Frequently asked questions

Product & data

What exactly does Pennant do?

Pennant is the enrollment marketing command center for higher education. It connects to the CRM and ad accounts you already run and unifies spend, pacing, attribution, and yield into one live view — leads, applications, and enrollments by channel, program, and campus, with honest cost math on top.

Which systems does Pennant connect to?

Salesforce (including related-object support), HubSpot, LeadSquared, Google Sheets, Google Ads — including agency manager (MCC) accounts — and Meta Ads. Connectors sync automatically every hour, and historical backfills mean your view starts with depth, not an empty chart.

Does Pennant work with Slate?

Answer pendingTODO: confirm the Slate answer with product — whether the Google Sheets connector is the recommended bridge for Slate exports today, and whether a native Slate connector is on the roadmap.

Does Pennant integrate with our SIS?

No. Pennant connects to your CRM and ad platforms, not your student information system. Funnel analytics run on CRM records — leads, applications, and enrollment statuses — which is where enrollment marketing data lives.

How is cost per lead calculated?

Spend divided by paid-source leads only. Organic, referral, and other unpaid volume is reported alongside, but it never enters the cost math — so organic strength can't make paid channels look cheaper than they are. The same paid-source principle applies to cost per enrollment.

What's the difference between Period view and Cohort view?

Period view counts everything that happened between two dates — leads in, enrollments in, spend out. Cohort view takes the leads acquired in a window and tracks them forward to today, with twelve-week progression curves and maturity projections. The first answers "how did April go?"; the second answers "are the leads we bought converting?"

Can we see spend gross and net of agency fees?

Yes. Pennant tracks gross versus net spend with a per-channel agency fee markup, so both numbers are explicit and reconcilable instead of silently mixed.

How fresh is the data?

Connectors sync automatically every hour, and sync health is monitored continuously with alerting — if a connection needs attention, you know before your numbers go stale.

Do we need a data warehouse or a data team?

No. Pennant's connectors, funnel model, and enrollment metrics are managed and built in. There are no pipelines to build, no semantic layer to define, and zero per-school configuration for campus, program, and channel drill-downs.

Privacy & security

Does Pennant store student personal information?

No. Pennant stores no student names, emails, phone numbers, or addresses — ever. Analytics run on pseudonymous CRM record IDs, funnel-stage dates, statuses, and attribution fields. Identity stays in your CRM, under your existing controls.

How does Pennant handle FERPA and student privacy review?

Answer pendingTODO: have counsel approve the FERPA positioning before publishing. The factual basis: Pennant never ingests student names or contact information, analytics run on pseudonymous record IDs, connector credentials are encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM), and erasure with re-import suppression is built in. The security one-pager covers the architecture for reviewers.

What happens when someone requests data erasure?

Erasure is built into the product, with re-import suppression: once a record is erased, it does not come back on the next CRM sync. Retention follows a documented retention policy.

How is access controlled?

Role-based permissions scope each user to appropriate institutions and functions, every institution's data is isolated per tenant, and a full audit log records administrative and data-affecting actions.

Agencies & multi-school setups

We manage several schools. Does Pennant handle that?

Yes — it's a core design point. A portfolio rollup compares every institution side by side, then drills into any single school. Each institution's data stays isolated in its own tenant.

Can our clients see dashboards under our brand?

Yes. Dashboards are white-label: each institution sees its own logo and colors. Google Ads agency MCC support connects your manager account once and maps spend to the right school.

Can we limit what a client (or an agency) sees?

Yes. Role-based permissions control which institutions and functions each user can access, and per-tenant isolation keeps every school's data separate.

Getting started

How long does implementation take?

Answer pendingTODO: placeholder — confirm typical connector setup and historical backfill timeline with the product team.

How does pricing work?

Pricing is tailored to your setup — the number of institutions, connectors, users, and lead volume. There's no public price list; schedule a call and we'll put a number on it quickly.

What happens to our data if we cancel?

Answer pendingTODO: placeholder — confirm offboarding and data-return/deletion terms with the product team.

Can we see it before committing?

Yes — three ways, in increasing depth: explore the sample dashboard on this site (no signup), run your own numbers through the honest cost calculator, or book a demo and we'll walk through the product against your actual questions.