Dublin City University Sees 64% Increase in Sign-Ups Through Ambassador-Led Engagement with Unibuddy Chat and Assistant

Challenge

Dublin City University (DCU) has long recognised the value of student ambassadors, running a successful programme for over 20 years. When Colette O’Beirne, Global Recruitment Manager at DCU, was introduced to Unibuddy at a conference focused on peer-to-peer engagement, she saw an opportunity to strengthen the existing programme. 

However, like many universities, DCU struggled when Covid-19 hit. With open days and campus tours no longer possible, DCU had to rethink how it attracted and engaged with prospective students, particularly international students. 

Solution

To begin with, DCU implemented Unibuddy Chat, which quickly became a major part of the wider content and marketing strategy. Through ambassador conversations, Colette and her team began to identify recurring questions and emerging themes. These insights directly shaped the ambassador-generated content, ensuring messaging reflected what prospective students actually wanted to know.

“It’s the only way students can actually reach out to each other and hear what life is really like outside of our Open Days” says Frank Farrell, Postgraduate Recruitment & Marketing Officer at DCU. “Unibuddy has really enabled us to give students that peer-to-peer connection and advice they trust.”

Ambassadors are now actively guided on which topics to create content around, making their stories a core part of DCU’s recruitment marketing across social channels and email campaigns.

Following the success of Chat, DCU introduced Unibuddy Assistant to support the team at scale. In 2025 alone, Assistant generated almost 612,000 impressions and managed 6743 conversations, which saved the team a total of 482 hours.

“Hundreds of questions are coming in through Unibuddy Assistant, that we simply wouldn’t have the time or resources to answer! At the moment, we are only using Assistant across two hubs which are central sources of information for both Undergraduate and Postgraduate prospective students, and this year we plan to expand it to a number of programmes across the online prospectus.”

Impact

The partnership with Unibuddy has allowed DCU ambassadors to be more involved in the content and recruitment strategy, taking a real weight off the team’s shoulders. Between 2024/24 and 2024/25, DCU saw a 64% increase in sign-ups, alongside a 30% rise in content views, driven in part by ambassador-led content. 

“We have been able to see a shift in trends, which is just a great insight to have.” Colette shares, “Typically, prospective students were asking more course-related questions, but now we can see that’s shifted towards student life. That knowledge allows us to adjust our content and communication, and guide ambassadors on exactly what topics they should be creating content about.”

This has been incredibly successful for international students, as they prepare to make a huge decision on where they want to study, being able to talk to ambassadors about campus life, the local area as well as student activities has made students feel more comfortable and more empowered when making these choices.