Seton Hall Monitors Recruitment Dollars with Coremetrics

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 09/30/08

Seton Hall University is using Coremetrics to better track its investment in recruitment efforts. The Web-based service, which is primarily used by retailers, captures behavioral data to provide the university with insights on how to allocate marketing dollars across campaigns and channels.

"Our recruitment cycle is a long one, often taking as much as 18 to 36 months from the initial inquiry to enrollment in classes," said Robert Brosnan, director of Web and digital communications. "During the application process, we interact with prospective students through a variety of online and offline channels. Coremetrics gives us one place to go to get all the data we need and to look at our marketing efforts from a holistic perspective. We've learned some surprising things that would have been impossible to discover without the ability to attribute conversion to multiple channels. Our analysis showed, for example, that natural search plays a more significant role than expected deep into the recruitment cycle. As a result of this insight, we have made changes to our online application process and are rethinking our paid and natural search strategies."

The marketing data is used to measure the impact of both online and offline influences, including print advertising, direct mail and college recruitment fairs, for the school, which has 10,000 students.