USF Muma College of Business Scales Student Engagement Strategy with Unibuddy

Challenge: Scaling Student Engagement Opportunities with Limited Human Resources

Institutions are continually seeking efficient ways to expand their recruitment and engagement efforts with prospective students. The University of South Florida – Muma College of Business is no exception. They previously struggled to effectively communicate and engage with prospective students due to staffing constraints, prompting a need for new, scalable solutions. Eric Douthirt, Director of MBA Programs, acknowledged the challenge, sharing, “Like many higher education institutions, we face resource limitations. It became clear that to effectively serve our prospective student base and remain competitive, we needed a scalable approach that didn’t require too much intervention.”

The College already had an MBA ambassador program facilitating one-to-one connections between students and ambassadors. However, the admissions teams had to manually coordinate these connections without any means to track or monitor the conversations. Douthirt highlights, “Our existing approach lacked scalability. We identified the need for a new tool that automates this process, removes the middleman, and has secure communication channels for students.”

With approximately 2,000 students across various graduate and MBA programs, USF Muma College of Business aimed to attract high-quality leads and ensure students were nurtured throughout the recruitment and enrollment process. Douthirt emphasizes, “Our goal was to expand our services and engagement opportunities for prospective students, despite our limited resources.”

Solution: Enhancing Student Connections to Drive Quality Applications

After discovering Unibuddy, Douthirt and his team were immediately intrigued by its ability to facilitate student connections and offer real-time insights. Douthirt recalls, “We looked into it and thought this was a brilliant idea. What sold me was the ability to get prospective student data. It felt like a turnkey solution for doing exactly what we wanted in a way that protected the privacy of our ambassadors, which was really important to us.” During this period, the MBA programs at the College experienced significant growth, resulting in surplus revenue that could be used towards implementing Unibuddy.

With a seamless integration process, ambassadors eagerly transitioned to Unibuddy, enthusiastic about using a new platform that offered enhanced capabilities for tracking, engaging with, and moderating their conversations. USF Muma College of Business was able to shift focus from mere growth and application volume to prioritizing application quality. Douthirt explains, “Unibuddy not only provided an additional channel for prospective students to connect with us but also offered valuable conversation insights into who is truly a good fit for our programs.”

Result: 25% of the Applicant Pool Leveraged Unibuddy Throughout Their Journey

The positive impact of Unibuddy on staff, students, and ambassadors was immediately evident to Douthirt. He shares, “Prospective students finally have a direct connection to our institution, rather than waiting for us to respond by email 24 hours later. It’s now a mutually satisfying dialogue between ambassador and prospect, and it’s been a game-changer for our applications.” Notably, in the latest cycle, 25% of applicants were Unibuddy users.

Encouraged by the success, USF Muma College of Business wanted to move forward with scaling Unibuddy even further, with the adoption of Unibuddy’s Assistant and Unibuddy Community. They recognized the potential to enhance website interaction and support admitted students’ decision-making process.

Previously, the College relied on traditional recruitment activities such as info sessions or student ambassadors to educate prospects at the beginning of the recruitment funnel. However, Douthirt and his team were interested in experimenting with a different opportunity aimed at capturing and engaging website visitors, rather than relying solely on ambassadors and events to provide basic information. Hence, Douthirt opted to trial Unibuddy’s Assistant, “Introducing Assistant was an obvious choice. I already knew that our ambassadors were tired of answering the same questions over and over again. Once I saw it as a solution for transactional-type questions to be addressed quickly and effectively by AI, and then having the student ambassadors talk about niche experiences or personal stories, it was a no-brainer to me.”

Douthirt and his team also aimed to expand connections for admitted students beyond traditional methods. So, they introduced Unibuddy Community to support admitted students in making friendships and helping them gain access to information and resources to make their final decision. Douthirt elaborates, “Community felt like the natural progression for us. Given our focus on driving application quality, enhancing our yield initiative was just as important. By using Community entirely for yield, students are already familiar with the platform, can engage with one another, learn about programs, and see what there is to do on campus; fostering a sense of commitment.”

With Unibuddy helping to facilitate every step of the prospective student’s journey, USF Muma College of Business is primed for success, offering comprehensive support to prospective students and remaining competitive in today’s higher education landscape.