Referral Source Definitions Graduate Admissions Updated 4/1/11 Scope: Tracking students has grown increasingly difficult with varied source codes and a wealth of responses to “How did you hear about us.” This document herein attempts to clarify a means to appropriately track referring sources for student prospects. Tracking Field Definitions: Tracking of students occurs in one of three ways: • Created Source Code ID This ID is created automatically if a student enters the system via an inquiry page or an automatic import. This ID can also be generated manually by users who input new records based on the source of the inquiry. This is a required field during manual entry. • How Did You Hear of Us This field is populated by a student answer to the question on an interest page or an application. If provided to a UNH user entering new prospects, this information can be entered manually; however, it should never be assumed if not clear from the prospect and should thus be left empty. This field includes specific referral sources such as GradSchools.com, Facebook, Newspaper Ad, Friend/Family/Alumni, and others. It can be expanded with specific source names if requested. • Referral Source This field is populated by a series of bulk edits in the system that compiles data from both the Created Source Code ID and How Did You Hear of Us attributes. This attribute serves as a means of categorizing student data.
This is a sample referral source definition policy that I created for the University of New Haven. This policy was referenced in my presentation, "Sizing Up a Monumental Task: Building your Recruitment Funnel and Measuring the Flow," at the 2011 NAGAP Annual Conference.
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Referral Source Definitions
Graduate Admissions
Updated 4/1/11
Scope: Tracking students has grown increasingly difficult with varied
source codes and a wealth of responses to “How did you hear
about us.” This document herein attempts to clarify a means to
appropriately track referring sources for student prospects.
Tracking
Field
Definitions:
Tracking of students occurs in one of three ways:
• Created Source Code ID
This ID is created automatically if a student enters the
system via an inquiry page or an automatic import. This ID
can also be generated manually by users who input new
records based on the source of the inquiry. This is a
required field during manual entry.
• How Did You Hear of Us
This field is populated by a student answer to the question
on an interest page or an application. If provided to a UNH
user entering new prospects, this information can be
entered manually; however, it should never be assumed if
not clear from the prospect and should thus be left empty.
This field includes specific referral sources such as
GradSchools.com, Facebook, Newspaper Ad,
Friend/Family/Alumni, and others. It can be expanded with
specific source names if requested.
• Referral Source
This field is populated by a series of bulk edits in the
system that compiles data from both the Created Source
Code ID and How Did You Hear of Us attributes. This
attribute serves as a means of categorizing student data.
This field includes sources such as Internet, Social
Networks, Print or Web-Based Guides, Word of Mouth, and
more.
Tracking
Issues:
Prior to the establishment of the new “Referral Source” attribute,
determining the source of a student record for ROI strategy was
extremely difficult as users would have to use both “Created
Source Code ID” and “How Did You Hear of Us” fields for reporting
purposes. The added “Referral Source” attribute allows us to make
strategic decisions on how to more appropriately track students.
New Tracking
Process:
Students and users will continue to use the “Created Source Code
ID” field and populate the “How Did You Hear of Us” fields when
student answers are provided. The new process involves two key
cornerstone initiatives:
• The “How Did You Hear of Us” attribute will become a
central repository for all referral source codes. Student-
provided answers combined with created source code ID
values will give us a comprehensive list of detailed source
codes. These source codes can be as detailed as a specific
newspaper title, website, or directory name.
• The “Referral Source” attribute will serve as a means to
categorize all of our sources for reporting purposes. For
example, GradSchools.com, GraduateGuide.com, and
Petersons.com will all be listed as “Print or Web-Based
Directory.”
How this is all
accomplished:
Through a series of bulk edits set up in the system, the system will
look every morning for students with specific values in both the
“How Did You Hear of Us” and “Created Source Code ID” attributes
and perform the appropriate edits to each student record. The
“Created Source Code ID” will never change; the “How Did You
Hear of Us” attribute will change only if the question is empty.
Please refer to the source diagrams on the attached addendum
for details on how sources will be reflected in the “Referral
Source” attribute.
What this
means to you:
You can now run a detailed report of all sources for a given
student pool (How Did You Hear of Us attribute) or report on
students using a condensed list of referral source categories
(Referral Source attribute). The goal of this initiative is to provide
you with useful data to make informed strategic decisions on how
to best allocate resources to build our prospect pool.
Addendum: Referral Source Input Maps
I. Print or Web-Based Directories
Print or Web-Based Directories
Peterson's Guide
Petersons.com
Graduate School Guide
GraduateGuide.
com
GradSchools.com
Gradview.comHotCoursesAbro
ad.com
Study in the USA
College.us.com
International Hobsons Leads
Guidebook/Magazine
II. Word of Mouth
III. Purchased Lists
Word of
Mouth
Employer
Education Consultant
Guidance Counselor
Coach
Educational Agent
Friend/Relative/Alum
Faculty Referral
Purchased Lists
GMAT Search Names
GRE Search Names
International Search Names
International Hobsons
Leads
IV. Fair/Expo/Tour
V. Social Networks
Fair/Expo/Tour
Corporate/Employer Visit
College Fair
Education Fair
Social Networks
Facebook
EMT Facebook
AppOrkut
Twitter
VI. Internet
VII. Other
*Note: Television is included because we do not regularly utilize
television advertising. When we begin to use it again, we can create a
separate category. The Newspaper/Radio/TV Ad category is old and
does not provided specific data to categorize it specifically with
newspaper, radio, or TV. All new prospects are sourced more