Best sales month in nearly 20 years within 30 days of launch

10.8% conversion rate with team assistance

Number one converting lead channel in the business

~10,000 leads per month handled at scale

8x cheaper than a human agent

Under 60 second response times, 24/7

OVERVIEW

Hader Institute of Education, Online Courses Australia, and The Career Academy operate very different models: an RTO in the mental health and allied health space, a high-volume short course and microcredential provider, and an established provider managing close to 10,000 inquiries a month across Australia and New Zealand. What they share is the market they compete in. Prospective students inquire with multiple providers at once and commit to whoever earns their trust first, and all three came to Enrola with the same problem: the speed and consistency needed to win that first conversation had outgrown what a human team could deliver on its own.

Three providers, three different angles on what happened next.

HADER INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

What They Were Solving

Hader is a registered training organisation delivering vocational qualifications online across the mental health and allied health sectors. CEO Marcus Sellen’s biggest concern was not lead volume. It was lead bias, a tendency every human sales team develops over time: some lead sources naturally get attention faster than others, which adds delay on top of an already competitive market. And with inquiries arriving around the clock, no team can realistically cover every hour of the day. In a sector where first response wins, after-hours leads were an open door for competitors.

What Enrola Does for Them

Hader’s agent, named Anna and treated as a genuine member of the student recruitment function, contacts every lead within seconds and with the same quality, regardless of source or time of day. She gives prospects enough to self-qualify without giving the sale away, keeping price and payment for the human conversation. A Calendly link inside the SMS flow lets prospects book a call with a recruitment agent, capped at two days out to keep urgency.

The Result

Enrola’s SMS flow is now the single highest-converting lead activity Hader runs, outperforming every other channel without exception. Anna has booked more than 1000 advisor calls, holds a 50% SMS reply rate, and handles 18+ courses simultaneously with zero leads missed after hours. Leads who book through Anna are the highest-converting segment in the business, and the experience has Hader now reviewing every part of the operation for AI opportunity, from inbound calls to assignment marking.

“It is our highest converting lead activity that we undertake in the business. It is exceptional.”

— Marcus Sellen, CEO, Hader Institute of Education

ONLINE COURSES AUSTRALIA

What They Were Solving

OCA is a high-volume provider of short courses and microcredentials, running a full e-commerce channel alongside a human sales team. Reaching students has become materially harder: spam filters, call screening, and a growing base of younger learners and time-poor working parents who simply do not want a phone call. CEO Cheryl Quang came in with clear commercial expectations, setting a minimum conversion benchmark before signing on.

What Enrola Does for Them

OCA’s agent, Eva, runs first-touch conversations over SMS, async and on the student’s schedule. No phone pressure, no hard sell, no discovery call they did not ask for. Eva qualifies, answers questions, and surfaces the highest-intent leads for the sales team, who step in with the full transcript in front of them. More recently, OCA has pointed Eva at older database leads to pull additional revenue from inquiries already paid for.

The Result

Conversion through the SMS channel has nearly doubled since launch, currently at 10.8% with team assistance, and Cheryl’s benchmark was hit within the first two weeks. Enrola reaches leads at roughly an eighth of the cost of a human agent doing the same job, which means lead profiles that were previously marginal become profitable, and that margin goes back into lead generation.

“Think of it as absolutely a sales team member in your team. Eva gets assigned new leads and she handles that. And there are lots of opportunities from that.”

— Cheryl Quang, CEO, Online Courses Australia

“Every single education provider needs to have this solution or something very similar in their wheelhouse right now. It’s low friction, low cost, and so far so good.”

— Cheryl Quang, CEO, Online Courses Australia

THE CAREER ACADEMY

What They Were Solving

The Career Academy manages close to 10,000 student inquiries every month across Australia and New Zealand. Every call, email, and SMS was handled by hand, and by the time an advisor worked through the queue, the student had often already moved on. Not because the team was not working hard. At that volume, no manual process can keep pace, it is a structural limit rather than a staffing one. CEO Daniel Hunt saw an early LinkedIn post about Enrola, called the same day, and challenged the team to be live within two weeks.

What Enrola Does for Them

A student submits an inquiry and has a response within 30 seconds, before any advisor has opened their inbox. The agent engages overnight, answers questions, and works toward booking a call. When an advisor reads the transcript the next morning, they already know who they are calling and what concerns came up. The student already knows TCA, so the advisor skips the introduction and goes straight to career goals.

The Result

The month immediately after going live was the biggest sales month in TCA’s history, and conversion rates across the business have been the strongest in close to two decades. New leads replied at rates the team had never seen through any SMS channel. A sales team that was understandably cautious about AI at first now rates Enrola leads among the best they work with, and TCA is extending the platform into post-enrolment support.

“Sales skyrocketed. We had the best sales month ever, the month after we introduced Enrola.”

— Daniel Hunt, CEO, The Career Academy

“I wish you could have built this 10 years ago.”

— Daniel Hunt, CEO, The Career Academy

THE THROUGH-LINE

Three different businesses, one repeating pattern. The agent handles first contact within seconds, opens the door without giving the sale away, and hands the human team warmer, fully briefed prospects. At every provider, sales teams that were understandably cautious about AI at first became the agent’s biggest advocates once they saw what landed in their pipeline. And in each case, results in lead conversion opened the door to more: post-enrolment support, database reactivation, and a wider look at AI across the business.

Beyond conversion, the transcript dashboard has become a decision-making tool at all three providers. Leaders read student conversations to see what the market is asking, which objections come up, and which messages resonate. For fully online businesses, it is a direct, unfiltered signal from prospective students that did not exist before.