There’s a sentence shape that has become so common in brand copy that it’s losing its distinction. “We want to generate more leads” is something you hear all the time in university marketing. 

But quite often, when you dig into what that actually means, what we really want is more Open Day bookings. There’s an important difference between the two. 

An Open Day booking isn’t really a lead. By that point, we’re asking someone to choose a date, give us their details, potentially travel a significant distance and give up a good chunk of their Saturday to visit us. That’s quite a big commitment, especially for someone who might still be considering a long list of universities.  

It’s also an incredibly valuable one. Last year…

Getting a prospective student onto campus gives us an opportunity that an ad, landing page or prospectus never really can. They can see the facilities, meet academics and current students, explore the city and, hopefully, start to picture themselves actually studying there.  

So, ultimately, the Open Day registration is the outcome we want, but the lead won’t always get us there alone. 

What gets lost when we talk about lead generation in HE is that the value isn’t really in collection the email address.  

It’s in what we can do with it to create further opportunities for increased engagement, connection and, eventually, commitment. 

Think about where we’re reaching them 

Imagine a 17-year-old scrolling through TikTok or Instagram. They’re probably not thinking particularly deeply about university at that exact moment, but then an advert appears asking them to book an Open Day. 

We’ve gone from them scrolling TikTok to asking them to commit to visiting a university in the space of a few seconds. 

Some will book, particularly those who already know the university, are actively considering it or have already decided they want to visit, but there’s also going to be a much bigger audience who might be interested, just not interested enough yet to make that commitment. 

That’s why I think we need to be careful about expecting Open Day advertising, particularly on paid social, to always generate an immediate booking. Sometimes its job is simply to make sure a prospective student knows there’s an Open Day coming up, when it is and why they might want to go. 

We then need to give them more reasons to actually get there. 

This is where lead generation comes in 

It’s a problem that comes up every year in Open Day campaigns, but the answer lies outside the HE sector. 

Sign up for 10% off. Join the waitlist. Get priority access. Enter your email to be the first to know when something launches. 

They’re offering something of value in return for a relatively small commitment from the customer. Obviously, I’m not suggesting universities start offering 10% off tuition fees for an email address, but I do think we could be much more creative with the value exchange. 

A virtual tour is an obvious example (shoutout, Vepple). Let someone explore the campus from their bedroom and, if they engage with it, you have a very natural reason to follow up and encourage them to come and see it for themselves. 

Or how about a “What course should you study?” quiz? Ask about their interests, favourite subjects and what they might want to do in the future, then give them some personalised recommendations at the end. If they want to hear more about those courses, they can leave their details. 

You could even build a mini-game. It doesn’t necessarily need to be directly related to applying to university. If it’s entertaining enough for someone to interact with, and there’s a genuine reason for them to leave their details as part of it, you’ve created another way into the conversation. 

One idea I particularly like would be giving them something they can redeem when they eventually visit. Complete something online, download a digital pass or sign up for something useful, then tell them to bring it along to the Open Day and find someone on campus to collect a free university T-shirt or teddy bear. 

There are a couple of reasons I like this. Firstly, the value exchange itself gives them another little reason to actually turn up to the Open Day – but there’s also some longevity to it. 

They take the T-shirt or teddy bear home with them. It sits in their bedroom, they wear it, their friends see it and it potentially stays around for months while they’re still weighing up their university choices. 

Now compare that with another prospectus that gets put in a bag at the Open Day and might never be looked at again… You’ve used the initial lead generation activity to encourage the visit, but you’ve also left them with something physical that keeps the university in mind afterwards. 

Getting the lead is only useful if we do something with it 

This is probably the most important bit. If someone gives us their details and we put them into a generic newsletter journey, we haven’t really gained much. 

If they’ve completed a quiz and told us they’re interested in Psychology, we know something genuinely useful about them. We can show them the Psychology facilities, introduce them to current students, tell them more about what they’ll actually study and show them where graduates have ended up. 

Just as importantly, they’ve learned something interesting about themselves – provided by you. A prospective student being given some inspiration behind which course they should study might just be the thing which makes them remember you when crunch time comes around. 

Then, when the next Open Day comes around, invite them to visit and experience those things for themselves makes a lot more sense. 

The same applies to someone who has taken a virtual tour. They’ve already shown an interest in the campus, so encouraging them to come and see it properly is a fairly obvious next step. 

That’s what I think sometimes gets lost when we talk about lead generation in HE. The value isn’t really in collecting the email address. It’s in what we can do with it afterwards. 

Open Day bookings should still be the goal 

None of this is to say we should stop running Open Day campaigns. There are plenty of prospective students who are already at the point where they’re ready to book, and we absolutely want to make that as easy as possible – but we probably shouldn’t judge every channel exclusively on whether someone sees an advert and immediately registers. 

That’s particularly true of TikTok and Instagram, where we’re often reaching students well before they’ve narrowed down the universities they’re seriously considering. 

For those students, perhaps the job of paid social isn’t always to generate the Open Day booking there and then. It might be to generate the initial interest, capture that interest in a useful way and give us the opportunity to build on it. 

The Open Day is still where we ultimately want to get them, we just need to give ourselves more opportunities to get them there.