Vendor reportFlywheel, 2026

Higher education is the most expensive education segment to advertise in, averaging $300 per lead and $9,000 per enrolled student

Channel validation

Metric	Top performers	Average
Cost Per Lead ($)	25	300
SQL Rate (%)	50	30
Cost Per Customer ($)	4,000	9,000

Higher Ed benchmarks: CPL, SQL rate and cost per customer — top performers vs average, 2025/2026

Reader Note:: The report also gives a top-performer cost per lead of $25 for higher education, which does not reconcile with its own $4,000 cost per customer and 50% qualification rate. Treat that figure with care; the $300 average is the one to compare against.
Evidence:: Expert judgment
Vendor interest:: Moderate — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: Aggregated Flywheel client data, plus third-party research and industry insider conversations; no sample size or selection details disclosed.

Good for

Hearing how someone who knows the field reads it, and deciding what to check yourself.

Not for

Anything that needs a measurement. Nobody counted or tested this.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
The source never says how this number was measured.
The source says how much it looked at, but not how any of it was chosen.

4.4x

How much better an AI search visitor converts compared to an organic search visitor, on average

of Google searches that showed an AI summary ended with a click on a link inside that summary (US, March 2025)

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

Share of each generation who discover new brands via influencer endorsements
Generation	Share who discover brands through influencers (%)
Gen Z	20%
Millennials	17%
Gen X	12%
Baby Boomers	5%

Go deeper on this topic

Our Substack turns the data behind these cards into full breakdowns: what changed, why, and what to do about it.

Fixing your influencer marketing campaign: How to get into the top 10% of advertisers

11.4%

of shopper sessions in the US involved an AI tool as of June 2026, up 2.3 percentage points from a year earlier

is the short-term ROI index for influencer campaigns in the UK, right on the market average with 4.5% of short-term sales (excluding campaigns that produced no result)

21–26%

of consumers in the US, UK, and Germany report using AI tools to research products online, per Statista's 2026 Global Survey (Jul 2025–Jun 2026).

Higher education is the most expensive education segment to advertise in, averaging $300 per lead and $9,000 per enrolled student

Good for

Not for

Related cards

Go deeper on this topic