University of Arizona drives international recruitment with Unibuddy

The challenge

The University of Arizona was looking to bolster its recruitment strategies to hone in on the surplus of stealth applicants that they were getting.  As a large public university, they received plenty of website traffic but they weren’t necessarily seeing it translate to conversion.They were looking for a way to engage those visitors while capturing their information and providing them with answers to the questions they may have.

The solution

“What we liked about Unibuddy and why we signed on was the international focus of the platform, but also the fact that the platform would allow us to put our students at the forefront.” Associate Director, Enrollment Operations & Strategic Communications International Admissions Kayla Harvey Lugo explains. “A lot of prospective students want to hear from current students—they don’t just want to hear from recruiters who are toeing the company line.”

Arizona also appreciated the layers of protection that are added for ambassadors. As an asynchronous platform, they get to choose how much information that they want to disclose. “Leveraging Unibuddy’s robust customization features, we enforced a code of conduct on the signup page and restricted the chat popup to specific website pages. These deliberate adjustments significantly heightened the relevance and quality of interactions between our ambassadors and prospective students.” Tristan Boisseau, Communications Manager shares. 

Other vendors seemed to portray a more transactional relationship, while Unibuddy offered a partnership that was invested in helping the university reach its goals throughout the entire student journey. “The prospects insights tool acts as a valuable lens into Unibuddy’s impact across a student’s lifecycle. Looking ahead, our enthusiasm lies in seamlessly integrating Unibuddy with our CRM. Our vision extends beyond the prospect lifecycle, as we plan to encourage newly admitted students to actively engage with the platform, fostering a seamless and informative student lifecycle experience.”

The results 

Prior to the widespread promotion of Unibuddy, the university had only 534 visitors to the Unibuddy widget. In just two months the number of visitors skyrocketed to 4,607. “We’ve also experienced an increase in the number of countries that we’re seeing students come from. A majority of our visitors are coming from Pakistan and India,” said Lugo, “We’ve just seen so much growth and Unibuddy has really exceeded our expectations.”

“From Unibuddy, we had 27 applicants (a 6% conversion rate) and 6 enrollments (a 22% conversion rate). These rates are slightly higher than the conversion rates from larger digital marketing efforts (ad buys, retargeting, etc). This also tells me that students who are coming to our site through our ads are also likely engaging with the widget – we’re very happy with these rates. As we continue to use Unibuddy, sign-on more ambassadors, and implement Community, I am confident these numbers will continue to grow.” Lugo shares. 

Boisseau also highlights the helpful nature of Unibuddy’s tools, “The transformative impact of Unibuddy’s conversation insights on our marketing endeavours cannot be overstated. By unveiling prevalent student queries, we gained valuable insights that informed a targeted marketing strategy. Notably, understanding students’ concerns about the institution’s quality empowered us to spotlight our educational excellence through impactful email and social media campaigns.” 

He concludes, “In essence, our Unibuddy experience has not only tackled immediate challenges but has also positioned us for a more proactive and integrated approach to student engagement, marking the commencement of a transformative journey.”