Every school has an enrollment funnel, but most schools are only managing half of it. And the half they're missing is getting harder to reach and capture which means a lot of missed opportunities.
Consumer behavior has fundamentally shifted. Today's parents research schools the same way they shop for everything else online: anonymously and on their own timeline. Studies across industries consistently show that buyers now complete the majority of their decision-making before ever identifying themselves and without filling out a single form. Yet most schools still require a robust inquiry form with parent contact information, children’s details, and program interests in exchange for entry into their enrollment process. For a growing number of families, that ask is simply too much, too soon. The traditional inquiry, as schools have known it, is dying.
In this session, we introduce the Two-Funnel Framework, a model that separates the research funnel from the enrollment funnel, and explains why treating them as one leads to blind spots in visibility, measurement, and strategy.
The research funnel is where families quietly browse, compare, and evaluate schools on their own terms, often without the school’s knowledge. The enrollment funnel, by contrast, begins once a family makes direct contact and enters the school’s formal, CRM-driven process. While this stage is highly tracked, it often lacks insight into the earlier interactions that shaped a family’s decision.
These two funnels operate under different rules, serve different stakeholders, and require different tools, yet most schools treat them as a single system. Because they cannot be effectively connected or measured using the same metrics, the connection between them often breaks down. As a result, schools are left without a complete view of the parent journey, particularly where and how initial interest is formed.
To bring this framework to life, Niche will open with a market-level view of the research funnel: what families are actually doing before they ever contact a school, how registration and lead behavior has evolved, and what the data reveals about the gap between family interest and school inquiry volume. This unique perspective sets the stage for what individual schools cannot see from their own systems alone.
Two Niche partner schools will share how they connected these funnels in practice. Each will walk through how they are lowering the barrier to first contact through strategies like lighter-weight lead capture, integrations with their CRM, and how this is changing the way they manage their marketing performance and admissions pipeline.
Attendees will leave with a practical framework, and a conversation to take back to their own marketing and admissions teams.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will be able to:
- Distinguish between the research funnel and the enrollment funnel, and explain how shifts in consumer behavior are widening the gap between them
- Recognize how high-friction inquiry requirements may be reducing the number of families who ever enter a school's enrollment funnel
- Identify lower-friction entry points that capture family interest earlier — lowering the barrier to first contact without requiring full commitment upfront
- Plan a cross-functional conversation between marketing and admissions teams — particularly those operating in separate systems — using a shared two-funnel framework
- Illustrate how CRM-integrated lead data, tracked from the research funnel through the enrollment funnel, creates a more complete and actionable picture of the full parent journey and enrollment ROI.