Are they really “branded leads”? Better yet; Are “branded leads” really exclusive?

The EDU space is different then any other vertical slightly different then other verticals in how leads are captured. I am tempted to cross out the whole sentence and say that it is no different then any other vertical, but I will give the vertical a little credit and say it has a few differences. The key difference is the attention that lead buyers give to “branded leads”. Even though directories have been around in other verticals of ages, like the mortgage vertical, the attention to buying branded leads has never been so strong.

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It is no secret that the for-profit education vertical is seeing some very nice growth on both the supply and demand side of the lead gen table. A few weeks ago the guys at Sparkroom commented on the excellent growth that DeVry currently realizing and this week the Apollo Group is expected to release their earnings reports as well. If they meet the streets expectations they will post 25.9% YOY growth in enrollments, which would be almost 6% more then DeVry posted just weeks ago.

The growth stems from a number of factors, but there are two that clearly stand out from the rest. The first being the increased access to the Internet. The more people have access to the Internet inside their homes the more likely they are going to use it for continuing education. There is an obvious convenience factor at play. Couple that with the increase in corporate layoffs, increased unemployment rate and fewer jobs, more and more people are going back to school. The for-profit edu space is benefiting from being a counter cyclical to a declining economy. Cleary two very obvious factors.

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Tree.com continues its goal of interstellar domination with yet another acquisition. These very calculated acquisitions, while on the surface are not the biggest moves you will see by a company the size of Tree.com, but should be considered Chess moves. These acquisitions are pieces to the big puzzle that Doug Lebda touched on at last years Targus Lead Quality Summit, (which is a must attend) about providing a single source for all life’s biggest decisions. And in these times continuing education is an important decision people are making everyday.

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