Monitoring metrics is essential to evaluate the performance of an educational institution. However, it is neither possible nor productive to measure everything and, therefore, the question arises: do you know the most relevant metrics for a higher education institution?
Knowing the metrics for higher education institutions is important for you to direct your time and resources in collecting information that is really useful for your goals.
With that in mind, we made this post presenting metrics that can help any higher education institution to develop more accurate strategies to achieve ever better results.
What you will see in the post:
- Why tracking metrics is important;
- Higher education metrics: which ones are most relevant?
- How can software help you?
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Why tracking metrics is important
Metrics, as well as the performance indicators that derive from them, are directly related to the goals and objectives established for an educational institution.
Through them, it is possible to quantify the work done to attract students, and then evaluate its effectiveness. From this, it is easier to improve strategies and make safer decisions aimed at achieving the objectives of the higher education institution.
Higher education metrics: which ones are most relevant?
There are different metrics for educational institutions and determining which ones to monitor is something that, as already indicated, must be done based on the objectives of the institution itself.
In other words, simply copying what another higher education institution measures might not be ideal. However, there are some metrics that can serve as a basis for any institution, and they are the ones we are going to talk about now!
Return on investment (ROI)
The return on investment (ROI) is the metric that shows the value that the institution got from a certain action or campaign.
For example, it is possible to check how much your educational institution spent to activate a new student attraction strategy and compare this value to that obtained with the enrollment of these new students. Thus, it is discovered how much was collected with this campaign.
Read too:
- 4 educational marketing strategies for colleges
- O what is lead scoring in educational marketing?
- What is the buyer’s journey in the educational market?
Acquisition cost per student
The acquisition cost per student is related to the cost that each enrolled student represents, in relation to the amount spent during the capture campaign and the enrollment numbers.
To arrive at this measure, one must consider all the investment made for the campaign (marketing team, software, discounts, etc.), from the moment of activation until closing, with confirmation of enrollments.
Now, you should know that your acquisition cost per student is not necessarily a real number! That's because, here at 4revops we have already identified that within the intake rule, the person who enrolls in your institution today may be impacted by their actions in the last 3 or 4 years.
So yes, it is important to define this number per campaign, but it is also necessary to take into account the number of potential students that are being impacted, but that can convert just a few years from now.
Student lifetime value
The lifetime value of the learner (or lifetime value) is the value that each student generates throughout their relationship with the educational institution.
In other words, this is a metric that allows you to project how much profit a student will generate from enrolling to completing the course.
Lead-to-student conversion rate
By itself, the conversion rate of leads is one of the important metrics of higher education. But, it may be even more interesting to direct this measurement to be able to identify how much time is needed to qualify the institution's leads and, then, better plan your lead capture and nurturing campaigns.
Remember that in item 2 we talked about the time it takes for leads to convert? So, accompanying him from the first interaction with your content until the moment he actually becomes a customer is essential to identify possible bottlenecks in communication and correct these bottlenecks, improving results.
Presence in the classroom
Just as important as campaign tracking metrics is the rate of students attending your institution's classes.
This item is one of the most important when we talk about increasing the dropout rate, since one of the factors that can signal the departure of a student from your institution is the frequency with which he is absent!
It is a relatively simple indicator to monitor, but extremely important. And often, educational institutions do not give due attention to this item.
Here are some impacts that excessive student absence can cause:
- Difficulty keeping up with the class;
- Difficulty socializing;
- Difficulty in keeping up with the syllabus;
- Difficulty in keeping informed about events at the institution;
- Difficulty generating connection with the environment.
In other words: this indicator is one of the keys that will allow you to act in advance in some way to retain this student and prevent him from leaving the institution.
Dropout rate
One more metric that must be monitored in any way: the evasion rate. Having a high dropout rate is a strong indicator that something may be wrong with your institution.
It is very important to look for ways to understand the reasons that led students to leave your institution so that you can act preventively and avoid future dropouts for this same reason.
How can software help you?
Even when the institution understands the importance of carefully selecting the metrics it wants to monitor, the volume of data to be collected and analyzed is high. And that makes the process laborious and prone to errors that compromise the results.
Relying on the help of technology is an alternative that makes the difference, as it makes the collection more agile and also eliminates failures and difficulties that tend to be common in the manual process.
Did you like the post? Enjoy and meet 5 tools to monitor educational marketing performance!
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