Translating the Value of Unibuddy to Your Higher Ed Colleagues

At Unibuddy, our mission is to empower the next generation of students to make the right choice for their future. So, providing your higher ed team with the right tools and resources to help more students plan their futures remains our core objective. 

But, just like not every student is the same, neither are the higher ed professionals who consider and use Unibuddy. Where one part of the platform might be a selling point to one of your teams, it may not be what convinces another on the value of our product. 

Get higher ed marketing ideas with the 2023 Unibuddy Higher Ed Marketing Guide.

That’s why we’ve compiled helpful fodder to help you translate the value of Unibuddy for your higher ed team:

1.0 Who needs to be convinced on a higher ed team?

While every organizational chart is a little different in the world of enrollment, we often see marketing, communications, recruitment, admissions, IT, procurement, and first year orientation teams involved in the student journey to enrollment. 

All these functions play a role in helping an institution hit their goals – but motivations for adopting Unibuddy can vary. While one team might leverage funnel metrics to boost application and yield numbers, for example, another team might be looking for ways to facilitate better student experiences through increased engagement. Some teams might just be looking to reduce workloads and manual time-consuming work. Whatever the case, it is imperative to highlight the value of our solutions to every segment of a higher ed team – for maximum application and ROI. 

Maybe you belong to an admissions and recruitment team aiming to boost yield numbers for admitted students. Unibuddy Chat enables your team of student ambassadors to speak directly with your new students, reassuring them that they made the right decision to attend. According to Unibuddy data, 92% of Gen Z say just speaking to a student ambassador can help them make a final decision about where to study higher ed.  

Or you might be, for example, a Director of Orientation and First Year Programs and want to leverage Unibuddy Community to initiate hub-style groups for incoming students to meet other accepted students arriving on campus. You notice one Community group, let’s say “Bikes On Campus,” is growing at a fast clip. Knowing this topic is top-of-mind with your incoming class, your communications team might consider creating more content addressing how to get around campus, or alternative modes of transportation like bikes and scooters. 

Or maybe you belong to an admissions and recruitment team aiming to boost diversity among admitted students or numbers of first-generation higher ed student applicants.

You might use Unibuddy to promote first-generation student ambassador profiles to prospective first-generation students. By introducing these students to others who have followed first-generation paths, you help instill confidence levels and show that higher ed is not only accessible – it’s possible. 

With that said, Unibuddy is most-impactful when implemented across your entire organization. We recommend deploying it with the following teams to drive max ROI:

Marketing Team: Whether centralized or decentralized, this team provides marketing support to recruitment and admissions teams – and is often responsible for maintaining web content. They are looking for solutions that not only make engaging with prospective students easier and more efficient, but also enable personalized student experiences at-scale, via traffic-driving tools or data-rich actionable insight tools. And anything that helps with messaging and brand awareness requiring as little overhead or time consuming manual effort as possible can be valuable. 

This team also often deals with everything outward facing communications-wise, from media relations to digital content to website content and social media. As such, marketing teams can be fast-paced and often work off multiple tools and platforms. Successful tools should also be scalable, controllable, one-stop brandable communications solutions which provide the data they need to inform further strategy modifications. 

Student Recruitment and Admissions Team: This team, or group of teams, helps attract, convert, and retain students, often through their first few weeks on campus or, in some cases, all the way through the first term. They look for ways to scale their recruitment efforts to larger audiences without losing their authentic student experience. Their primary objective is to increase yield and applications. 

IT and Procurement Team: This team is concerned with the procurement and integration of new tools into your higher ed tech stack. They want to ensure a tool snaps to digital infrastructure easily, meets security standards, can be supported due to additional loads, and can be applied across multiple uses and teams. They like tools which do more with less, allowing expensive resources to be focused elsewhere. 

Student Orientation and First-Year Team: This team organizes, informs and helps retain new students pre- and post-arrival on campus. As Unibuddy data reveals, major blind spots in retention plans often involve low levels of student confidence or feelings of being overwhelmed by the academic process. Members of this team look for engagement tools which enable them to provide new students with the information they need to take confident first steps in their higher ed journey. 

Institutional Communications Team – This team deals with everything outward facing communications-wise, from media relations to digital content and social media. These teams are fast-paced and often work off multiple tools and platforms. This team looks for scalable, controllable, one-stop brandable communications solutions which provide the data they need to inform further strategy modifications. 

Student Success Team – This team is responsible for ensuring students have every support available to them to ensure academic success at every step of their higher ed journey. This team looks for tools which enable high levels of student retention – making sure students stay, feel confident, and, ultimately, graduate.

2.0 How to translate Unibuddy ROI to enrollment teams?

We’ve all heard the question: “How much is this going to cost?” We’re all working within budgets – and every dollar counts. But what if we asked questions like “how much is this going to cost if it isn’t implemented” or “how much more additional tuition revenue might this tool bring in” instead? In other words, instead of talking about cost, think about value, time saved, or valuable applications. 

Consider the University of Leicester, for example. Looking for a way to digitize their ‘Headstart’ program, a program designed to reduce pre-enrollment nerves among prospective students, Leicester opted to host groups on Unibuddy Community. The results? A 23% enrollment jump worth an estimated £6.3M (about $8M) in additional revenue – a healthy ROI. This is just one example of how looking beyond cost toward value and ROI can change perspective. 

Or, for a more multi-application scenario for better ROI, look no further than University at Buffalo. After integrating Unibuddy with seven graduate and professional schools, University at Buffalo saw results in enrollment, with schools reporting as high as 75% conversion rate to application for students who engaged in Unibuddy Chat conversations. But they also received praise from across their entire team, from their IT team noting a smooth implementation process led to a reduction in support calls to their marketing team who highlighted Unibuddy’s easy integration with their CRM Slate as a win. This is a perfect example of how Unibuddy delivers max ROI to higher ed recruitment and marketing teams while simultaneously streamlining internal tech stacks.

2.1 Here is our breakdown of features designed to reduce work for more ROI for each component of your higher ed team

2.1.1. Unibuddy ROI for marketing and communications teams

Without effective brand outreach, whether through media, content, or social media, it can be difficult to differentiate your school from the rest. By hitting the sweet spot between informational and authentic, a higher ed communications team can get their messages out without sounding generic or scripted. This is where the candid, flexible nature of Unibuddy can play a special role. 

Higher ed marketing and communications teams can take advantage of traffic drivers connecting prospective students to student ambassadors. These traffic drivers, from pop cards to chat bubbles to “buddy cards,” which are embeddable throughout your website, are customizable. They can be configured to link prospective students with specific student ambassadors, staff members, or groups of student ambassadors. In addition to providing prospective students with the next step in their journey toward conversion, you can embed traffic drivers to flex to other initiatives, like a ‘contact us’ or ‘help’ button, ensuring you don’t lose students who might have questions. 

Learn more about available Unibuddy traffic drivers. 

On the back-end, Unibuddy provides your team with powerful AI-driven insights about who prospective students are, what they want, what they expect, or more specific data points, like funnel stage, Unibuddy is also a platform for your student ambassadors to shine as content creators. Simple content publication tools, which include support for video, empower your student ambassadors to shine as your official brand storytellers. Streamlined publication processes, from submission to review to posting, enable your team to scale user-generated content production to new levels. 

Data-wise, the world is their oyster in terms of leveraging Unibuddy to identify new audiences or engage with existing audiences. Using powerful filters, marketing and communications teams can slice and dice Unibuddy data according to funnel position, topic, or geographical area. AI-generated conversational insights can subsequently provide short summaries of chats between prospective students and your team and provide lists of follow-up questions to ask them which can then be fed into your CRM for further automation.

On the front-end, we’ve added visibility features to ensure prospective students find your user-generated content in formats they expect to increase audience reach. As bonafide voices prospective students trust and recognize as belonging to their peers, user-generated content is worth its weight in gold to any marketing, recruitment, or admissions strategy.    

See more ways you can fit Unibuddy into your higher ed marketing and communications programs for better ROI. 

2.1.2. Unibuddy ROI for admissions and student recruitment teams 

At its core, Unibuddy is designed to facilitate authentic, candid, and meaningful connections between prospective students, current students, and your higher ed team. For student recruitment and admissions team members, the suite of Unibuddy tools help scale their efforts and make their jobs easier to manage. 

Let’s say, for example, your admissions team is conducting a coordinated email outreach campaign to prospective students – a channel 35% of higher ed professionals use and 50% of Gen Z list as effective. Using Unibuddy, you can create and append URLs or QR codes to the emails you send, pointing prospective student recipients to chat with specific student ambassadors- a source for information that 88% of students list as effective. This helps infuse your emails with the power of peer-to-peer engagement for a powerful coordinated punch. 

Pre-acceptance, Unibuddy Events enables higher ed teams to increase reach to prospective students and help nurture them to apply with engaging live stream components, including virtual open houses or Q&As with staff and student ambassadors. Unibuddy Community, meanwhile, provides safe, engaging, hub-style groups for prospective students to meet fellow applicants, student ambassadors, or faculty, to help prepare them for the start of their first semesters and keep on top of important deadlines of pre-arrival tasks. Coordinating all of Unibuddy’s platform components can supercharge your nurture efforts – and help students make the decision to attend your school.   

Determining ROI for the sum total of these efforts can be as simple as comparing total number of prospective students who enrolled via Unibuddy versus those who didn’t use the platform before enrolling. Available Unibuddy data can be sliced and diced to feature specific student demographics and directly integrated with your CRM. 

See more ways you can fit Unibuddy into your higher ed admissions and recruitment programs for better ROI. 

2.1.3. Unibuddy ROI for IT and procurement teams

Highlight the ease of integrating Unibuddy with existing tech stacks, CRMs and the additional support benefits of working with an app-based software-as-a-service (SaaS). Unibuddy is simple to set up, and is embeddable throughout higher ed websites with a single line of code. 

User-wise, Unibuddy sets the groundwork for future success. To get started, student ambassadors simply download the app, fill in their profiles and begin answering questions from prospective students through a light UX-optimized interface, anywhere on any device. The interface, including user-generated content creation tools, are easy for student ambassadors to use.

For teams looking to leverage Unibuddy Community, it’s worth mentioning that zero input is required from IT to set up and manage groups. Anyone on your higher ed team can easily create a new Community and have it set up in minutes. Our dedicated team of specialists are also available to get you started on the right foot – and remain available after you’re up and running. 

Support-wise, our Unibuddy support team is made available directly pre- and post-Unibuddy implementation, eliminating the need for additional IT phone calls, support hours, or in-person visits. Innovative updates to Unibuddy are consistent, market-informed, and automatic, without additional IT intervention. This saves IT teams valuable time, bandwidth and resources for other projects, increasing ROI. 

See more ways you can fit Unibuddy into your higher ed IT programs for better ROI. 

2.1.4. Unibuddy ROI for student orientation teams and first-year programming  

With melt rates hitting concerning levels, student orientation and first-year programming teams are looking for ways to improve retention rates through student engagement. With 90% of students reporting feeling nervous in the crucial period between enrollment and arrival – with others doubting they’ll continue to graduation – helping students make connections with their peers before day one and beyond is crucial. 

Unibuddy Community can help students find their people and feel welcome through the creation of hub-style digital groups. In addition to connecting new students with their classmates, you can provide access for your team of student ambassadors to join the conversations too. You can also use Community to share relevant onboarding and orientation information – including PDFs containing information like instructions for admitted student events over the summer, housing application forms, scholarship information, campus maps. Together, these types of features ensure new students are included, welcomed and up-to-date during their first days, weeks, and months at your school. 

See more ways you can fit Unibuddy into your student orientation and first-year programs for better ROI. 

2.1.5. Unibuddy ROI for Student Success Teams

Effective communication is a hallmark item of any student success strategy – serving to increase retention rates and drive NPS. Students don’t only want to be communicated with, they also want to be heard – to feel special. Unibuddy Community enables personalized communication at scale by providing your students with safe, user-friendly, and interactive hub-style groups for them to meet their people, join clubs, learn about accommodation, form study groups, ask questions, and receive important tips and information at-scale. 

Your student success team can appreciate the benefits of having all students of specific cohorts, interests, or classes, all in one place. Community Updates can be used to broadcast important announcements, reminders, or deadlines in a variety of formats – including images and PDFs. All students in a Community are automatically added to the Updates group, meaning they receive push notifications via the Unibuddy App when a new Update is posted. Students can react to Updates they receive with emojis with options to add these items to personal “to-do” lists. 

In addition to Community’s Update feature, students have the option to contact members of your student success team via secure Direct Messaging. This one-on-one messaging feature enables students to chat with one another, helping forge friendships or networks, or contact your team about more sensitive issues. With additional safeguarding measures across the entire Unibuddy platform, your team can ensure the highest levels of student safety and confidentiality – with AI-infused content filtering tools to flag inappropriate content, clear student reporting channels to escalate issues to your team, and the ability to add or remove specific users from a group or Unibuddy entirely. 

Data-side, Unibuddy Community provides student success teams with student confidence metrics at a granular level. This data can be filtered to determine a student’s level of confidence in their decision to enroll at your higher ed institution and provide additional context as to what might help increase this metric.

See more ways you can fit Unibuddy into your student success programs for better ROI.

3.0 Why choose Unibuddy?

We are higher ed-focused to our core – and this mantra goes into every facet of what we do at Unibuddy. We build our solutions specifically for higher ed users – from every front-end feature to every back-end implementation. We are continually launching innovative new ways for higher ed professionals to help empower the next generation of students to make the right choice for their future. 

So what does this mean? Unibuddy’s platform can be valuable to so many of the cross-functional teams that you work with. Unibuddy Chat isn’t just a peer-to-peer chat tool – it’s a data goldmine of student insights that can be applied to every area of your marketing, recruitment, and admissions strategies. Unibuddy Community isn’t just another social media platform – it’s an official safe hub for students to find their people before setting foot on campus. Our solutions are where students go to choose their futures with confidence – and where your team can meet them. 

For the world of higher ed, a world where budgets are tight and stakes are high, the multiple flexible applications of Unibuddy make less work for your team, for a higher ROI. From frontline recruitment applications to backend marketing tasks, and everything in between, our platform cuts workloads while increasing scale – ensuring you meet and exceed your strategic targets every year  Converting high quality prospective students can be expensive and time consuming, but, with the right engagement platform, you can streamline your process for less work and more ROI. 

Learn more about how you can fit Unibuddy into your higher ed marketing, admissions, and recruitment programs.