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00:00:01
The Hidden Leak
7 Plays7 days ago
In this episode, Rustam Irani unpacks one of the biggest misconceptions in higher-ed marketing: most schools don’t have a lead problem, they have a leak problem. He explains how institutions can identify hidden leaks in their enrollment funnel, why “speed to lead” matters, and how data modeling can transform student engagement. Along the way, Rustam shares personal stories about standing firm with leadership, building smarter communication strategies, and even rethinking how to keep talented team members engaged. The result is a blueprint for plugging leaks, improving conversion rates, and leading with both data and empathy.
Timestamps
- 00:02 – Why schools don’t have a lead problem, they have a leak problem
- 01:14 – Generating tens of thousands of leads but not seeing results
- 02:16 – Identifying leaks: weekend response times & “speed to lead”
- 03:34 – Different engagement preferences: phone, email, chat, SMS
- 04:20 – Building data models to identify ideal student segments
- 07:14 – How AI has simplified lead scoring today
- 08:10 – Standing up for marketing with data in tough leadership meetings
- 12:17 – Empathy in student communication and persona buckets
- 14:37 – Internal leaks: keeping your own team motivated and engaged
- 16:21 – Action steps to plug leaks and transform enrollment funnels
Recommended
Transcript
Leaky Funnels: The Real Problem
00:00:01
Rustam Irani
Most schools think they need more leads. But here's the truth. You don't have a lead problem. Usually you have a leak problem. Perfectly good inquiries coming into the funnel and disappearing, not going through the process, not making it an application stage.
00:00:20
Rustam Irani
It's kind of like watching tuition dollars slip through your fingers.
Identifying Hidden Leaks
00:00:25
Rustam Irani
Today I'm going to tell you how to find a hidden leak in your funnel and patch it once and for all. Also, to believe in your abilities and bring data to the table.
Host Introduction: Rustam Uyurani
00:00:36
Rustam Irani
Welcome back to ROI University, podcast for higher ed marketers and leaders who want to change a game and themselves. I'm Ristam Uyurani, your host, a recovering engineer turned marketer.
00:00:50
Rustam Irani
I'm a former higher ed CMO and have spent time on the agency side as well. So you could say I've built a landing page or two.
Data and Target Metrics Discrepancy
00:01:00
Rustam Irani
One of the most impactful times kind of in my career was basically when I was working with a school.
00:01:11
Rustam Irani
And I've worked on the school side, I've worked on the agency side, I've worked with some of the largest institutions, definitely in the US and even globally. And We were generating a couple of them tens of thousands of leads a month.
00:01:27
Rustam Irani
And basically one of the challenges was we weren't seeing the data come through properly and with the target metrics that we were looking for.
00:01:40
Rustam Irani
And the good thing was we were in constant communication with the admissions team, our marketing team was, but we weren't seeing the impacts of those additional leads that we were bringing into the system positively.
Unearthing Inefficiencies in Engagement
00:01:56
Rustam Irani
And so what we basically started to say, okay, let's look back at the source of the leads. Let's look back at the timing of the leads when they're coming in.
00:02:12
Rustam Irani
Let's look at the process of follow up on the lead. So what we began to start to do was realize that when you look at all these different pieces, you tend to find areas of inefficiencies and what I call leaks, right?
00:02:34
Rustam Irani
And so couple things that we came up with was we were seeing a good amount of You know, people were expressing interest Friday evening, not being in touch with anybody else until a Monday.
00:02:47
Rustam Irani
And that was not good because usually they would end up talking to another school or finding another opportunity that may be a better fit for them. that was just because they were able to connect with somebody quicker than with us.
00:03:02
Rustam Irani
Right. The other thing we would look at is how quickly we were engaging with folks when they were raising their hand, if they were filling out a lead form, and we call this speed to lead.
Effective Communication Strategies
00:03:15
Rustam Irani
Many schools that do this successfully, literally are contacting folks, engaging with folks within minutes of them raising their hands.
00:03:27
Rustam Irani
And we also noticed was when you look at it by source, there's different ways to engage. It's not always just a phone call.
00:03:37
Rustam Irani
Many people like different types of engagement, whether it's email, whether it's chat, whether it's a phone call, maybe even SMS.
Modeling Ideal Student Engagement
00:03:45
Rustam Irani
right So one thing that was really neat, the project that I worked on, and this started back in 2012 or so, with that much data, what we realized was, hey, can we figure out a smarter way to bring more types of students that were the right types of students for our school, for our institution?
00:04:10
Rustam Irani
And so we started building some modeling. and looking at key attributes and data signals that gave us the ideal student. and that was pretty impactful. We had built a model. Basically it was 10 deciles. We broke it into 10 different sections, one being the highest likelihood that somebody would start school with us and 10 being the least likelihood.
00:04:35
Rustam Irani
And, uh, we had basically built out a model that showcased each of these buckets had 10 different buckets and based on source, based on, um, on,
00:04:48
Rustam Irani
geography, based on demographic information, we were able to really hone in and figure out smarter ways to not only just find students, but also how to give them different types of experiences based on where they were on that scale.
Supermodel for Behavior Analysis
00:05:08
Rustam Irani
other cool thing that we did was we had actually built a what we called a supermodel, which also took consumer intent and consumer behavior into account.
00:05:22
Rustam Irani
And so what that did was we were able to see how much time a a particular user was spending on the website, what other sites they were visiting before getting to us. We used a tracking tool for this.
00:05:35
Rustam Irani
We were able to really hone in not only on the right type of demographic, but the right type of intense signals that gave us a good indication that this was the right type of student for our institution.
00:05:50
Rustam Irani
And we basically built different communication strategies that also basically impacted and gave them more of a positive experience, which At the end of the day, when we built this model, we put it into work.
00:06:10
Rustam Irani
It improved our conversion rates. I believe it was at least 15% when we looked at it overall from an enrollment standpoint that we made impacts.
00:06:22
Rustam Irani
And what we did was, again, we got smarter with what was coming in. We got more of what would come in from a a quality perspective and wouldn't fall off.
00:06:32
Rustam Irani
So we were slowly plugging the
AI in Lead Scoring
00:06:34
Rustam Irani
leaks there, right? We were making sure that the people that were coming in were more the the the type of students that were a good fit for our institution.
00:06:45
Rustam Irani
It was extremely impactful. And that model is still being used and refined today, which is just really amazing to to kind of see. And it just continues to get smarter and smarter and better and better.
00:06:59
Rustam Irani
And now today, with a lot of the new AI tools, you can build out lead scoring models pretty effectively without the incredible investment that we made way back when, when we analyze, you know,
00:07:15
Rustam Irani
hundreds of thousands of records and build out some pretty incredible regression models and different types of models to kind of build out this lead scoring.
00:07:26
Rustam Irani
So that definitely is one area where, again, you're trying to find that ideal type of student. That's kind of on the outside perspective.
Data-Driven Marketing Performance
00:07:37
Rustam Irani
I think one of the things that's also important when we think about ourselves as marketers is you've got to sometimes stick up for yourself. You've got to sometimes stick up for what you believe in.
00:07:51
Rustam Irani
I've definitely been in a number of situations where I was in a meeting and I was asked about performance and I was asked why a campus wasn't getting the amount of leads that they needed.
00:08:07
Rustam Irani
I would have the tough discussion with the campus president and say, hey, well, this is what's happening. Here's what our marketing is showing that actually it is struggling and here's why it's struggling, but here's what we're focusing and here's what we are seeing success with.
00:08:26
Rustam Irani
I always, so this is one thing internally, you know, when you're coming to these discussions and you're coming to the table with, you know, where you've got to explain what's happening,
00:08:38
Rustam Irani
and you've got the mentality maybe on the other side where it's, we just want leads, we just want activity, this has got to work. When you can bring actual data to the table, it's much, much more effective.
00:08:53
Rustam Irani
But you also need to come prepared.
Importance of Data in Meetings
00:08:55
Rustam Irani
And realize that sometimes, no matter how prepared you are or what you come to the table with, it could still go the wrong way.
00:09:04
Rustam Irani
And I specifically remember one instance when I was sitting there now with a campus president and basically he frustrated. was a program that was not hitting their numbers and we were trying with the budget that we had.
00:09:20
Rustam Irani
We had done a number of different things, but just weren't able to hit those numbers. And i was showing him why, what campaigns were running,
00:09:30
Rustam Irani
I was literally showing details of the campaigns, even at the keyword level, to try to educate him on things that our team was doing, things that we were doing. And he got so frustrated that he just basically asked me to leave the office, which was tough. That was really hard for me. was I was in shock.
00:09:52
Rustam Irani
But I also understood. I understood that this meant a lot to him and meant a lot to us as well. We were working hard to try to help that situation.
00:10:04
Rustam Irani
sometimes, you know, things happen and and people get a bit frustrated. So I understood. But again, stick to what you believe in. you long as you come prepared, you have the data, you're testing things, you're not stuck in your ways, you are open-minded, those conversations can go much, much better. So that is an important thing personally that we need to work on as marketers, come prepared and have have have things ready.
00:10:37
Rustam Irani
Another that that kind of along those lines that happened was I had presented reporting, monthly reporting to another executive at a school I worked at, and I didn't have the date range on the data that I presented.
00:10:57
Rustam Irani
And he basically said, hey, Rustam, when you get this properly put together and have a date range so I can understand what this data is telling me, you know,
00:11:09
Rustam Irani
come back and let's set up another meeting. I'm grateful for all of those types of experiences because they made me better. I've never come to meeting again without having a date range and understanding you you know what's happening behind the data. So there's no questions of where that data comes from, what date range is, and any other kind assumptions that are baked into the data.
00:11:39
Rustam Irani
I'm
Understanding Student Priorities
00:11:39
Rustam Irani
prepared. so you know, know, I think there's some other factors there that happen when you kind of look at some of the areas where leaks happen. You know, a lot of times students have other priorities. School is just not the number one thing.
00:11:54
Rustam Irani
And so we just try to get them into the funnel. We try to get them to enroll. That's our number one goal. But when we think about there's multiple priorities,
00:12:06
Rustam Irani
opportunities and options for them to go back to school. There's multiple things that might be happening, you know, on their side. with family, with priorities, with a job, I think, you know, then we become a little bit more empathetic and that goes a long way in crafting proper, engaging, effective communications.
00:12:31
Rustam Irani
You know, we had built out some buckets and I know I'm sure you all have heard of the personas, right? We've seen those over the years where, you know, there could be, know,
00:12:42
Rustam Irani
not ready Nancy or something like that. But what we had done was we had kind of thought about a few buckets, one being somebody who was interested, but had a lot going on.
00:12:56
Rustam Irani
right right It was all about the timing. So how do we continue to engage them and give them the right resources to make a decision? And so that's one example of what we do. We had these different types of buckets.
Influence of Internal Team Dynamics
00:13:09
Rustam Irani
So Another way to fix this leak is to really look at what you are doing on that side and figure out what types of communication is going out to what groups so you can improve the engagement, the contact rates, all of those different things that ultimately will lead to better experience for the student and for your team internally and the school.
00:13:41
Rustam Irani
And I think the other thing when you think about it is there's also a lot of internal factors that we're dealing with, right?
00:13:53
Rustam Irani
I can tell you another interesting example I had. One of our strongest data analysts was frustrated that he was kind of doing monotonous work And i could sense that frustration.
00:14:11
Rustam Irani
And, you know, it was pretty obvious that, you know, some of the reporting he was doing, which was critical was day to day. So had approached him and and asked him and he came out and he basically, I use the Jerry Maguire line, help me help you.
00:14:30
Rustam Irani
And he basically went to the whiteboard. We were meeting one-on-one in a meeting. And he said, he wrote on the on whiteboard, he wrote analysts versus scientists.
00:14:41
Rustam Irani
I looked at him for a minute and he said, I'm a scientist. I like to experiment. I like to discover.
00:14:52
Rustam Irani
I like to do all of these things. And so I want to work on projects that are going to take me beyond just reporting. That was pretty darn powerful.
00:15:04
Rustam Irani
Incredible conversation. really enjoyed it. And after that, we had just a great, great conversation and dialogue. And he actually came up with a couple different projects and reports that were pretty impactful for the institution.
Enhancing Funnel Efficiency
00:15:23
Rustam Irani
that was pretty neat, right? You know, I think At the end of the day, when you look at this funnel, there's so many different ways to plug these leaks.
00:15:34
Rustam Irani
Looking at the data, making sure you're communicating effectively, making sure you're tracking all of the different touch points and understanding what those benchmarks are.
00:15:48
Rustam Irani
Looking at when these leads are coming in, looking at who's engaging with them, how long it's taking. There's all these different ways that you can get just so much smarter and then basically get more out of less, right?
00:16:03
Rustam Irani
And once you do that, you get to understand where the quality is coming from And you look for more of that versus just bringing in leads. And that is definitely a key kind of transformation, right? When you look at that, it really doesn't come from more leads. It comes from getting smarter and looking for more of the right type. And and it's a benefit for both sides. I challenge you, look at your funnel this week.
00:16:31
Rustam Irani
How fast is your team responding? are you looking at the leads and scoring them depending on kind of where you're at? And there are some pretty cool tools out there that you can do that with.
00:16:42
Rustam Irani
And, you know, are you nurturing the ones that are not ready yet? And how are you nurturing them? Are you giving them the right types of communication? These simple things will definitely help your overall efforts.
Challenge to Evaluate Marketing Funnels
00:16:58
Rustam Irani
So that's all. For this class of ah ah ROI University, where the biggest ah ROI is personal, catch you on the next episode.