Calling when prospective students actually pick up

The Australian Institute of Music was attracting plenty of website leads and lacked the internal resourcing to contact them. Our Melbourne-based call centre took over: calling every enquiry, re-engaging leads who hadn't booked an audition, and using time-of-day analysis to reach students when they answer.

Client: Australian Institute of Music
Industry: Education
Solutions: Media & Performance
Region: Australia

Improvement in contact rates on weekends and after hours

19.8%

Of leads answering between 8am and 9am, the best hour to call

30%+

Higher average contact rate on weekends than weekdays

2%

The challenge

Every uncontacted lead is a prospective student deciding without you. AIM needed each website enquiry called, previous enquirers who never booked an audition re-engaged, and the highest-intent leads qualified, all without the internal team having to find hours that didn’t exist.

Our solution

A systematic outreach plan gave every lead multiple touchpoints: a missed first call triggered an email, a missed second call an SMS, so meaningful engagement stayed likely even when the phone went unanswered. Custom-built Application Sent and Application Complete stages streamlined the journey, automatically removing completed applicants from the calling list, and each contacted lead was classified by outcome, with appointment requests scheduled straight into Calendly.

The campaign’s first truly two-way CRM integration let AIM’s systems update ours in real time: unsubscribes removed promptly, completed applications flagged instantly, no double-handling. Ongoing audience and time-of-day analysis kept sharpening the approach, with AIM feeding us new events and course selling points to up-sell with.

The results

Between August 2022 and March 2023, contact rates improved 19.8% through weekend and after-hours calling, weekends ran an average 2% higher contact rate than weekdays, and time-of-day analysis found the golden hour: more than 30% of leads answered between 8am and 9am. Overall call connection rates rose significantly as the optimisations compounded.

What our clients say

The Garden complemented our in-house recruitment team by contacting prospects in the hours that we couldn't. By integrating our systems, the transition between our teams was seamless, with some great results!