An EdTech and training institute was generating enquiries but losing most to drop-offs. DXDasia built course-specific funnels and automated nurturing that grew qualified enquiries 6.2×.
6.2× Growth in Qualified Enquiries
Prospective students enquired but disappeared, and the team could not tell serious leads from casual ones.
We built dedicated funnels per course and let automation handle the follow-up.
Enquiry quality and enrolment efficiency both jumped:
In education, timing and relevance decide enrolment. Course-specific funnels plus automated nurturing meant no serious prospect slipped through the cracks — and the team spent time only on leads ready to enrol.
Prospective students researching training institutes compare programs extensively before enquiring, so content and paid campaigns were built around specific course outcomes and career paths rather than generic institute branding. Enquiry forms were restructured to qualify interest by program upfront, so the sales team could prioritise follow-up instead of treating every lead identically.
Students shortlist several institutes, ask each the same questions, and tend to stay with whoever answers first. The best-documented evidence comes from US graduate and online education, so treat it as a guide to behaviour rather than a Singapore or India benchmark. In an RNL survey, two-thirds of graduate students expected a response to their initial inquiry within 24 hours, and more than 60% were likely or definitely going to enrol in the programme that responded first. RNL sells enrolment services, so read the figures as directional.
Often on the landing page itself. Google's Core Web Vitals guidance sets "good" at a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of visits. Vodafone's published A/B test is a useful reference: a 31% better LCP went with an 8% increase in sales on an otherwise identical page. That is a telecoms retailer, not a school, but the mechanism is the same for a course page opened on a phone.
Ask a question that only a serious buyer answers. Google Ads supports this directly: qualifying responses in lead forms are multiple-choice questions on Search campaigns, they cannot be optional, and a qualifying answer tags the submission as a qualified lead and adds a "Lead form - Response qualified" conversion action. Optimising towards that action, rather than every raw submission, teaches the bidding system what a good enquiry looks like.
| Form approach | What the platform documents | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Standard lead form, optional questions | Questions other than qualifying ones can be marked optional | Highest volume, lowest filtering |
| Lead form with a qualifying question | Required, Search campaigns only, tags a qualified lead and adds a qualified-lead conversion action | Fewer submissions, clearer signal |
| Course page with its own form and CRM | Not platform-defined: you choose the fields and the sync | Full control, but you must send outcomes back to the ad platform yourself |
First two rows: Google Ads Help, qualifying responses in lead forms. The third row is a design choice, not a published statistic.
Completion is a fair worry for anyone paying for a course. An analysis of 221 online courses found completion rates from 0.7% to 52.1%, with a median of 12.6%, and lower completion in longer courses (2015, open online courses, so not directly comparable with paid institute programmes). Pages that show how a programme keeps learners on track answer the objection before it is raised.
The pattern is simple: match the page to the course, qualify at the form, reply fast, and measure what happens after the enquiry.
Across several client accounts we have found the same quiet failure: a website redesign or relaunch removed the Google Ads conversion tag, and the account kept spending while reporting zero or wrong conversions. For an institute this is costly, because course pages are often rebuilt each intake. We now re-verify the conversion tag and the form-to-CRM hand-off after every rebuild, before anyone judges campaign performance.
The qualified-enquiry growth is prompting the institutes to expand paid coverage into additional course categories using the same outcome-focused messaging that worked for the initial programs. Enquiry quality data is also starting to inform which new courses get developed next, based on what prospective students are actually searching for.
There is no universal number, and the best evidence is from US graduate programmes. RNL found two-thirds of graduate prospects expected a reply within 24 hours and over 60% were likely to enrol with the first programme to respond. Aim for minutes during working hours and an automatic acknowledgement outside them, then measure your own median.
Usually, yes, which is the point. Google's qualifying responses are required questions, so some people will not finish the form. What you gain is a tagged qualified-lead signal you can bid towards. Compare cost per qualified enquiry, not cost per submission, before deciding whether it worked.
For your main programmes, generally yes. A page that repeats the searcher's wording, the career outcome and the next intake date matches intent better than a general institute page. Start with the courses that produce most revenue and add others once the first set is measured.
Cost per enrolment, with qualified enquiries as a leading indicator. Raw form submissions can rise while enrolments fall. This needs your CRM stages sent back to the ad platform, which is why the enquiry-to-enrolment tracking step matters more than any single ad change. See our LMS case study for the delivery side.
