According to Alan Olsen’s 2008 Australian Universities International Directors’ Forum (AUIDF) benchmarking survey of 28 Australian universities, a whopping 72% of their country marketing costs went on agents. Those same agents have an enormous influence on where a student decides to study, according to Rob Lawrence at the AIEC Conference, with 30% of students saying the agent makes the decision for them, and another 45% saying that although they choose their university they still use an agent to apply.
If you’d like to get more from your international marketing budget or understand things from the institution point of view, take a look at the new QETI (Queensland Education and Training International) guide to agent management. It includes straightforward strategies for managing each stage of the relationship, including identifying and appointing a new agent and ongoing management - such as relationship building, training and review.
Your relationship with your agents is as or more important to them as their contract, so it’s important to maintain regular contact, with visits and email, set joint goals to build trust and commitment, and respond quickly to their requests and enquiries.
AppManager can also make it easier to manage all this with instant notifications and simple tools for analysing performance. It also provides your agents with a great interface to submit applications, status updates and a complete application PDF receipt to send to their students.
To find out more, please email sales@studylink.com.
