July is an important point to step back and assess the state of your inquiry pipeline. Do you have enough “pre-senior” inquiries? And, more importantly, are they right kind of inquiries that will lead to meeting your goals? By providing decision ready data based on over 1.6 million 2022 inquiries, MARKETview offers unique vision into what decisions you should make next.
Inquiry Source
Some inquiry sources convert down funnel at higher rates than others. In most cycles students who inquire before their senior year (pre-senior inquiries) and originate from a campus visit, from your recruitment travel or from voluntarily sending you their test scores are all more likely to apply and yield than inquiries from other sources. In 2021, there was a significant drop in both applications and deposits from pre-senior inquiries sourced from these categories.
The 2022 inquiry pool is shaping up similarly. While we see an increase in the overall volume of inquiries (up 7% over last year at this point-in-time), these inquiries are coming from sources which yield less efficiently.
This has important implications. If your total inquiry volume is up, but this growth comes from lower yielding sources, do not have a false sense of security about the strength of your pool. And if this is the case, it puts extra pressure on inquiries from high school seniors, typically a lower yielding population.
Stay tuned as we continue to explore this topic over the next several weeks.