Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Sees 33% Student Application Boost

Challenge: Support lead generation efforts and increase brand awareness among prospective students

The International Marketing Team at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), a consistent top-five world ranked higher ed institution for agriculture and forestry, were looking for a digital solution to help support their existing lead generation efforts and increase brand awareness within the higher education space.

“The challenge in international student recruitment for SLU is partly to increase the proportion of students who register at the start of the semester, but also to make our university known in the world,” said Elin Helgsten, International Marketing Officer at SLU. ‘We’re a young university – but at the same time one of the best in the world within our focus areas and of course we want to get as many as possible to notice this.”

SLU were looking to introduce a mix of different channels to help their team reach prospective students in multiple ways. But they also wanted a variety of reciprocal channels enabling students to reach out to their team – for effective two-way communication.

Solution: Unibuddy enabled flexible two-way communication between prospective students and student ambassadors

Through Unibuddy, prospective students were able to begin conversations with current SLU students in a safe, user-friendly, and light environment. In addition to Unibuddy’s best-in-class reputation within higher ed circles, the platform’s ease of implementation and user adoption are what ultimately convinced SLU to get on board.

“The direct communication between our student ambassadors and prospective students is something that was previously lacking for us,” said Helgsten. “Along with a good reputation and many satisfied customers, Unibuddy offered what we had been looking for for a while – the opportunity for quick and easy communication between students.”

Helgsten elaborated that Unibuddy’s simple flexible design made adoption among their student ambassador team easy – enabling them to manage accounts from anywhere in the world.

Results: 33% of prospective students who engaged with SLU through Unibuddy went on to apply 

SLU has seen strong tangible results with Unibuddy so far – with 33% of prospective students who engaged through the platform going on to apply. 18% of students who registered for Unibuddy before the SLU application deadline were subsequently admitted.

“Above all, Unibuddy presents an opportunity for the prospective student to become more confident in their choice,” said Helgsten. “The opportunity to ask questions to another student can be what makes a student not only apply to a certain university, but it can also be crucial that he or she actually registers at that university at the start of the semester.”