SUNY Plattsburgh uses Unibuddy to nurture and generate leads

The challenge

State University of New York (SUNY) Plattsburgh wanted to expand their reach beyond their own website to generate new leads. An existing Study in the USA (SUSA) partner, SUNY Plattsburgh was eager to leverage both their partnerships with Unibuddy and SUSA by opting into Unibuddy Discover.  

The solution

Unibuddy Discover combines ambassadors from multiple higher ed institutions on a single platform, like SUSA. Each student landing on SUSA’s site can discover and compare several options in one place. It also enables institutions to reach new global audiences – in this case, students interested in studying in the US. 

By choosing to integrate their Unibuddy ambassadors with Unibuddy Discover, SUNY Plattsburgh was able to target the international prospects they had already reached through SUSA, as well as generate new leads. The aim was to engage students in the research and discovery stage of their decision-making process, winning the fight for attention as early as possible.

Merging the two platforms meant that SUNY Plattsburgh’s current international students were front and center for prospective students to discover early in their journey, to chat with, get questions answered and ultimately convert to application. 

The results

“I can see very clearly in the Unibuddy platform which students have come from SUSA. Half or more had a tag that indicated they found SUNY’s Unibuddy instance through the SUSA site,” said Michelle R. St. Onge, International Recruitment & Admission Specialist.

Unibuddy’s peer-to-peer Discover platform embedded on the SUSA site generated over 230 leads for SUNY Plattsburgh from 32 different countries. This allowed the team to diversify their lead pool, a key goal for the institution. This exposure to new prospective students allowed SUNY Plattsburgh to reach out to more students than they have before.

“The integration made Unibuddy a bigger part of our toolbox. It’s really powerful for us to be able to reach new student audiences now and say, ‘Don’t just take it from me, take it from a current student.’”

SUNY Plattsburgh also used Facebook ads as traffic drivers to the Unibuddy page of their website. 

“There was a lot of traffic generated from the Facebook campaign. In the month we ran the ads, we definitely noticed a bump from people who saw us on Facebook, clicked in, went to the Unibuddy page, then picked a student to chat with, signed up for Unibuddy and continued on from there,” St. Onge said.

When schools are challenged to have in-person interaction with prospective students, St. Onge felt that the more students they could provide resources to, the better those individuals would feel about making a decision to apply, deposit, and ultimately enroll at SUNY Plattsburgh.