The study aims to determine whether or not some schools can pass the lead management test. They surveyed 4 distinct areas in the lead management process and assigned a letter grade for each. The areas included Speed-to-Call, Phone Attempts, Speed-to-Email, and Email-Attempts.

Key findings from the survey:

• 40% of schools failed to make their all-important first call attempt within 24 hours of receiving the inquiry
• 33.3% of institutions took an average of more than 5 hours to send their first email
• 76.6% of institutions in the study failed to send an appropriate number of emails

Schools in the study averaged more than 16 call attempts, with more than 30% making 10 calls more than the optimal number of 6.

4 schools made an average of more than 30 call attempts per lead.

There were 28 schools included in the report and not a single one scored higher than a B-. So what does this mean for EDU lead generation?

Leads360’s research reveals the significance of swift and persistent prospect follow-up for higher education institutions. As a leader in the education lead generation space, Tightrope Interactive is always working to successfully recruit qualified students, but clearly, the follow-up process from the schools could be greatly improved.

How do you think higher education institutions could optimize the admissions process?

On its official company blog, Google+ wrote about the 99 improvements that have been made to the product since launching. Google’s Vic Gundotra said, “We’re ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open signups.”

Today’s update also comes with big improvements to Google+ Hangouts, which includes the ability to use them on Android devices (version 2.3 and higher). Also included is a search feature, which is somewhat of a hybrid of content shared on Google+ and results from the web.

When the service first launched in July, Google+ attracted over 20 million visitors in its first month. However, the service has lost some of its luster since then, with controversy surrounding branded pages. Now that Google+ is open to everyone, we’re all eager to see what this service will do to the web.

Certainly Google+ will eventually change the web marketing world as we know it.  Since this is Google’s own product, they will rank social tick marks using the “+1″ Button over those coming from Twitter, Facebook and social bookmarking. This will likely impact organic search results, as web pages with the most +1′s will probably populate earlier on Google search results.

What kind of impact do you think Google+ will have on the marketing world?

Over the Edge is an adrenaline pumping fundraiser adventure that has become popular across the country. This year marks the second anniversary of the fundraiser here in San Francisco.

Last year, Over the Edge raised $100,000! Participants are required to raise a minimum of $1,000 for Special Olympics Northern California, which offers free training for 12 different sports year-round.

Would you go “Over The Edge” to support a good cause?

Tightrope Interactive is proud to announce that its DownloadAdmin™ Software Network now boasts the industry standard TRUSTe privacy seal.

DownloadAdmin™ is a consumer download management solution that enables advertisers to offer complementary software downloads to users. Through a network of high-traffic consumer sites such as Playfin.com and Uberdownloads.com, DownloadAdmin™ delivers over one million unique partner installs each month to an audience of more than three million unique users.

Users have the choice to opt-in or out, and there is never any obligation for users to accept. This completely opt-in process encourages trust and creates a better user-experience. Users who trust, in turn, convert to Customers.

DownloadAdmin™ has taken paramount steps to ensure user privacy through TRUSTe certification. TRUSTe has helped thousands of online businesses increase conversion rates, deal size, and customer engagement. DownloadAdmin™ is forthright and honest with users about the information they collect, why it is collected and how it is used to improve the user experience.

Focused on working with well-established, best-in-class companies, DownloadAdmin™ has partnered with some of the best software developers in the industry, and is always looking for new partners and advertisers to create solid working relationships with. K. David McCarthy, SVP/GM of Tightrope Interactive mentioned that “Through DownloadAdmin we are able to offer software publishers a way to monetize content downloads in a safe and meaningful way.”

CEO and Founder of PriceGong, Bar Elimelech, attests: “DownloadAdmin™ has delivered quality traffic to us at high volumes. For us it is an important source of new, quality users.”

Check us out on Facebook

Follow Tightrope Interactive on Twitter @tightropeinc

About Tightrope Interactive

Tightrope Interactive is a full-service online marketing firm, specializing in downloadable product development and distribution and Lead Generation.

With services tested and optimized on over three million unique users each month, Tightrope Interactive can increase your ROI by delivering unique installs for your software, and deliver consumers via targeted marketing campaigns.

Tightrope Interactive recently won a Leads 360 Lead Industry Award for Highest Quality Education Leads, 2010. To learn more about Tightrope Interactive, visit www.tightropeinteractive.com.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6734986&lang=en

Contacts

Tightrope Interactive
K. David McCarthy, 646-456-9816

Check it out on Business Wire

Great news! On February 25, 2011 Leads360 (a market leader in lead management platforms) awarded Tightrope Interactive with the award of Highest Converting Education Leads. We are proud to say we ranked in the top 3!

The Leads360 report reviews not only education lead generators, but also comments extensively on the state of the industry.

Findings in the report include:

1) The new non-Democratic House of Representatives may change the course of this legislation in the coming months.

2) Conversion rate in Q1 of 2010 was the highest out of the entire 2010 year.

3)72% of lead buyers expect purchasing to increase in 2011.

4) 72% of lead providers expect lead prices to go up in 2011.

Outside of the quality analysis of the industry’s leads they surveyed vendors and buyers about the state of the industry. Sentiment was inconsistent in that some people thought there would be growth, some said contraction, and a lot of people just were not sure. To a company like ours, this means we have incredible opportunity to grow and further differentiate ourselves in the market.

During these dynamic times, it’s important to partner with a company that not only understands your financial and growth goals, but also your compliance goals.

We dedicate our time to fully understanding industry developments. We take a multi-faceted view on creating a long term strategy plan. We take into account the current job market, economy, government, time of year, competitive landscape and media landscape to create precise campaigns for our clients.

If you would like us to create a custom proposal for you, please feel free to email us!

Note – Tightrope Interactive is not associated with Leads360. The views expressed in Leads360′s report are not necessarily the same as Tightrope Interactive’s.

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to please take a look around our cool new site.

Would you like to meet the fantastic people behind Tightrope Interactive? Or perhaps you’d like to learn more about Education Lead Generation? Go ahead, check out all those nice links you see on the right side of the site.

We’ve worked good and hard to redesign the look and feel of our site so that we can best-represent all that is Tightrope Interactive—from our products and services, right down to our team’s smiling faces. We’re proud to show off our company, and we’re more than excited to start blogging!