Maximising school enrolment with a robust marketing strategy

How can schools adapt and reassess their marketing efforts to promote growth, in the light of the introduction of VAT on school fees?

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The imposition of VAT on school fees is set to disrupt the market, at least in the short term. Many parents will face bewildering situations as their children’s schools adopt different pricing strategies, such as passing on the full VAT plus annual fee increases, choosing to absorb the tax, phasing it over time, offsetting the increase through targeted bursaries with potentially complex eligibility requirements, and much more. 

The market will eventually settle, but meanwhile schools must survive and thrive through the transition. For some schools, it will be an opportunity to grow and to further strengthen their reputation, but for others it will be a challenge to navigate the turbulence. 

Many of these schools will also take this as an opportunity to reassess their marketing funnel. Are we attracting interest from the right demographic? Are we effectively converting them from interest through to enrolled students at the start of the term? Even a small improvement in the amount of filled school spaces can have a significant boost to a school’s finances. 

Defining your priorities

Benchmarking your school’s performance and conversion rates against your chosen competitors at each step of the admissions process provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your recruitment strategy. It empowers the leadership team to understand where they should focus their efforts to improve or secure their conversion rates. 

Our Data Navigator for schools is the sophisticated, yet simple industry benchmarking tool that is provided free to UK members of the Independent Schools’ Bursars Association (ISBA). It provides this objective insight across a simple pipeline: 

Not all stages are relevant or required for all schools and age groups, and some schools may have slight differences in their pipeline, but by standardising the terms the tool can provide comparable numbers. 

Key insights from our Data Navigator tool 

Each school is different and there isn’t one answer that works for all. This is why the ability to select and customise your own group of schools for comparison is crucial. 

Using the Data Navigator benchmark information, we have collected some general insights.

_{Figure 1: Our Data Navigator tool gives you the ability to select your own benchmarking group across multiple dimensions, subject to strict commercial confidentiality requirements.}

Sixth form admissions have the greatest variability across the entire pipeline and the lowest overall conversions, with a median of 6.9 enquiries for each pupil who joins. This can partly be explained by selection, but it is a good benchmark to compare. 

For senior and sixth form, most schools need to extend about 2 offers for each new starter, but this can vary significantly with many requiring as many as 4 or 5 offers for each starter. For junior, it is 1.3 with much less variability. This will be a number to watch carefully as VAT is implemented. 

School visits are important for many prospective families and key events in the school diary. Junior and senior schools have the greatest variability of visits to applications received.  

A high number is not necessarily bad – perhaps the school is in a very competitive area, or you need to instil realism in prospective parents – but it is critical to understand the reasons for your school’s data and how you compare with others. 

By minimising the ‘leakage’ of potential students at each stage of the admissions process, schools can sustain and grow their pupil numbers effectively. 

Understanding your customers to boost enrolment 

Our recent analysis using Data Navigator highlights where potential customers tend to drop out of the journey – understanding this drop-off is essential for focusing your marketing efforts more effectively. 

On average, schools need 150 parental enquiries to receive 100 visits. Out of those 100 visits, only around 80 results in applications. This means just over half of the parents who enquire will apply, indicating that schools should enhance their efforts in the early stages of the customer journey. 

From application submission to offers being made, the conversion rate averages around 100% with only a minor drop-off. This slight decrease likely occurs when schools do not offer places to all applicants, such as when they fail to meet the required grades. 

However, out of the 80 families who apply only about 50 accept and enrol, resulting in almost a 40% drop-out rate – the highest across all stages of the admissions process. This equates to just one-third of the initial 150 families who enquired. Improving marketing efforts at this stage could provide significant benefits for schools, reducing assessment time and costs by needing fewer applications to achieve the same number of new pupils. 

Schools have two options to boost pupil enrolment. They can either: 

1. Increase the number of enquiries at the beginning of the customer journey. 
2. Identify and address the key drop-off points along the customer journey. 

By implementing one of these approaches, your school can refine its recruitment marketing strategy to improve conversion rates and better attract and retain pupils, promising long-term success in today’s competitive education market.

In short, a typical school using our Data Navigator tool, for every 100 initial enquiries receives:

• 67 campus visits
• 53 student sign-ups
• 33 actual enrolments

Ideally, a reasonable target to improve these figures would be for every 100 enquiries:

• 73 campus visits
• 62 student sign-ups
• 43 actual enrolments

Utilising Data Navigator to analyse conversions 

How do you determine your conversion rates and assess their feasibility? While an ideal conversion rate would be as close to a 100% conversion rate as possible, this is often unrealistic, particularly in the early stages such as moving from awareness to interest. 

Analysing your customer journey helps you identify where your conversion rates fall below the average for your chosen benchmark. This insight allows you to concentrate your marketing efforts on these specific areas, maximising your impact and improving the number of pupils accepting places at your school. 

The marketing page in Data Navigator offers valuable features in the ‘attractions' section, enabling you to examine conversion rates between stages. The marketing and attraction rates chart allows users to analyse their conversion rates at different stages of the admissions process. Users can also view rates for their entire school or specific age groups, such as junior or senior students.  

Like all charts in Data Navigator, this one utilises the data submitted by all schools to build a benchmark for comparing your school’s metrics. You can adjust this benchmark to compare your metrics with schools that have specific characteristics to yours, such as similar pupil numbers and location. 

How we can help

We have developed our smart, sophisticated Data Navigator tool in partnership with ISBA.  

Your first step to gain access is to complete the data capture. As soon as you submit your data, you will receive free access to core benchmarking with the Data Navigator app.  

If you would like to see a demonstration or need any further help, please contact our helpful and friendly team at DataNavigator@barnett.waddingham.co.uk