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The true costs of building an in-house enrollment marketing team

September 16, 2024, By Val Fox, Senior Director and Principal, Adult Learner Recruitment

Topic

Marketing and Enrollment

Tag

Graduate enrollment now represents nearly 50% of net tuition revenue, and 100% of president and provosts agree that graduate enrollment is a priority. So it’s no surprise that university leaders are allocating more resources to enrollment marketing aimed at growing adult-serving programs. But how they’re doing it varies widely.

Given that graduate enrollment marketing is vastly different from marketing designed to attract undergraduate students, many institutions choose to outsource full-funnel lead generation. Other institutions remain committed to supporting these efforts in-house. If your institution is exploring how much it would actually cost to expand your adult marketing without outside support, here are a few things to keep in mind.

Costs of Ramping Up In-House Graduate Enrollment Marketing

Graduate enrollment marketing teams look different than undergraduate enrollment marketing teams for one key reason: a ready-to-rent, addressable audience list for adult learners does not exist.

The journey that adult learners take to enrollment is less linear and far more complicated than typical undergraduate students who are coming directly from high school. Considering that 80% of adult learners are now unknown to an institution before they apply, it is crucial for institutions to tap into a diverse range of sources to identify right-fit prospects.

Critical (and often new to your organization) roles include: 1) an SEO strategist to optimize program pages and web content to attract stealth prospects, 2) paid search specialists to ensure your programs’ ads are featured in search results, and 3) Slate/CRM managers who have the dedicated capacity to build responsive and supportive campaigns that address prospects’ needs over their increasingly long decision cycle, to name a few.

While hiring a few generalists may seem appealing, they often won’t have the technological or market expertise to perform at the high level that is necessary to be successful, nor the bandwidth to do (or learn) it all. Here are the typical roles you’ll want to hire for, with average salary bands*.

Senior Marketing Manager/Director of Marketing: $104,451
Creative Director: $113,823
Content Strategist: $78,039
SEO Strategist: $73,409
Copywriter: $66,214
Digital Media Specialist: $59,159
Paid Search Specialist: 74,111
Website Manager $73,009
Slate/CRM Manager $93,934
Project Manager $89,054

*Indeed.com reported average annual salaries in the U.S. based on August 2024 job postings

Before benefits, you can expect to spend approximately $720,752/year in salaries for these key roles, and approximately $936,978 with benefits. And of course, there is no guarantee that graduate leaders can fully staff their enrollment teams given low unemployment, competitive salaries for these roles from industry, etc.

68%

of surveyed graduate enrollment leaders indicated they have one of more unfilled positions in their department (Sept 2022)

Opportunity Cost of Underinvesting in Graduate Enrollment Marketing

Given the current budget climate, many institutions don’t have the resources to hire the necessary marketing staff in-house. If your institution opts not to staff up significantly, it’s important to consider the opportunity cost of that approach.

Use the following framework to identify and factor in the opportunity cost of two alternatives to building an in-house graduate enrollment team. How do your enrollment gains and your subsequent return-on-investment with limited in-house staff and associated costs compare to these alternative scenarios?

Scenario 1: Organic growth with no/low marketing resources: Overall, four-year institutions across the U.S. have had annual enrollment growth rates of 0.6% in 2023.

Scenario 2: Outsourcing to external enrollment marketing partners like EAB’s Adult Learner Recruitment, who should be able to share the annual growth rates they deliver to partners and help you project a return on investment. Graduate schools who partner with EAB see an average 6:1 return on their investment.

+18%

average enrollment growth for first year graduate partners with EAB

Building a high-functioning enrollment marketing operation that performs across all the key functional areas is a significant investment. If you’re committed to building an in-house enrollment marketing operation that can both scale and expand from generalist marketing skills (like content creation and email production) to the specialized skills you’ll need to succeed (like SEO, web analytics and digital media buying), you’ll need to be aware of all associated costs to make informed decisions.