Dr. Melissa Webb, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School at the University of West Florida, is straightforward when asked why she was able to start working with Halda.

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“It was the free trial. It’s been awesome. The free trial gave us the data and experience we needed to show that Halda worked and justify using it to our leadership–and the results speak for themselves,” she elaborates. “The implementation was easy. Once we got approval from our IT team, it took seconds to install the script, then it was up and running.

"The Halda forms are enticing, they're encouraging. Our students want to be seen and heard. The forms show empathy, meet them where they are, and help them move to the next step."

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Of course, this swift implementation wouldn’t mean much if it did not lead to swift results converting website traffic into leads. “It was immediate,” explains Webb. “Within the first week, we were already capturing our website traffic at a higher rate. Now the leads just keep rolling in.” (Here's the raw data from UWF's Slate instance)

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Why Halda works for UWF

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UWF is a Slate partner, so they’ve historically had Slate’s RFI forms up on their website. In the Spring of ‘24, however, Halda gained recognition as a Slate Preferred Partner for the company’s ability to provide more sophisticated lead capture tools than what Slate offered their clients.

“The Slate RFI form lived on our website” explains Kristina Hathaway, CRM Coordinator at UWF, “but it was hard to find and it was just…generic."

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UWF’s graduate web pages get solid traffic–about 7000 visits a week from prospective students–but the team was concerned that prospects weren’t getting an experience that deepened their relationship with the school.

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“Most of our web traffic is stealth traffic. It’s organic,” continues Webb. “So we don’t know who they are unless they give us their information on the website. And the data shows that most of them come to our site and leave without us ever finding out who they are."

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The lack of ability to engage with the information was crippling their website conversion and frustrating some of their most high-value visitors. What they quickly found out was that Halda's engagement not only helped with lead capture, but increased enrollment velocity at every stage of the funnel.

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Learning more about each prospect provided the context to deliver better information and more effective follow-up. “Our response dashboard through Halda delivers videos, key information, and timely CTAs,” explains Hathaway. “Through Halda’s integration with Slate, that lead information gets automatically transferred into our Slate database.”

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This integration with Slate allows Hathaway to trigger immediate communication with prospects. “They go right into a drip campaign to learn more about our programs,” she elaborates. “And as we move forward with Halda we can transfer more specific information into our Slate instance and personalize those drip campaigns even more.”

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A healthier pipeline starts with a student-focused website experience

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Webb and Hathaway’s initial frustrations stemmed from a seemingly universal issue on higher education websites: It’s too difficult to find the information you need.

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“Our students get lost. We can see where they’re clicking through and winding up in places like undergrad residency and other rabbit holes that just aren’t where they want to go,” Webb explains.

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Halda’s interactive forms help students quickly find the right information with little navigation.

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“The Halda forms are enticing–they’re encouraging,” she continues. “Our students want to be seen and heard. The forms show empathy, meet them where they are, and help them move to the next step. For some of our students, the forms even help them see their options when they don’t know exactly what they’re looking for.”

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For Webb, this initial touch is all about laying the groundwork for meaningful relationships.

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“The earlier we can start a meaningful conversation, the better. The Halda forms help jumpstart relationships, so we can find out where students are and help them, regardless of whether they’re coming to the University of West Florida or not.”

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This focus on relationships was also one of the reasons why Webb felt strongly about her free trial experience with Halda.

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“Greg, our Halda account manager, took a different approach compared to vendors we’ve seen in the past. Greg has approached us with empathy and understanding, while bringing creative ideas to every conversation,” Webb explains. “And Judson, who has helped us with implementation, is organized and strategic.”

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These interactions have made it easy for leaders like Dr. Webb to envision a future working with Halda. “We have data and a roadmap that clearly shows where we’re going. And, as I said earlier, the results speak for themselves.”

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