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00:00:01
Why 5% Wins Can 5X Your Enrollment Funnel
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In this episode, Rustam Irani introduces the “5% Rule”—a simple but powerful approach to enrollment growth that leverages small, consistent improvements across every step of the student journey. He shares a real story about how sending branded scrubs to healthcare students reduced melt, boosted retention, and set the stage for his compound growth formula. Rustam then walks through the funnel step by step—from impressions to enrollment to retention—showing how incremental gains add up to transformational outcomes for both institutions and students.
Timestamps
- 00:02 – Introducing the 5% Rule as the hidden growth lever in enrollment.
- 01:01 – A real story: solving student melt by sending branded scrubs.
- 03:26 – Looking at the entire funnel for incremental improvements.
- 04:27 – Breaking down the compound growth formula.
- 05:18 – Funnel stage 1: Improving impressions and brand awareness.
- 06:12 – Funnel stage 2: Increasing clicks and website engagement.
- 07:00 – Funnel stage 3: Boosting inquiries and conversion rates.
- 07:26 – Funnel stage 4: Improving admissions contact and engagement.
- 07:53 – Funnel stage 5: Making enrollment easier through support and messaging.
- 08:26 – Funnel stage 6: Creating a great student experience after enrollment.
- 09:10 – Why 5% improvements compound into 27%+ enrollment gains.
- 09:32 – Internal factors: building teams, setting benchmarks, and aligning messaging.
- 11:07 – Why there are no silver bullets, just testing, learning, and small wins.
- 11:49 – Closing encouragement: find micro-touchpoints, make 5% gains, and watch the compounding effect.
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Transcript
Introduction to the 5% Rule and ROI University
00:00:01
Rustam Irani
What if I told you the most powerful growth lever in student enrollment isn't at the bottom of the funnel, but actually a hidden in every single step along the way? Today, we're going to unpack what I call the 5% rule.
00:00:16
Rustam Irani
Pretty much the eighth wonder of the world. Basically, once you see the math, you're never going to look at the enrollment funnel again. And it's pretty incredible what you'll find.
00:00:29
Rustam Irani
Welcome back to ROI University, a podcast for higher ed marketers and leaders who want to change the game and themselves. I'm Roo Samirani, your host, a recovering engineer turned marketer and a former higher ed CMO.
00:00:46
Rustam Irani
I've spent on some time on the agency side as well. So you can I've built a landing page or two in my career.
Community Building and Pilot Test Success Story
00:00:54
Rustam Irani
me tell you about incredible story that happened to me many, many years ago.
00:00:59
Rustam Irani
But basically, we had an issue a challenge where we were getting students to enroll, but they were having challenges actually showing up for class.
00:01:10
Rustam Irani
What was missing? Why were students not ending up showing up for the first day of class? And so we basically looked at a ton of data. We looked and and did some actually market surveys. We did some focus groups. We did a number of things to try to figure out why weren't students actually ending up showing up?
00:01:31
Rustam Irani
Why were they falling off? And one of the interesting things we learned through that process was they didn't feel a part of the community. They didn't really feel like they were part of a school.
00:01:43
Rustam Irani
That was for primarily an online program and it was a healthcare based program. So what we said was, okay, how can we make them feel a part of this institution? How can we make them feel like they're a part of the community?
00:01:59
Rustam Irani
So we decided to test something. We said, Hey, what if after a student enrolls, we send them a set of scrubs. They're gonna be in healthcare. care We can have scrubs sent out and we'll make them branded.
00:02:11
Rustam Irani
We'll have our brand on it. And so we basically tested that out and we did a small pilot, we did a holdout group, and we realized that this the people who enrolled, the students who enrolled, actually the ones that received the scrub versus the holdout group we saw a higher show rate and less of a melt rate on those to actually starting class and starting school.
00:02:38
Rustam Irani
Pretty amazing. Not only that, but when we track the retention of those students, it was even better than the retention of the students that didn't get anything.
Compound Growth and Enrollment Funnel Breakdown
00:02:48
Rustam Irani
And so the important part here is to realize that that's only one part of that entire funnel to make an impact like that.
00:02:57
Rustam Irani
And so when we were able to see that, we realized that that is just one piece. What if we actually step back and look at all the different areas and all the different touch points within the student journey?
00:03:11
Rustam Irani
Can we potentially get ah better results? And so that's when we started to look at basically the entire funnel, all the different opportunities within that funnel.
00:03:22
Rustam Irani
And can we get a 5% lift? That was really the goal that we set aside for the team in each of these main core areas, micro moments, touch points in the funnel, whatever you want to call them, across the student journey.
00:03:38
Rustam Irani
And so that's when the fun began. When you're looking at the student, when you're looking at yourself, you're going to have internal factors and you're going to have external factors.
00:03:51
Rustam Irani
Those are all going to be basically points within experience that can be impactful. There's always pressure, right, for enrollments, there's always going to be pressure for bottom line metrics.
00:04:06
Rustam Irani
But at the end of the day, what are you doing as an institution? What are you doing as a team? And what are you doing as a leader to look at all of the different areas to make potential big swings to make big impacts?
00:04:23
Rustam Irani
And so what I've developed is basically what I call the compound growth formula. And the way I look at it is basically I break the funnel into its core components.
00:04:35
Rustam Irani
Basically in a student journey, somebody sees your brand, they're clicking on your ad, they're coming through to whatever landing page or your website, they're converting on your website.
00:04:48
Rustam Irani
And then eventually once they convert, they're kind of getting contacted. Can we contact them? Are we contacted them?
Optimizing Engagement and Conversion Strategies
00:04:56
Rustam Irani
Then they're eventually enrolling, filling out application, enrolling, and starting in school.
00:05:01
Rustam Irani
All of these different touch points within the funnel, we said, hey, if we step back and we look at it, can we make small incremental grains in each of these areas?
00:05:14
Rustam Irani
And so let's take a look at each of these pieces. Impressions. How can we improve impressions on our brand? There's tons of different ways to do that. A lot of people are now you know pushing digital opportunities. It could be connected TV, it could be digital radio. There's so many different ways to improve your brand awareness and your brand experience at the top of the funnel.
00:05:40
Rustam Irani
One example we did was we had ah where we would run open houses, virtual open houses, and we would promote that through digital radio, through digital TV.
00:05:51
Rustam Irani
see if we can get folks to come in get an experience of our school, the offerings, and see if they're interested in inquiring a little bit more. Then once they're aware of you, they're coming, they're engaging with either your landing pages or your website.
00:06:06
Rustam Irani
How can you increase the impact of the clicks that they're coming through? So if you're putting ads out there or if you're promoting yourself out there, how can you get them to come to these landing pages and these and your website at a greater clip than, you know, typically whatever your benchmarking is.
00:06:27
Rustam Irani
We once optimized placements for wrong zips. So what we thought was an ideal zip actually turned out not to be an ideal zip. And so we were basically getting the wrong clicks.
00:06:41
Rustam Irani
How can you optimize that? Then once they get to your site, they inquire. They want to learn more about your institution. They want to learn more about your school. What can you do to improve the conversion rate there?
00:06:53
Rustam Irani
One test we ran once was we basically did dynamic keyword insertion on our landing pages where the exact keywords that they were searching for created that same experience on the landing page.
00:07:04
Rustam Irani
And we saw a jump in the landing page conversion rate. Are you creating that optimal journey? Then now that they've filled out an inquiry, admissions is trying to get in touch with them.
00:07:19
Rustam Irani
Are you sending relevant emails? Are you following up from SMS with SMSs? Are you text messaging them? Are you sharing relevant information with them to get them to engage?
00:07:32
Rustam Irani
And so there's tons of opportunities there. It could even be direct mail. There's so many different ways to improve that contact rate. Now that admissions has contacted them, how can you improve their ability to enroll?
00:07:46
Rustam Irani
Is it a right fit for them? What messaging are you giving to them? How difficult is your application process? Is it a difficult process? Is there a lot involved? Are you supporting them through that process?
00:07:58
Rustam Irani
Financial aid could be a pain. Are you giving them opportunities to create and learn a little bit more about what it takes there? And lastly, now that they've enrolled, they started your institution. What are you doing to create a great experience for them once they start?
00:08:18
Rustam Irani
um you have a sandbox environment where they could take a look? Do you have a community of students and ah ah and that they can engage with, maybe even alumni that can like they can engage with?
00:08:29
Rustam Irani
So there's tons of different areas. So when we step back and I just kind of gave you an overview of all of the different aspects of the funnel, basically impressions, clicks, leads, contact rate, enrollments and starts.
00:08:47
Rustam Irani
can you make small incremental improvements in each of those areas? The way I like to look at it, 5% rule. Can you make 5% improvement in each of those different areas and the KPIs you have in those areas of the funnel?
00:09:03
Rustam Irani
And if you can, you'd be amazed that the absolute bottom line is gonna go way higher than 5% because it compounds. Each of those areas stocks upon each other You could literally end up with a 27% improvement at the bottom of that funnel or your enrollments or your starts.
00:09:24
Rustam Irani
Now, as I mentioned, there's a couple other factors, right? It's not just these external, but there's internal factors.
Internal Alignment and Incremental Improvements
00:09:32
Rustam Irani
What are you doing to build this sort of team internally to look at each of these areas and look for improvements?
00:09:41
Rustam Irani
Do you have benchmarks across each of these different areas? You know, What are your copy and content goals for your team? Do they align with what you're looking for from an ad experience?
00:09:56
Rustam Irani
You also have to factor in the students. What are they going through? Or is that coming out in your messaging? Is that coming out in your advertising, right? Is your message clear about what your value proposition is, what you offer as an institution?
00:10:13
Rustam Irani
Are there testimonials? How else can you lift confidence in that prospective student about your institution? There's so many different ways to do this.
00:10:24
Rustam Irani
um um And lastly, from an internal perspective, you know there are always going to be ways to you know get the group together, come up with ideas, and you know really create this environment of testing and measuring. i'm a big believer in that.
00:10:41
Rustam Irani
And so you know the reality is, And it's funny, I used to joke about this with one of the executives at ah ah at an institution I worked with. who You know, Ristam, when when are you going to come up with the next silver bullet? Or when are you going to come up with the next multimillion dollar idea?
00:10:58
Rustam Irani
And the reality is, there's really no silver bullets. There are definitely great ideas that can drive significant revenue, that can drive significant opportunities and performance.
00:11:10
Rustam Irani
And over the 25, my 25 year career, you know, I've definitely had a few silver bullets or a million million dollar ideas and and, you know, have had some pretty amazing campaigns.
00:11:23
Rustam Irani
those are pretty few and far between. i think the majority of the success in my career has come through testing, measuring small incremental improvements and really breaking it down into those different key areas.
00:11:39
Rustam Irani
And ultimately, if you can break it down and look at each of these different touch points or micro touch points, as I like to call them, if you can make these small incremental improvements, 5% in each of these touch points, you can absolutely make a greater than 5% improvement at the bottom line.
00:12:01
Rustam Irani
And so i would definitely encourage you Look at the funnel, find opportunities. If you need a checklist, I've got a checklist that we have that has 10 different ideas in each of these different points, but get your gains in each of these areas.
00:12:19
Rustam Irani
And you'll be amazed that this 5% formula will definitely create greater results. That's all for this class of ah ah ROI university where the biggest ah ah ROI is personal.