Unibuddy Emerges as the Leading Student Tool at the University of Glasgow

Challenge: A timely and efficient process for building relationships with students

Ensuring students have the necessary resources and tools to make confident, informed decisions is a crucial component of enrollment and recruitment. Juliet McEwan and Claire Martin, part of the central recruitment marketing team at the University of Glasgow, are responsible for attracting and retaining students from application to enrollment, and navigating through various technological tools throughout the students journey. 

The introduction of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in the UK presented a significant challenge as it restricted direct communication with students. The team at Glasgow couldn’t email students without obtaining prior permission. To address this, they devised a web-based assessment form allowing students to pose questions to the recruitment and enrollment team while also securing consent for email communications. However, this method was far too clunky and inefficient to engage prospective students while maintaining their interest throughout the process. 

“With all these limitations hitting us at once, we needed an external solution that could help us build relationships with students, providing more insightful data and ensuring a more timely and efficient process. Transparent insights and ease of use for students were really important considerations for us,” shared McEwan.

Solution: Student-to-student connections and personalized support at the heart of enrollment

“We discovered Unibuddy through our industry connections and immediately recognized its potential in supporting our primary goals: engaging students and boosting conversion rates.” For the Glasgow team, Unibuddy wasn’t an option; it was a necessity to meet their recruitment goals. “Finding budget and obtaining approvals wasn’t too challenging given our internal restrictions” added McEwan.

After a few successful years with Unibuddy, Glasgow upgraded their package and adopted Unibuddy Community, to sustain peer-to-peer conversations throughout the entire enrollment process. McEwan explained, “By having both products, we had all the advanced analytics needed to understand student thoughts and feelings, allowing us to better predict their decisions or what they need from us.”

McEwan and Martin also leverage the data to enhance student communication and marketing. “Every 30 days, I export the conversation data to identify the questions prospective students are asking. This information is then shared with our content creators, who produce content tailored to the students’ interests. Understanding the questions being asked at different points in the recruitment cycle is always beneficial,” Martin shared.

Result: Students rated Unibuddy as the #1 digital tool to support their decision-making journey

Following an increase in enrollment, the University of Glasgow conducted an extensive audit to analyze the functionality of its tech stack and identify top-performing tools. This initiative was part of the digital transformation project that took place across the entire school. It took three months to perform, in order to collect all the accurate student data and sentiment. “The project looked at all the different external facing databases and systems that students use throughout their journey, grading them based on helpfulness, usefulness, and if it’s easy to understand.” McEwan shares.

In the final audit, students rated Unibuddy as the #1 digital and most impactful tool to support their decision-making journey. It achieved a perfect score of 5/5 in categories such as clarity of purpose, mobile-friendliness, student satisfaction, ease of use, and availability for help.  McEwan emphasized, “This was 100% student perspective, so Unibuddy’s success as the top performing tool wasn’t surprising, given the positive feedback we’ve always received.” 

The audit concluded that ‘Unibuddy is a great example of a third party digital tool being integrated at the university and using its capabilities to good effect. It is clear to visitors what it offers and provides an easy to use interface to put students in touch with real life people who will offer bespoke responses to the questions being raised.’

“Observing the conversations, we witness the genuine relationships forming between students and ambassadors. The ambassadors invest sincere effort into their responses, sharing relatable experiences and offering positive reassurance. Unibuddy’s recognition as a top-performing tool by students is well-deserved, and our current student engagement and conversion rates wouldn’t be as impressive without it,” concluded McEwan.