How the University of South Dakota Tripled Engagement Without Growing Their Team

Challenge 

Prospective students are engaging in new ways, and expecting institutions to keep up, but admissions teams aren’t getting any bigger. At the University of South Dakota (USD), the team has successfully pivoted to attract new students, yet began to see early signs that conversion was becoming a challenge.

Before Unibuddy, USD relied on emails and on-campus events to engage prospective students. While these channels shared a lot of information, they didn’t provide a scalable way for prospects to connect with current students after the events, or have follow-up questions answered without adding more manual workload to the team.

With many students living off campus, the university also faced challenges around integration and community building. At the same time, prospective students were seeking information earlier in their journey and USD wanted to implement this through authentic, peer-led insight into student life. This became even more apparent when the Assistant Vice President of International Admissions discovered Unibuddy while travelling abroad, after students specifically asked whether USD used Unibuddy, and could they connect with any current students.

Connor Peterson, Director of Undergraduate Admissions & Enrollment Marketing, noted, “Gen Z, and soon to be Gen Alpha, don’t want to hear from staff members. They want to hear the student perspective and what life is really going to be like, and we were missing that engagement piece.”

Solution

Unibuddy Assistant was introduced to manage high-volume, repetitive questions that didn’t require personal input, as a small team with big goals, they needed a solution that could expand their reach. Assistant enabled the team to respond instantly to common questions, freeing staff to focus on higher-value, personalized interactions. While Unibuddy Chat enabled prospective students to connect directly with real students for more personal, peer-to-peer conversations. This shifted engagement from staff-led to student-led and distributed the workload more effectively.

Over time, the team expanded their use of Unibuddy by introducing ambassador-led content into their recruitment strategy. By building content creation into their ambassador program, USD began sharing authentic student stories earlier in the funnel, supporting yield and addressing summer melt. This approach has driven engagement, particularly among high school juniors, and given the admissions team greater insight into what matters most to prospective students beyond academics. Since October 2025, USD Ambassadors have produced 86 pieces of content, Connor explains, “Students really want to see these stories, they are getting more involved at an early stage, and overall, the engagement is making a difference in our summer melt.”

Impact

Since implementing Unibuddy, engagement at University of South Dakota has grown significantly, with a 3x increase in engagement volume when comparing January 2025 to January 2026, showing wider adoption and stronger connections between prospective and current students. 

The platform has provided a central hub for authentic student stories, helping prospects feel connected in ways social media couldn’t achieve. Now, the Ambassadors are supplied with “business cards” to hand out during on-campus events, encouraging prospects to follow up and keep the conversation going. 

Overall, Unibuddy has enabled USD to build meaningful peer-to-peer connections, share compelling content championing student voice, and drive scale and efficiency, in ways they simply couldn’t do before, “this time of year is when engagement really matters, it can make a huge difference in whether a student feels connected to USD.”