High Points for Higher Ed: Unibuddy’s 2023 Product Vision
Unibuddy has always been in the business of helping students make crucial decisions along their higher ed journey. As young adults on the crux of a big (expensive) life decision, students feel immense pressure to get it right. One friend’s daughter couldn’t even broach the topic of applications with me, the severity of the decisions felt so paralyzing.
I take great pride that, at Unibuddy, we are able to ease a lot of that pressure and ensure students don’t have to make these crucial decisions alone. For over 1.5 million students, peer-to-peer connections made on our platform have helped the authentic voice of institutions shine through. As we look ahead, I’m genuinely thrilled about our ambitious 2023 product roadmap that will build on this support in some really powerful ways.
Building confidence at all steps of the student higher ed journey
From the time they start exploring to the time they set foot on their chosen campus (online or in-person), students live under the shadow of doubt. Can I really afford this? Will the workload be too tough? Will I fit in? Who’s going to be my roommate? Will I feel safe at school? From an institution’s perspective, you could lose a prospective student during any of these hesitations. That’s a leaky funnel of potentially qualified students that can be expensive for your recruitment, admissions or enrollment teams to lose.
Enter Unibuddy Community – A place for students to bond
This year, with the launch of Unibuddy Community, we set out to address the confidence gap at the most stressful moment of the journey: which school should I go to? That’s the precise point at which students need to be surrounded by others making that same leap of faith, those students who may become classmates very soon.
Related: University of Leicester Boosts Enrollment by 23% Since Implementing Unibuddy Community
In six short months, Unibuddy Community has already become the higher ed onboarding tool of choice at over 70 institutions worldwide – a startup within a startup! In 2023, I’m excited for Community to continue to evolve by connecting students automagically based on their profiles, helping students complete their long to-do list prior to campus arrival, and ultimately continue to help them cultivate that sense of belonging post-enrollment.
Learn more about Unibuddy Community.
One size no longer fits all in higher ed
The second area we are focused on in 2023 is in line with marketing trends we see in many other industries: personalization. A one-size-fits-all marketing approach feels disingenuous, often spam-like. And higher ed students are discerning buyers. They’ve grown up in a world that has come to expect personalized marketing experiences; why would they expect less from the higher ed institutions they’re exploring?
Related: The Gen Z journey to higher education
But personalizing the decision-making process can be challenging for institutions. Often, you don’t know who students are until they come to an event or do a campus tour. And personalizing for a handful of students may be manageable, but at scale? There’s enough written about higher ed burnout to know that’s not feasible.
A new way to propel students forward with your institution
That’s where Unibuddy has decided to shake things up. We’re taking the powerful human connections our platform was built on one giant step further, by pairing them with personalized recommendations. So now, students will be able to get the information and insight they need, at just the right moment, to help propel them forward in their journey with your school.
This means that institutions will no longer have to guess where students are in their decision-making process – we’ll ask them for you. You’ll no longer need to know what their biggest concern is – they’ll share it on Unibuddy. And you won’t need to wonder how best to cater your content or marketing to their needs – Unibuddy will serve up relevant content, suggested peers to talk to, and just-in-time recommendations, at scale. No more one-size-fits-all.
Unibuddy’s innovation story for 2023
As a marketer, I know there is nothing we relish more than the opportunity to tell a product story that fundamentally changes the industry. Based on my 10 years in edtech, I do believe this is what we’re on the verge of at Unibuddy. These types of groundbreaking innovations, however, seldom take shape without putting the customer voice at the center.
As is our standard process, the Product team has been on an intensive listening tour with customers to discuss these ideas, get feedback, pressure-test assumptions, and figure out how to create scale. The Unibuddy Early Access Program has 50 customers testing out new features as they are released, sharing the impact they are making on the ground for their teams and for students, and how we can improve them to deliver even more value. And our Engineering teams are busy running experiments to gauge usage and, more importantly, value for administrators and students.
Sign up to stay in the loop on the personalization tools we’re releasing.
As higher ed teams head into 2023, trends will certainly continue to evolve. One thing we know will stay constant is the pressing need to ensure students feel confident in their paths and futures ahead of them. We look forward to continuing to partner with you on this mission.
- Nina Bilimoria Angelo, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Unibuddy