Cost per enrollment (CPE)
What you pay, on average, for each enrolled student a paid channel produces.
Definition
Cost per enrollment is paid media spend divided by the number of enrolled students attributed to paid sources. It extends cost-per-lead through the whole funnel: not what an inquiry costs, but what a student costs.
CPE is the metric leadership actually cares about, because it connects marketing spend to the institution's real unit of success — an enrolled student. A channel with a cheap CPL and a poor lead-to-enrollment rate can have a worse CPE than an expensive channel that converts.
Why it matters
Two channels with identical CPLs can differ several-fold in CPE. Allocating budget on CPL alone systematically rewards channels that produce inquiries rather than students.
How Pennant treats it
Pennant computes CPE as spend ÷ paid-source enrollments, per channel and per program, so the cost of an actual enrolled student — not just an inquiry — is visible for every paid source.