Higher Ed Lead Gen Programs - How much do they pay?

[curiousgens]

I've built a higher ed publishing site with decent North American traffic, and have begun looking at additional ways to monetize. By scouring this forum, I've seen people recommending rev-share deals with colleges/universities or doing lead gen with middlemen like Campus Explorer (and others). I imagine getting rev-share deals directly with institutions is a tad hard?

Anyone with experience working with in this space... Would like to know how much they pay for leads. Feel free to share any other pertinent details.

 

[CaptainHustle]

It shouldn't be.

A lot of scummy agencies in my country that "secure" admission to certain NA universities for their students have juicy deals with the universities.

Tuition for master's can be as high as $120K/year (foreign students).

I would think there is a lot of money to be made as a lead seller.

It should be more interesting to sell seats as opposed to just leads though.

 

[curiousgens]

I would consider selling the seats- but I'm not sure that conversion would be tracked all the way to my traffic. Unlike, say a conversion on Amazon where there's a cookie duration that attributes a conversion to your clicks, I imagine a student might do a Request for Information/Form Submit and then perhaps end up paying through some offline model- like a cheque or wire transfer.

But there is a lot of dough in Higher Ed.

 

[eliquid]

As someone that has done lead gen for higher ed since 2008, I know there is a lot of money in the space.

But only for the schools. That is unless you have a lot of high-quality leads that actually turn into 1st-day seats... which you will never know about. You will also have to do a lot of negotiating.

The problem with high ed leads is:

- It's just a lead
- A lead has to become an application
- An app has to become an enrollment
- An enrollment has to become a start
- A start has to become a 1st-day seat
-- This takes months, depending on start dates and how good the lead is at getting their info together

Schools can get leads a dime a dozen, so those are cheap.

But that's when your tracking is likely to drop off and you start to lose data unless you partner with the school for further events.

Also, these schools are terrible AF with these leads.

Unless you own a call center yourself and you are able to call these leads within 2 hours of submission, forget a decent payday like the big boys.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@curiousgens, I once sold college entry leads. You probably won't be surprised to hear that it was largely the privately operated for-profit colleges buying the leads, which was fine in my case because the people didn't need accreditation, just an education (that they could have gotten for free online and in books). It was one of those industries where you either have the skills or you don't.

Anyways, I don't recall exactly what the leads were worth. Maybe $10 each just to request information be mailed out. This was through the affiliate network QuinStreet which was insane to even get into. They had this process of stonewalling you every which way to see if you'd persevere and keep contacting them through a million different ways.

I was just looking them up for you and found that they sold the education part of their network off to EducationDynamics for $20 million in late 2020.

I'm not sure how they may have the funnels set up but on QuinStreet they had a Wordpress plugin and then you could choose one of their many "modules" to use. I would use a lead form that would let the reader choose their Major and put in a zipcode, then it would lead them to another module on a page template I made that listed all of the schools in the network that offered that major or a very similar one.

And they could then request info from those schools from there, which is what qualified as a lead. So it was a 2 step funnel to filter out bad traffic, but it was a very top-of-the-funnel lead so the value was low (but the volume was high enough).

 

[curiousgens]

As someone that has done lead gen for higher ed since 2008, I know there is a lot of money in the space.

But only for the schools. That is unless you have a lot of high-quality leads that actually turn into 1st-day seats... which you will never know about. You will also have to do a lot of negotiating.

The problem with high ed leads is:

- It's just a lead
- A lead has to become an application
- An app has to become an enrollment
- An enrollment has to become a start
- A start has to become a 1st-day seat
-- This takes months, depending on start dates and how good the lead is at getting their info together

Schools can get leads a dime a dozen, so those are cheap.

But that's when your tracking is likely to drop off and you start to lose data unless you partner with the school for further events.

Also, these schools are terrible AF with these leads.

Unless you own a call center yourself and you are able to call these leads within 2 hours of submission, forget a decent payday like the big boys.

@eliquid, Glad you responded, as it is your other response sometime back in '17 on a similar topic that prompted me to discover & sign up on this forum.

So, you would recommend if I were to do it to have a way to nurture these leads myself, and perhaps introduce them to the school only when they are ready to enrol/pay tuition?

Also, from your experience, what kind of money (estimates are ok) are we talking esp for undergrad & graduate levels- if I found a way to deal directly with the institutions?

Because, ultimately my goal has been to generate qualified leads of course, but then also provide end-to-end support from application to enrollment in partner institutions. Almost like these guys are doing. And obviously, I thought that before I have the resources to "build" a back office for that, I might consider selling leads the ol' fashioned way in the meantime.

@curiousgens, I once sold college entry leads. You probably won't be surprised to hear that it was largely the privately operated for-profit colleges buying the leads, which was fine in my case because the people didn't need accreditation, just an education (that they could have gotten for free online and in books). It was one of those industries where you either have the skills or you don't.

Anyways, I don't recall exactly what the leads were worth. Maybe $10 each just to request information be mailed out. This was through the affiliate network QuinStreet which was insane to even get into. They had this process of stonewalling you every which way to see if you'd persevere and keep contacting them through a million different ways.

I was just looking them up for you and found that they sold the education part of their network off to EducationDynamics for $20 million in late 2020.

I'm not sure how they may have the funnels set up but on QuinStreet they had a Wordpress plugin and then you could choose one of their many "modules" to use. I would use a lead form that would let the reader choose their Major and put in a zipcode, then it would lead them to another module on a page template I made that listed all of the schools in the network that offered that major or a very similar one.

And they could then request info from those schools from there, which is what qualified as a lead. So it was a 2 step funnel to filter out bad traffic, but it was a very top-of-the-funnel lead so the value was low (but the volume was high enough).

Thanks for that detailed response @Ryuzaki!

Ten bucks per lead doesn't sound too bad. I guess the challenge for me would be that my traffic needs accredited programs. As long as programs are accredited, then I wouldn't mind too much. However, I would of course prefer dealing with Non profit or/and Private faith-based institutions. But I wonder if there are lead gen networks for these?

Also, in your case, did you then stop feeding them the leads, or you exited from the business?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Also, in your case, did you then stop feeding them the leads, or you exited from the business?

I sold the site and had no immediate use for the network any more.

One thing to consider in my case is one user could request info packages from 5 colleges at once. So one lead = 5 conversions.

They definitely had more than just for-profit institutions but they didn’t always keep their campaigns running while the for-profits always topped up their accounts.

 

[eliquid]

So, you would recommend if I were to do it to have a way to nurture these leads myself, and perhaps introduce them to the school only when they are ready to enrol/pay tuition?

You don't have to nurture yourself, but what happens is this:

- School has 2 or 3 enrollment people, working 9am to 5pm ( lets pretend it's east coast ).
- These people are already working at 90% capacity on leads trying to call and close/get info
- You start sending leads, lets say 10 a day.
- Those 2 or 3 people can't get to them for 4-6 hours, meaning the prospective student prob has sent in their info to 3 other schools, of which 1 of those has already reached out and collected info and got them further down the application path.
- Your leads come in Friday at 7pm.. those enrollment peeps at the school are gone. When they come in on Monday, they start working Monday leads and not late Friday/weekend leads. Now your lead is super ass cold and doesn't get reached until Wednesday, if ever.

^^ This shit really happens.

If you don't want to nurture them, at least get full insight every step of the way to each milestone so you know to go back to the school and be like, "why do we have 40% of my leads not getting contacted within 72 hours?" and then demand some kind of change or new deal.

 

[curiousgens]

You don't have to nurture yourself, but what happens is this:

- School has 2 or 3 enrollment people, working 9am to 5pm ( lets pretend it's east coast ).
- These people are already working at 90% capacity on leads trying to call and close/get info
- You start sending leads, lets say 10 a day.
- Those 2 or 3 people can't get to them for 4-6 hours, meaning the prospective student prob has sent in their info to 3 other schools, of which 1 of those has already reached out and collected info and got them further down the application path.
- Your leads come in Friday at 7pm.. those enrollment peeps at the school are gone. When they come in on Monday, they start working Monday leads and not late Friday/weekend leads. Now your lead is super ass cold and doesn't get reached until Wednesday, if ever.

^^ This shit really happens.

If you don't want to nurture them, at least get full insight every step of the way to each milestone so you know to go back to the school and be like, "why do we have 40% of my leads not getting contacted within 72 hours?" and then demand some kind of change or new deal.

Yeah, that sounds like a lot of work. Thanks for breaking it down. I tried selling insurance leads before in a non-US market and there was poor or non-existent tracking. So, I ended up opening an insurance agency to handle, nurture, and deal directly with carriers after the leads have converted.

Obviously, in higher ed, it is a little different. But I still think nurturing would the better (more frictionless) process, but with a lot of resources to buy/build tracking tech and integrate with schools (assuming they'd even consider that).

What do you think about this other question (below)?

Also, from your experience, what kind of money (estimates are ok) are we talking esp for undergrad & graduate levels- if I found a way to deal directly with the institutions?

Let me know what you

I sold the site and had no immediate use for the network any more.

One thing to consider in my case is one user could request info packages from 5 colleges at once. So one lead = 5 conversions.

They definitely had more than just for-profit institutions but they didn’t always keep their campaigns running while the for-profits always topped up their accounts.

I've looked EducationDynamics up and contacted two of their people on LinkedIn- at least to get a conversation going. Much appreciated, though!