Call 800-516-9571 now to initiate a conversation with InterEd

Precision Retention Management Systems

InterEd's market and client financial analyses show that adult-centered and professional higher education programs are spending too little on retention. The typical institution in our target model would benefit from an investment in retention of an incremental 25% of what it spends on lead generation, enrollment, and pre-matriculation services (the front-end). In practice, such institutions spend a small fraction of this amount. The result is that their average acquisition cost to graduation is significantly higher than necessary.

The above perspective is primarily based on financial considerations. It is generally true that it is smarter (i.e., less expensive narrowly and broadly) to retain an existing customer than to secure a new one. While financial outcomes represent the easiest part of smarter to operationalize, the non-financial benefits of increasing retention often present stronger reasons for taking immediate action. Consider the following generalizations about retention:

Graduating successful learners is a university's core business.
Employee morale (faculty, staff, administrators) is lowest in low-retention environments.
Costs of retention are a fraction of the costs of acquisition.
(Recall that acquisition costs money until past the point of break-even; thus retention is the only activity that produces a positive margin.)
Retained students are satisfied and refer with a strong positive ratio.
Referred enrollments are the least expensive and have the highest retention rates.
Non-retained students are dissatisfied and refer negatively.
High graduation rates confer value with accrediting and licensing bodies.

Of course, there is more to increasing retention than throwing money at the challenge. What to do, and when and how to do it, account for more variance in outcomes than do raw expenditures. InterEd develops the right system for your institution through a hands-on, periodically onsite engagement. Engagements span 9 to 12 months and involve engineering or re-engineering some or all aspects of risk definitions, information acquisition nodes, information interpretation and management, intervention systems and triaging methods, and results management. Infrastructure development includes key role and proficiency definitions, performance standards and metrics, retention counselor compensation plans, knowledge infrastructure and reporting, and executive management systems.

The result of this relationship with InterEd is a best-in-class retention management system that pays for itself with at least 2:1 positive leverage (typically much more) in financial terms alone. Equally important, gaining precise control over retention variables leads to more accurate budgets and more precisely defined service quality.

Variables in this engagement are adapted to conform efficiently to your current staffing capabilities and include the following:

The amount of time spent onsite versus managing processes virtually,
The nature and scope of back-office work done by InterEd (cf. guided by InterEd but executed by through your resources), and
The depth of the engagement process (i.e., leading development teams cf. providing executive guidance and coaching).

There are no services quite like InterEd's hands-on engagements. Your colleagues will tell you how they come to see our team as valued members of their team. They will explain how their burden is lightened and their outcomes are assured. They may tell you the feelings they experience when making their first executive announcement of sharply increased retention, learner satisfaction, and referral. We do our best to ensure that outcome.