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Five Questions to Ask your Lead Generation Provider

Posted on February 1, 2012 by dsears

Purchasing international student leads can be a great addition to your current recruiting strategy.  It is very cost effective, since you determine your budget and your budget will then determine the number of leads that you are willing and able to receive on a daily, weekly, monthly or even annual basis.  The questions you need to ask yourself are:  What budget do you have to work with?  Secondly, how many leads can you realistically handle?  To answer this you need to keep in mind either you, or your staff, will have the responsibility of moving them from a lead to enrollment?

While there are many other questions to ask, here are five main questions that you should ask your current or prospective lead provider:

  1. How often are the leads delivered?  Can they be delivered in real-time?
  2. Are the leads exclusive and if not, how many other schools receive the same student lead?
  3. Can you target to specific regions, countries, nationalities?  What about specific programs offered or specialized majors?
  4. How do you generate leads?  Do you pay for traffic or get them from a third party source?
  5. How do you deliver the leads?  Via Email, Spreadsheet or fed via API?

While this is a small list of questions, it should allow you to gather enough information to know whether your current (or prospective) lead provider is supplying you with the best available leads.  What questions do you ask when you are evaluating a lead provider?

 

 

Posted in International Education, International Education Marketing, International Student Lead Generation, International Student Recruitment, Lead Generation | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Press Release – International Student Insurance Launches Chinese Portal

Posted on January 16, 2012 by rmason

International Student Insurance (ISI), the leader in international student insurance marketing around the world, is proud to announce the launch of its Chinese Portal, geared towards helping the growing number of Chinese students coming to the USA to study. The new portal includes plan information, downloadable flyers, and contact information, all in Chinese, as well as in-house Mandarin and Cantonese language customer service support.

According to the 2011 Open Doors report from the Institute of International Education, there was a 23.5% increase in the number of Chinese students coming to study in the USA, bringing the total to 157,558. Morrison Kwong, marketing associate at ISI and former Chinese international student from the University of North Florida, commented “Many international students do not realize that they can save money by purchasing an alternate insurance plan and waive out their university’s insurance plan. I wish I had known about ISI earlier, which is why I’m excited to be working to help educate students about their options.”

The Chinese portal is available online at http://www.internationalstudentinsurance.com/cn. Students are able learn more about the company and popular international student health insurance plans in their native tongue. They can also access specially created PDF brochures in Chinese that describe ISI and its health insurance plans in more detail to provide to their parents.

In addition, ISI is actively working through Chinese social media channels and search engines to reach Chinese students and make them aware of their international insurance options. “Students from China feel more comfortable reading in Chinese, even if they can read English well, and certainly their parents and grandparents want information accessible to them,” Kwong added. “And most students will not be able to access English webpages if they are using Chinese search engines and social media platforms, so the activity here will be an excellent opportunity to help students in a more suitable environment.”

ISI provides students with the highest level of insurance coverage and customer service, no matter where they are from or where they choose to study around the world. ISI customers can rely on world class service from fully licensed insurance agents who offer support in English, Spanish, Thai and now in both Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese.

International Student Insurance is a specialized insurance agency selling health and travel insurance to students from around the world. Online since 2001, ISI is a trusted industry leader providing insurance to students studying outside their home country. Owned and operated by Envisage International Corporation, International Student Insurance is a NAFSA Global Partner and accredited with an A+ rating by the Better Business Bureau. For more information, visit the website at http://www.InternationalStudentInsurance.com.

Posted in Chinese students, International Student Insurance | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

International Student Loan Launches a New Loan Comparison Tool

Posted on January 4, 2012 by dsears

The rising cost of higher education means that more international students are financing some or all of their education through student loans. Traditionally, however, because eligibility requirements are often vague and the application process arduous, many international students have difficulty finding lenders that will meet their needs. Fortunately, International Student Loan’s new loan comparison tool works to help simplify this process.

Long known as the industry leader providing access to international student loans, foreign-enrolled loans and study abroad loans for international students, ISTL’s loan comparison tool builds on this expertise in an effort to elevate its commitment to customer care. Developed with the needs of international students in mind, the new loan comparison tool is designed to help students quickly and easily find the right loan. Instead of wading through pages of applications, applicants can get results by answering just a few simple questions. After students choose their school, citizenship, and their co-signer status, students will be matched with eligible lenders. Once students have compared and chosen the loan that meets their needs, they can proceed to the application and apply for the loan directly.

The new loan comparison tool is part of International Student Loan’s continuing efforts to make students’ study abroad experience easier. Study abroad, international and foreign enrolled students will find that financing their education has never been simpler. If you have any questions about this program or how you can make it available to your students please feel free to contact Jennifer Frankel at International Student Loan today. You can also read more about our loan comparison tool on the recently distributed Press Release.

Posted in International Education, International Student Loans | Tagged , | Leave a comment


Lessons Learned from the NAFSA Regional International Education Conferences

Posted on November 10, 2011 by dsears

I have been on a road trip to several of the NAFSA regional conferences around the country. NAFSA is the leading nonprofit professional organization geared towards international education. They have 12 regional conferences across the US, broken down by geography. I have attended 4 of them over the last few weeks and have one more to go in Cedar Rapids, IA next week. So, as the 2011 NAFSA regional conferences begin to wind-down, I thought I would share some of the things that I have learned so far over the last couple of week, talking and taking notes from my colleagues in the international education space.

First, recruiting international students can be quite expensive. Did I just learn this? Well, no. Traveling to fairs overseas….. the support staff required….. paying agents commissions….. and I could go on and on. Schools are spending tens of thousands of dollars (and even hundreds of thousands) on their international student recruiting strategies. Money spent to increase their school’s international student population.

Second, social media still seems to be a hot topic, but schools are still behind the curve on using social media as a way to reach and personally connect with students. Maybe it is because I was in a sessions on recruiting using social media or maybe it is because they really don’t quite get the power of our new way to socialize. Social media gives us a sense of community and of being together without being in the same room together.

Third, back to the first point, “recruiting international students can be quite expensive.” When asking several colleagues (and those that spend money recruiting) how they reach international students online, the main answer was through their school’s website. OK, that is a good start, but how do you really reach international students online? They seemed willing to spend $10,000 for a fair in India when all expenses are calculated, but have not thought through how to cast a wider net and reach millions of international students online.

All in all, the conferences have been great experiences and quite eye opening. Do you have success using social media to connect with international students and do you have an online strategy that compliments your overall recruiting strategy?

Posted in Facebook Marketing, International Education, International Education Marketing, International Student Recruitment, Social Media Marketing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Reaching Chinese Students Online

Posted on October 5, 2011 by dsears

Do you know how to know how to reach Chinese students online?  That doesn’t sound too complicated.  After all, at Envisage International, we reach four million international students from 170+ countries across the globe every year through our network of websites, newsletters, blogs, iPhone apps and social media.  Here is the complicated part.  Facebook is banned, Twitter is nonexistent and Google is irrelevant and there are significant language barriers.

So what do you do?  You have to play on their playground with their rules and in their language.  Here are some of the things that we have done to reach Chinese international students.

  • Translation – While many Chinese students can speak and read English, we have found they simply won’t.  They prefer to read in their native language.  Translations are key to reaching them.  We have done this with some of our insurance blogs, getting content out in their language.  You can see an example here.
  • Social Media – As mentioned earlier, Facebook is banned in China.  As opposed to Facebook, they use renren.com and instead of twitter, they use weibo.com.  We want to reach them where they are socializing on the Internet.  Click on the links to visit our renren and weibo pages.
  • Mobile – As mentioned in an earlier blog posting, we developed an International Student iPhone app.    It allows students to search for schools in the US as well as many other useful features.  This app has proved to be extremely popular and China is the country with the second most downloads of our app!

We began our efforts to reach Chinese students over the summer.  If we look at what countries our traffic comes from on our flagship site, InternationalStudent.com, China typically has ranked 10th.   Over the summer months, their average rank was 7th.  This clearly shows an increased amount of traffic from our efforts.

What are you doing to reach Chinese students online?  What seems to be working?

Posted in Chinese students, Facebook Marketing, International Education, International Student Recruitment, Social Media Marketing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Envisage iPhone Apps all iOS 5 Compatible

Posted on October 5, 2011 by rmason

With the announcement yesterday of the iPhone 4S, Apple also quickly rolled out the GM seed of iOS 5 (for those non-technical, this is basically the latest iteration of the iOS software before it goes live to the public in just over a week). When a GM is rolled out by Apple, this is the most stable version of the software and apart from maybe minor tweaks to the software, it will be the same version that is released to the general public.

With the launch of the GM, we have been busy testing our three iPhone apps and we are happy to announce all three of our application are compatible with iOS 5 without any need for modification or changes. This is excellent news for our customers, as they will not need to wait for any updates and when moving to iOS 5 you will still be able to enjoy our apps without any interruption!

Our current iPhone app lineup includes:

  • Study in the USA iPhone App – designed for international students from all around the world, this free iPhone app helps students navigate their way through information and learn all about how they can study in the USA!
  • InternationalStudentInsurance.com Student Zone App – designed for our customers, our iPhone app allows you to manage your account on the go wherever you are in the world!
  • Work and Travel Insurance Student Zone App – for all our work and travel clients, downloading the iPhone app is like your personal assistance on how to use your insurance plan, where to seek treatment and much more!
All our apps our free and available from the iTunes store.
Posted in International Education | Tagged , , | Leave a comment


Envisage International’s New iPhone App Helping Reach International Students, Including in China

Posted on September 7, 2011 by dsears

We recently launched our first ever InternationalStudent.com Study in the USA  iPhone app, allowing students to access content and features from InternationalStudent.com right in the palm of their hand. The new app allows international students across the globe access to our Featured Schools, Study in the USA content, Concierge service and so much more…. It is available now for the iPhone and iPad as a free download!

The new app has been a huge success with students, and we are off to a great start with over 1,000 downloads in the first several weeks of launch. The data that has also been coming through from the app shows some very interesting insights into its usage and it has given us the ability to reach new audiences that were previously hard to reach. See below the chart of top countries where the app is being downloaded, compared with the top countries on our main site, InternationalStudent.com:

iPhone App Country Downloads

  1. USA
  2. China
  3. South Korea
  4. United Kingdom
  5. Saudi Arabia
  6. Thailand
  7. India
  8. Brazil
  9. Australia
  10. France
 InternationalStudent.com Traffic

  1. USA
  2. United Kingdom
  3. India
  4. Canada
  5. Australia
  6. Pakistan
  7. Philippines
  8. Germany
  9. Russia
  10. China

We certainly expected the USA to be number one on the list, but were pleasantly surprised that number two was China. Over the past few months, there has been a concerted effort online to reach Chinese students that want to study in the US. This strategy includes translations of our web page, Chinese search engines and social media. We thought that we would get some interest in China, but if you compare our visits from China on InternationalStudent.com to the iPhone app, we are happy to know that the app will be a viable way to reach Chinese students and will compliment our online strategy.  This is also a huge benefit to our Featured School partners as they are gaining valuable exposure to a new audience.

How are you reaching Chinese students?  I’d love to hear your ideas.

 

Posted in Blog, International Education, International Education Marketing, International Student Lead Generation, International Student Recruitment, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Press Release – International Student Insurance Launches iPhone App

Posted on August 22, 2011 by rmason

Neptune Beach, FL (PRWEB) August 21, 2011

International Student Insurance (ISI), an Envisage International Corporation website, is excited to announce the launch of its “ISI Student Zone” mobile application for the Apple iPhone. The application has been designed to assist clients by allowing them to manage their plans no matter where they travel around the world.

Keith Clausen, President of ISI, commented “Smartphone use has risen dramatically in recent years, especially for international students who tend to take their phones with them when they travel. The launch of this new application is in response to growing demand from our customers who want the ease and convenience of managing their plans on-the-go.”
The application, which is a free download in the Apple iTunes App Store, allows students to manage a number of tasks including:

  • Update personal details
  • Update credit card details
  • Renew plan details
  • View their insurance ID Card
  • View claims information
  • PPO Provider Search
  • Emergency Contact Information
  • and much more…..

“The new app will allow students an added convenience – if they are at the doctor and they have forgotten their insurance ID card, they app will allow them to pull up the id card on their screen to show the provider. In addition, by providing instant access to the 24 hour insurance helpline and provider search, the app will be a great resource when a student needs it most. ” commented Mr. Clausen.

For more information about the new application, or to download your free copy please visit our website at http://www.internationalstudentinsurance.com/mobile-app/

International Student Insurance is a specialized insurance agency selling health and travel insurance to students from around the world. Online since 2001, ISI is a trusted industry leader providing insurance to students studying outside their home country. Owned and operated by Envisage International Corporation, International Student Insurance is a NAFSA Global Partner and accredited with an A+ rating by the Better Business Bureau. For more information, visit the website at http://www.InternationalStudentInsurance.com

The full press release is available online:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/ISI/iPhone_app/prweb8733785.htm

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