Three years ago, Assistant Dean for Enrollment, Marketing & Communications Leslie Monson helped build the enrollment tech stack behind Freeman's graduate programs from the ground up. Halda was one of the first tools the Freeman team brought in, and it didn’t take long to prove itself. A 30-day pilot performed well enough that Freeman signed an extended and annual agreement before the trial period was over.
Today, Halda functions as Freeman's top re-engagement channel across every lead source it tracks. And because Monson now oversees the entire enrollment funnel end to end, she can measure exactly what that's worth: a return that ranges from 6x to 29x the investment, tracked program by program.
The Challenge: A Lead Form Was the Whole Strategy
When Freeman set out to build its enrollment tools, the process for a new prospect was simple and mostly hands-off. A student found a lead form, filled it out, and moved on. What happened after that was largely a mystery to the admissions team.
"We were looking for something that could provide more personalized attention, with better guidance for the consumer moving through the process, Monson said. ”Almost like, 'Hey, here's your next step,' instead of a lead form that just goes into the abyss."
The Freeman team found Halda at a conference while scouting vendors for a new build-out. It became one of the foundational pieces, alongside a handful of other tools they were evaluating at the same time.
The Solution: Guidance in Place of Guesswork
Freeman started with Halda's AI forms, then added info cards and the hub station. All three still run today. Once a prospect enters the funnel, Halda passes context back into Freeman's Slate instance, so admissions officers see the same picture Monson does:
“Once someone's in the Slate system from Halda, I know their demographic, I know their pain points, I know their barriers to entry. That equips the admissions team to have those conversations, answer questions and give the consumer enough comfort to take the next step."
The rollout wasn’t instant. One of Monson’s colleagues, who manages the day-to-day relationship on Freeman's marketing team, spent the first few months fine-tuning the system, checking that every AI-generated response and info card was accurate before it reached a prospect.
"I'm not going to lie, it was a big lift in the beginning,” said Monson. “But now we're at a place where we think about what's next in a student's journey, or what question keeps coming up from admissions, and we build an info card for it."
Freeman is adding to that toolkit over the next 12 months, rolling out Halda’s AI recruiting agents and piloting AI email for a handful of programs.
The Results: Return, Measured Program by Program
Monson evaluates Halda the way she evaluates every channel in her funnel: dollar for dollar, net of what Freeman actually spent to enroll that student.
- Halda re-engages about 20% of leads that had gone dormant or disengaged, making it Freeman's top-performing channel for bringing prospects back into the funnel.
- Event leads make up the largest share of that group. 30.51% of everyone Halda re-engages first came in through an event.
- 42% of all application starts at Freeman trace back to Halda.
- Of the unique applications Halda helped start, 71.5% were completed, meaning the majority of the prospects it engaged followed through rather than stalling out.
- Weighed against total annual Halda spend, allocated across programs and calculated net of the scholarship dollars awarded to enrolled students, ROI runs from 6x to 29x depending on the program:
- Master of Accounting: 11x
- Master of Finance: 6x
- Master of Management in Energy: 29x
- Full-Time MBA: 9x
- Professional MBA: 19x
"I take our whole Halda spend and divide it across every program, because it's a lead-gen component for all of them,” Monson shared. “Then I net out the scholarship dollars for every student who came in through that channel, to get a true ROI. Some programs are hitting a 29x multiple."
The multiple matters less as a standalone number than as something Monson can produce for any single program, not just Freeman as a whole. Part of what makes that possible is that Halda's engagement data lives inside Slate alongside everything else Freeman tracks, so a dollar spent on Halda shows up in the same ledger as a dollar spent anywhere else, not in a separate report Monson has to reconcile by hand.
She took over admissions in January 2026 after several years running marketing and communications, and that move gave her visibility into the full funnel: every dollar spent, every channel, every enrolled student, traced back to its source. That view told her Halda was outperforming, and it's also what let her pull spend from a channel that wasn’t converting into applicants and put it toward the one that was.
A Partnership That Keeps Showing Up
Monson pointed to two things when asked what has kept Freeman renewing: the dashboard, and the account team behind it.
"Halda continuously upgrades, enhances, optimizes. There's always something new on the dashboard, like the hot leads feature. Our receptionist pulls hot leads every day and sends them off, so it's not just sitting with the program leader. Everyone in admissions shares in it,” Monson said.
She was just as direct about the account team:
"Our Partner Success Manager is by far the most responsive and engaged account manager I've ever had. We have check-ins every other week, deliverables are hit on time and she knows the product inside and out. When you have that kind of support system, it's a lot easier to say ‘yes’ to the next thing."
Expanding Across Campus
Freeman's results didn’t stay inside Freeman. Monson became an internal champion, and multiple other schools at Tulane have since brought on Halda, along with the university's undergraduate admissions team.
"I was one of the biggest proponents of telling every school at Tulane, 'You need to get on with this,'” Monson shared. “They saw what was happening with our numbers, and they jumped on board pretty quickly."
What This Means for Enrollment Teams Weighing the Next Step
Monson's advice to peers evaluating a tool like Halda has less to do with the technology itself and more to do with being willing to look:
"People get trapped with their blinders on, thinking this is the way we've always done it. Sometimes the juice is worth the squeeze. Put in the time the first few months, and it pays off. Try it, because the numbers will speak for themselves."
Freeman's numbers back that up: a return that changes by program, a re-engagement channel that outperforms everything else in the funnel and an admissions leader who can trace every one of those numbers back to a specific dollar spent. That's the case Monson is making internally, and it's the same case she's comfortable making to any peer who asks.
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