Bot or Not: Using the Right Data to Drive Enrollment Success

What’s really behind your web traffic? How can you tell if the clicks you’re counting are from future students or from bots inflating your metrics? And what does it take to turn raw numbers into insights you can actually act on?

In this episode of Innovating Enrollment Success, Digital Analytics Manager Sam Hofman and Ad Ops Engineer Nathan Huff talk about how to separate real insights from digital noise, and why trustworthy data is essential for student recruitment and retention.

What you’ll learn:

• Good data is trusted and actionable, not just clean spreadsheets.
• Set metrics early with a measurement brief that defines success and allows for pivots.
• Compare platform and CRM data to avoid inflated conversion counts.
• Identify bot traffic—40–60% of hits could be non-human.
• Block invalid traffic with honeypots, IP filters, and ad verification.
• Assign a data steward to own your data strategy and guide smarter decisions.

When your data is done right, it doesn’t just track activity, it tells the real story of your audience. And in today’s enrollment climate, those insights can make all the difference.