Indiana State University processes 20,000 applications a year. Until recently, they had no reliable way to know which of those students would actually show up in August.
Shonta Sellers, Director ofInstitutional Marketing, and Faith Haley, Executive Director of Admission, deployed Halda across the entire enrollment funnel — from first website visit to enrollment confirmation — to close that gap.
The result: a real-time view of where students were getting stuck, a follow-up tool that reaches the right students at the right moment, and a lead capture system that surprised even Haley with its performance on transfer students.
The Challenge: 20,000 Applications, Very Little Visibility
ISU’s funnel had two distinct problems. The first was at the top: stealth traffic. Prospective students were visiting the website without identifying themselves, browsing without converting, and leaving without a trace.
The second was at the bottom:confirmation. Even students who wanted to attend were getting stuck — lost in portal activation, unsure of next steps, quietly drifting toward another school.
“We knew students were getting stuck. Students say all the time ‘I really do want to come here, but I just can’t do it for some reason.’ Halda gives us the chance to find out if they’re stuck somewhere. Then we can contact them and get them where they need to be.”
— Faith Haley, Executive Director of Admission, Indiana State University
Before Halda, ISU had no clean way to act on either problem at scale.
“Before, we didn’t know our real class size until students showed up at orientation —which happens over the summer. We would go August-May without really knowing who would end up on campus.”
— Shonta Sellers, Director of Institutional Marketing, Indiana State University
The Solution: Halda Across the Full Funnel
Top of Funnel: Capturing Stealth Traffic
Halda’s Landing Pages surface personalized engagement on ISU’s website — designed to identify and convert visitors who would otherwise browse anonymously and disappear.
ISU’s landing pagesare built around the3-second rule: the window before a visitor’s attention moves on.
“Our attention spans are about 3 seconds. Halda is an attention-getter. It cuts through the noise and gets people what they want faster.”
— Shonta Sellers
Mid-Funnel: Reaching Transfer Students
Transfer students are a notoriously hard population to engage — every institution is chasing them, and most outreach misses. Halda’s lead capture performance with transfer students was one of the most unexpected wins for ISU.
“The volume of lead capture Halda had with that population really surprised me. Their willingness to give us so much information, then the ease of follow-up with those leads has been great.”
— Faith Haley
Bottom of Funnel: The Enrollment Confirmation Landing Page
The most operationally significant deployment was at the confirmation stage. Haley built an Enrollment Confirmation landing page specifically to identify students who had gone quiet —admitted, interested, but stuck somewhere in the process.
“Everyday there are down-funnel prospects who have gone there, submitted this information and said ‘Here’s where I’m stuck.’”
— Faith Haley
That real-time signal gives ISU’s counselors something they didn’t have before: the ability to reach out with specifics, not a generic nudge.
“The conversion rate on the Enrollment Confirmation LP is high, and it gives our counselors the power to be as specific as possible for follow up with our most interested students.”
— Faith Haley
The Results
- ISU now has continuous visibility into where down-funnel students are getting stuck — in real time, not after orientation.
- Enrollment counselors can act on specific student situations rather than blasting the full confirmed pool.
- Transfer student lead capture exceeded expectations in both volume and quality of information shared.
- The Enrollment Confirmation LP runs daily, feeding counselors a prioritized list of students who need a targeted follow-up.
- Campus programs that previously had no visibility into admissions engagement can now see how prospective students interact with their content.
For Sellers, the value runs deeper than any single metric.
“It’s a benefit to us as an enrollment team, but it also makes the process easier for everyone coming to the site. It immediately alleviates pain points we know they have.”
— Shonta Sellers
The Side Effect: Campus-Wide Buy-In
One outcome neither Sellers norHaley fully anticipated was what Halda did for cross-campus interest in enrollment data. Programs that had never engaged with admissions metrics started paying attention when they saw what Halda surfaced.
“We have these people across campus who will see Halda and say ‘What’s this? How does it work?’ Our programs really like that we can change our settings to give students the right experience based on what they’re looking for.”
— Faith Haley
That visibility creates a natural feedback loop: programs understand what students are asking about, and Admissions gets better intelligence on which programs are driving interest.
What Enrollment Teams Can Take From This
ISU’s deployment works because it’s built around one principle: don’t make students hunt for information, and don’t wait for them to raise their hand.
The 20,000 application problem isn’t unique to Indiana State. Every large institution faces the same question: of the students who applied, who actually intends to enroll? Halda gives admissions teams a tool to find out — before August, before orientation, before the melt happens.
“Halda reveals the necessity of getting people information faster and not depending on them to sift through your website to find what they need.”
— Shonta Sellers
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