How the University of Groningen Doubled Sign-Ups and Increased Website Traffic with Unibuddy Chat

Challenge 

For the University of Groningen, one of the key challenges in student recruitment was a lack of visibility into prospective student concerns. While students could email a student ambassador, messages landed in a central inbox managed by the Future Students Team, which required someone to then manually forward each inquiry to the right person or department. This process was manual, time-consuming, and made it difficult to track common questions or trends.

The service was also poorly highlighted on the website, meaning students often struggled to find it. As Antonis Pinakoulakis, Communications Systems Coordinator, explains, “Students had to either know their way around the website, which understandably they don’t because they have to navigate tens of university websites and each one has its own structure. So students either have to really know where to find the information or they need to reach out to us and that was doable, but it created this extra step, this extra burden.”

Solution

To address these challenges, the University of Groningen implemented Unibuddy Chat to streamline communication with prospective students. They chose Unibuddy over other providers because of its intuitive user interface and positive feedback from other universities already using the platform. The focus on one-to-one communication was particularly appealing, allowing students to engage directly with ambassadors in a more personalised and efficient way.

The university has now been using Unibuddy for four years and recently introduced Ambassador popcards on their website, further improving accessibility and visibility of student support. In February 2026, Unibuddy also launched a new benchmarking feature, which Antonis highlights for making communication and reporting much clearer and more effective:

“Over the past two weeks, it has been easier to communicate our activities and progress than it has been over the past few years. Having a clear benchmark gives people a reference point, which makes discussions and updates far more straightforward.”

Impact

The University of Groningen has seen significant results since implementing Unibuddy Chat, so much so that they are now introducing Unibuddy Community to further strengthen engagement. From 2024 to 2025, website traffic has grown over four times, while chat sign-ups nearly doubled. Unibuddy now delivers the strongest conversion rate across all their student recruitment activities.

“Unibuddy has one of the strongest conversion rates of any activity we run. It outperforms events and other initiatives, and users who we have observed using Unibuddy have a vastly higher likelihood of actually applying and then enrolling as well.”

With these efficiencies, the university has been able to scale back on some events without affecting application volumes, allowing the team to focus on strategic projects. They can now personalise communications, matching prospective students with ambassadors who share similar backgrounds or interests. Antonis notes:

“We can meet people at fairs or other events and direct them to the right contact if they’re interested. Linking them to a profile makes follow-up much easier and more effective.”

A particularly striking outcome has been seeing former prospective students enrol and then become Unibuddy Ambassadors themselves,  a clear signal that the platform is resonating. Combined with targeted campaigns, blogs, and country filters, the university is now able to engage students in a more personalised way, helping convert interest into enrolment.