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The education vertical has gotten to the point where the high demand for leads is negatively affecting lead quality. Sources that are not able to compete in the high quality lead generation channels begin to subject themselves to questionable marketing tactics.
Case in point.
Lead aggregators may very well know that they have an affiliate pointing traffic to their pages from Unemployment site, but I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they don’t. At the time of this article unemployment.info ‘s reg path directed users to an aggregators landing page. You can view the site here
While one could argue that people who are unemployed would be good prospects to go back to school, it simply is not the case for obvious reasons – they likely can’t afford the high price of for-profit schools. Nevertheless, these types of marketing tactics are permeating legitimate marketing campaigns without notice.
Another gem found the other day was one where traffic was being pointed to an ITT Tech page via a Welfare page.
After providing information to apply for Welfare they are presented with the offer.
Again, while one could argue that people looking to collect Welfare would be good prospects for schools, it is likely not the case. Ultimately, it is up to the advertiser to determine whether or not these tactics are appropriate for their needs. In my opinion, they aren’t helping many of the issues that the for-profit space is facing these days. I personally think these tactics should be avoided for those reasons. Let me know what you think.
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13 Comments
Not only are these tactics distasteful, they violate various Title IV and regulatory regulations.
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Jason Reply:
August 18th, 2011 at 10:17 am
What is distasteful about giving people information about returning to school and pursuing their dreams. For you to categorize unemployed people as all broke is discriminatory and prejudice. Very convenient how you leave off the education disclaimers off the pictures..then try to say this violates regulations. Not to mention your article gives no statistics on unemployed education leads..only your biased discriminatory ideas about americans in between jobs.
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Lead Critic Reply:
August 18th, 2011 at 11:34 am
HI Jason,
Here is the link to the site so you and others can read the disclaimers
http://www.unemployment.info
They were not left of intentionally.
Do you have statistics showing conversions from sites like these?
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Lead Critic Reply:
August 19th, 2011 at 10:27 am
By the way, the first comment above that you are responding too was not made by me, but rather a reader that used “lead critic response” as his name. That has been changed for clarity.
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Yes I do and surprisingly for you the enrollment rate is right on industry. The fact that you do not have these statistics and you are choosing to bash a class of people as hopeless and worthless to market is rather disturbing. Reinventing yourself is the American dream..and thankfully in this country there are resources available to help people follow these dream regardless of income level.
I would encourage you to take down this article as it is offensive, ignorant, irresponsible. written without any analytical support, and will only hurt those seeking opportunity to find new careers and education.
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Lead Critic Reply:
August 18th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Hi Jason,
First, I have data as well and it proves exactly the opposite. In fact, leads coming from sites like this are the worst I have ever seen.
Secondly, I am not bashing anyone. I am saying that leads coming from co-reg sites just like the ones above are not optimal for For-Profit schools that can cost up to $1500 a month to attend and that also struggle with acquiring students that are not paying back their loans. No one is saying that these people are not good candidates for going back to school in general. Going back to school would be a great option, but are they good candidates for becoming a student at a for-profit institution, not likely. Are co-reg sites in general any good for driving quality leads? That depends on the vertical, but for EDU, I would say no.
This is not about people looking for an education or a new opportunity. It is simply about the process in which people find those pages. A co-reg site, let alone one that is advertising to a group of people that are not likely to afford the options they are presented with is not going to be fruitful. If you want to continue to support this channel, by all means, go for it.
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Jason,
Fighting for these pages in the manner that you are leads me to believe you must be the publisher of one of them? If so, I would say good job in finding a very low CPC’s and arbitraging it through a co-reg path and into a high priced EDU lead. Unfortunately, like most co-reg stuff the quality only reflects co-reg traffic, nothing else.
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I agree with you both. Coreg sites have horrible quality because they are based upon incentive to register. However the sites you displayed are not coreg…There is no ipad being given away to sign up for offers..These sites are called path sites..and are staistically significant…Your article is flawed because your stats are based upon coreg statistics.
I take offense of you classifying unemployed people as a helpless group. I don’t think the lead critic has a right to speak on behalf of these people..trying to say they are all poor and have no chance of succeding in going back to school is tasteless. Are you some kind of bigot?
I will be at ASE this weekend doing a presentation on my path technology software. If you would like to continue this conversation face to face that would be great.
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Lead Critic Reply:
August 19th, 2011 at 9:14 am
Jason,
I am not classifying unemployed people as a helpless group nor am I speaking on their behalf. At this point you are making things up to try and support your argument. I am saying that leads from sites like the two mentioned above do not convert as well as other channels. Obviously, not as articulated as well I wanted.
You would be better off continuing your argument that these leads enroll at an equivalent rate compared to other channels, than trying to make this personal. I can appreciate your position, but I will continue to respectfully disagree that this is not an optimal channel for quality leads. I believe this because I have first hand stats on leads from sites just like yours above.
You being experienced in the industry should know that co-reg sites are not all incentivized. These are not completely in line with your traditional co-reg sites, but they are not far off. When a user is on path to sign up for one thing and then asked about multiple other options through their path, its co-reg. And let me say, there is nothing wrong with co-reg, but when it is not expected and the CPL’s are not inline with quality then there is obviously a problem.
Anyway, if the quality supports the continuation of your efforts then this whole article is meaningless and you will have schools knocking on your door for leads. Do you work with any schools directly or just through affiliate networks?
I would love to meet and discuss my position with you, but I will not be attending Affiliate Summit. Feel free to reach out to me via the contact form and we can exchange phone numbers.
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Jason has some good points, specifically about unemployed not necessarily unable to afford these schools. There are lots of people who are employed that wouldn’t be able to afford the schools too. Without the data, it’d be hard to know for sure, but I would assume those looking for information about unemployment are more recently unemeployed and therefore might be interested in looking to either get a degree or make a career change. $1500 a month sounds like a lot, but when you compare it to the costs of other types of colleges, it is rather low (excluding some state schools). If anyone has any more data, it’d be great to cite in the article.
As for welfare site, to me at least, that seems much less targeted but if the statement about financial aid is actually true, then it could be opportunity for those who may not otherwise be able to afford it.
Big Disclaimer: I’m not involved in this industry so take what I’m saying with a bucket of salt.
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Lead Critic Reply:
August 19th, 2011 at 10:15 am
Agreed, he does and I was quick to make that point and did not support it with other arguments.
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The lead quality suffers because the leads are being tricked. I could see lots of people going to that unemployment site and filling out the forms because they think that’s what they need to do to get unemployment benefits.
We had an affiliate a while back where every lead they sent said this when called, “What? I didn’t ask about college, I was filling out a job application” because of similar path trickery used.
And the lead type generated by the above paths is less than desirable to the schools. An unemployed person interested in medical records is going to qualify for 100% financial aid and hurt the schools 90/10 ratio. Someone interested in nursing or dental will not get enough Federal financial aid to cover the costs of their schooling which means out of pocket funds which increases the 10 money.
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Ads like this are part of the reason the government is so heavily regulating higher education. Lead providers don’t seem to understand schools DO NOT want leads from sites like this. These are the students who usually, there are always a few exceptions, the enrollment team spends a lot of time enrolling, the student scrapes together the application fee (if there is one), they enroll for the school and apply for the full amount of financial aid and usually get accepted for a PELL grant, the student takes a few weeks of one class and drops. They have to pay for the full tuition, book, and fees they student keeps the rest of the financial aid and grant money and never pays back the government while the government goes after their pay months or years later.
Lead buyers at the schools are usually too incompetent to know where they’re being advertised, yet they and the school they work for thinks they’re brilliant, and the lead buyers are generating so many leads they cannot keep track of where they’re being advertised. Also, this example I wrote above, this person would count as an enrollment for the lead buyer, school and lead provider. Although the cost put into generating the lead and enrolling them cost more than the student actually paid the school. This industry needs an overhaul to get control, it’s a churn and burn machine.
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