start looking at all this data now. and Again, this can actually set.
Speaker: ah I mean, it not only does it replace everything that we do at 5 a .m. when we wake up and start pivoting everything out, but now you can start building forecasts and doing all the stuff off of this data, which is super helpful because I think like. If you know that you.
Speaker: needed to be doing this, or you already do it. You know that it's a. Pain in the butt to do it every single day. Or oftentimes you might do it every single week or even some folks. probably do it monthly and it's already too late.
Speaker: I mean, it's already too late to like. you know, be able to use the data. or um understand like how things are going is particularly particularly if you need to make changes in your marketing efforts, you know, and so yeah, it's just great, great stuff to have.
Speaker: Again. cohort view. versus period view, just understanding how that data aligns with kind of each that admissions and marketing and how you how how you actually use the data.
Speaker: Yeah. Thank you. Absolutely. and And I think the other. side of this also is like Again. It's really what helps the conversation become a little bit more clear.
Speaker: And I talk about this all the time is. I think I mentioned this, like transparency in in data, right? Transparency creates trust.
Speaker: And I can tell you, um there have been many instances and and situations where it's a challenging conversation between marketing and admissions to discuss like, hey, we're behind on where we're targets where our targets are.
Speaker: Why is this? Well, marketing is not, you know, if I look at our data, we're behind. and If you're not. prepared to discuss. why marketing is behind or what's happening or the fact that.
Speaker: We're just not matured out and the marketing should mature to where we should hit our target. Here's our projection of where we're going to land. That's a very difficult conversation to have with an admissions leader or the admissions team, right? It's an extremely difficult conversation because what are they going to do? How are they going to trust you on what you're saying? Because as far as they're concerned, they're behind.
Speaker: yeah And so... I think that's where it's it's just so important to be able to understand that there are two sides of this and to be able to kind of share that and show that. And it and it doesn't take a lot. like it Like you we said, like we you just showed in the dashboard.
Speaker: It's a pretty easy way to kind of create that calculation, even if you want to just run pivots and and Excel, but I would absolutely do that.
Speaker: Grab your data. Make sure you have. both views, make sure you come prepared with both views. Because if you're not looking at both views, you're you're only seeing one side of the puzzle. And honestly. Marketing and admissions, I believe, have always been combined, like they should absolutely be joined in their core goals and what their core budget and targets are.
Speaker: They should 100 % be aligned. And so. that's The way I learned. Yeah. that's That's how I learned. And that's how like you work together to. meet that goal. It was a team effort. It's not.
Speaker: You know. Siloed. yeah but Same here. and um I'm so grateful that that's kind of the experience I had, Chris. like Growing up in this industry, right, and coming from that experience, because that was one of the first things was the admissions leader was like, hey, Ristam.
Speaker: Get over here and come start listening to some calls, talk to some of our admissions and our representatives, have some of these conversations, understand the process. And so valuable to the point where I started to have our teams do that.
Speaker: Whenever we brought on a new team member, we always had them get involved in that end. Because, again, you know, it's not just. get the lead and get them in the door and that's it. That's just not how it works.
Speaker: So... Do you think? that We can use some of this cohort analysis and view to understand like lead quality or seasonality. ah Is there anything?
Speaker: tucked in there that we can understand. From... Like the cohort. look Yeah, I think seasonality absolutely should be built into it. um Again, it's all based like.
Speaker: Every institution or school is unique, right? Some have greater seasonality than others. You know, August, January, typically August, September, or January are typically big ah kind of months in the space.
Speaker: back to school, new you, new life kind of January. ah type of thing. so I think. Seasonality absolutely plays into this. But, you know, I think it all just depends. and And I think you should be looking at that. Like every month, whenever we build a budget or we build a report, we bake in seasonality into it. depending on historical data and what we found from that history.
Speaker: Yeah, that's that's what we build in. And if it's if if if it switches or whatever, we tweak it. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I love looking at that data as well. It helps me understand seasonality year over year, what we did last year, looking at these cohorts and then kind of like even.
Speaker: understanding um lead quality too. If we see a big fall off, we might have some signs and, you know, there's obviously other things that we can look at even in the dashboard to understand some of that. But like just understanding like signals and signs from the data alone can like just help you understand like what's happening. Even. further up in marketing.
Speaker: Yeah. Up funnel. So, yeah. So I think. You know. To take it home, I think like... It's great to understand both. admissions and marketing view, understand how they both align to kind of what you're working at, but then ah obviously is one. One common goal is to You know?
Speaker: Yeah. like Fulfill the the the enrollment budget and the start budget. Right. And. yeah i think having both sets of data is very important and then of course if you know, The dashboard, like... Pen it. Takes human error out. That's the other. part of that. But if you're not, you know, doing something on a daily basis, or a weekly basis, at least understand what that looks like, you know, pivot tables or whatever, you know, head over to pennant dash and ah sign up for a demo, we'd be happy to show you something.
Speaker: Yeah, and I i absolutely will. Kind of. Hang my hat on this one. But ah if you're, I mean, you've got to be looking at both. If you're in marketing and you're not also understanding kind of how the maturity is of the data on your side, you've you've got to be doing that. Find somebody in the organization, pull the data yourself.
Speaker: get Get somebody to help with that. But it's so critical to have you know both views. Again, you know it's it's building trust in transparency. right i I think that's what i I mentioned, but I believe in that. like It's so huge. And then you you understand what's happening and you get the full picture. So, well, Chris, ah this is awesome. I think this is a huge topic. It just came up.
Speaker: this week actually in a conversation we had on budgeting with one of our one of our clients but Yeah, I appreciate it. I think for next week, actually, we've got an exciting guest ah that's going to be joining us. So I'm pumped about that. An OG in the podcast podcast space and then also a CMO in in higher ed. And so we're we're excited to have him join next week. and For this episode, that's all for ROI University, where the biggest ah ROI is personal.
