5 Ways to Get More Out of Your Student Recruitment Software
Plugging Unibuddy into your university website and starting to connect your prospective and current students is super simple. But are you making the most of our student recruitment software? Here are some of our top tips to maximise the value of Unibuddy at your institution.
1. Connect with your CRM
Unibuddy is a fantastic lead-generation tool, and there are no doubt plenty of students who are connecting with your institution for the first time via the platform. But if you’re not transferring those leads into your CRM system, they might never hear from you again and you’ll never know they reached out.
Speak to your account manager or use our live chat if you need help connecting Unibuddy with your CRM.
2. Diversify your Unibuddy ambassadors
We’ve spoken to hundreds of prospective students to learn more about how they use Unibuddy. One thing that comes up time and time again: they want to speak to someone who is like them.
In fact, when we asked what the main factor was when choosing an ambassador to chat to, prospective students told us that they wanted someone who studied their course, was from their region, and spoke their language. We’ve got the data to back that up too. Conversations were 46% longer when prospective students and ambassadors shared characteristics.
To get more conversations (and also boost your visitor to sign-up conversion), a diverse pool of ambassadors is crucial. Make sure you have a vast array of ambassadors from different nationalities, courses and backgrounds.
3. Customise your platform
You can tailor the Unibuddy platform and make it your own!
Adapt your ambassador profiles with custom fields, so you can share the information that matters most to your prospective students. For example, if you have multiple campuses, why not add a field for “Campus”?
You can also customise ambassadors’ welcome message – or allow them to customise their own. Give your ambassadors the chance to add their personality into every part of the conversation.
You can even customise the sign-up form to make sure you’re collecting the information that matters to you. You can ask for postcodes, date of birth – or anything else you might need!
4. Gain more insights
Your prospective students are having authentic conversations on Unibuddy, and asking questions about what matters to them. These insights can benefit your institution’s marketing and messaging.
If you log in to your university dashboard, you can read (anonymized) conversations and gain a real understanding of what topics are coming up. By regularly meeting with your ambassadors and asking about their experiences, you can also start to get an idea of recurring themes in the questions.
Plus, as a Unibuddy partner, you have access to the range of research and analysis we’ve conducted into the almost 1 million messages exchanged on our platform. In our white paper, we’ve dissected different student profiles and established exactly what they care about most. Speak to your account manager to get hold of a copy.
5. Add authenticity to your comms
Your current students are your best advocates, and their stories and voices are incredibly powerful.
We’ve found that just including the “chat to a student” call to action in your email marketing campaigns has a noticeable impact on both open rate and click-through rate. Your prospective students want to talk to current students!
Read more: How do you create a credible and authentic message?
You can share your ambassadors’ blogs and vlogs on social media, in your emails or across your website. Enshrine the “chat to a student” call to action into everything you do, and integrate it across your website using the Popcard, Buddy Card and Carousel.
