double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

We at DoublePositive have gotten to know the online education space really well these past few months.  What we’ve come to find is that online education is truly a unique field: here is a phenomenon that will change the way people think about higher education forever. With the shift from strictly-traditional to online universities, study after study proves that the market will only grow in the coming years. 

The results of the latest study done by EducationDynamics, an interactive marketing firm, echoes the same sentiment about the growing importance of qualified lead generation for enrollment activities in online education.  Out of nearly 100 not-for-profit higher education marketers surveyed at an AMA conference, 42% credit online lead generation as the best way to obtain qualified leads of potential students. However, the market is still in its earliest stage of development, with 65% of marketers contributing only 20% of their budgets to lead generation.  But the outlook is promising: half of the respondents plan on increasing their commitment to online marketing in 2008.

This information is encouraging and not at all surprising. After all, it takes time for the market to adopt new development in technology, and it looks like 2008 will be the year where all education marketers see the pivotal role that effective online lead generation will have in increasing ROI and decreasing the cost per student acquisition.