How Geo-Analysis Strengthened a Small Private School's Funnel Performance

Facing tighter enrollment pipelines and budgets, Milagro College wanted to adopt a more data-driven approach to enrollment and focus its dollars on the most impactful investments. Milagro wanted clear visibility into which inquiry markets would drive the most benefit to their funnel and needed a partner who could provide that data-driven insight.

Working closely with Milagro’s team, EAB performed an in-depth geo-analysis spanning all stages of Milagro’s enrollment funnel. This included identifying top-performing markets, high-opportunity markets (high volume, weaker yield), and emerging markets (low volume, high conversion).

EAB mapped Milagro’s historical inquiry and enrollment patterns to the ZIP-code level, providing granularity Milagro had not been provided from other vendors. Next, EAB pinpointed best-fit students in key segments, ensuring dollars were allocated to areas seeing enrollment success. With EAB’s guidance, Milagro fine-tuned their inquiry generation strategy. After seeing strong performance in their Appily inquiry-to-application rates, Milagro expanded their partnership expansion to include high-intent Prospect* names.

*Students who are interested in similar institutions who have not yet inquired.

EAB’s transparent, high-touch analysis delivered exactly what Milagro was looking for: actionable intelligence on where to find their best-fit students, how to optimize spend, and what markets held untapped enrollment potential.

After implementing EAB’s data-driven strategy, Milagro saw a 19% increase in the apply-to-admit rate for inquiries coming from Appily, and an 11% increase in yield rate for Appily-connected inquiries. With 45% of their deposits coming from students on the Appily platform, Milagro received deposits from Appily students in nearly 40 states. The geo-analysis also identified new areas for Milagro’s marketing efforts, creating additional opportunities for strategic growth. After EAB’s granular data insight produced results, Milagro redirected a portion of their budget away from other sources to invest more in Appily, demonstrating the institution’s confidence in EAB.