Generating leads and quelling unique fears at Otis College of Art and Design

Challenge: Increase reach of enrollment team without increasing travel demands

Otis College of Art and Design were looking to recruit more students without increasing travel demands on their enrollment team.

Their primary goal was to connect with these prospective students at early stages of their enrollment journey.

With many tools requiring additional training, and strong learning curves, accessibility and usability were key for a successful edtech solution. They wanted to ensure that resources were available to students at all stages of their enrollment journey.

Solution: Unibuddy enables students to connect with student ambassadors regardless of location

By adopting Unibuddy, Otis College could now effectively fulfil requests from prospective students to speak with current students – a key part of researching higher ed art and design institutions.

Otis College implemented Unibuddy Chat and embedded Unibuddy traffic drivers across their website prompting connections to student ambassadors. They also found Zoom a helpful compliment to Unibuddy Chat – enabling students to continue conversations they have at Otis College virtual events.

Courtney Richter, Interim Director of Admissions at Otis College, reported that they have every major the school offers represented among their 12 student ambassadors. This makes it easy for prospective students to begin more relevant conversations with current students in their desired stream.

“It’s so informal. It’s very different from them talking to someone in the admissions office. So it just gives them a more comfortable way to connect,” she said.

Result: Unibuddy helps Richter source first-time leads by enabling student-to-student connections

“We were really thinking about Unibuddy for international students, bridging that gap,” said Richter. But explained that they ended up utilizing Unibuddy for domestic recruitment as well. “The breakdown between the two matches our enrollment pretty closely. So it’s cool to see that there was just as much of a need for it with our domestic prospective students.”

Richter also noted that Otis College has leveraged Unibuddy to help them source unique leads from Unibuddy. Through Unibuddy’s student-to-student chat capabilities, Otis College’s team of student ambassadors could instill interest in prospective students to learn more about their school.

“We rely on it so much now that it’s hard to imagine that we didn’t have it before. It’s helped us understand the importance of putting our students front and center,” Richter said. “It’s so seamless now and the conversations are happening all year long as opposed to just on Accepted Students Day or at other events.”

Prospective students feel like they’re getting very unfiltered, honest responses from current students. This is essential at an art school for which many prospective students have a unique set of concerns regarding their aptitude.

“A lot of students have that fear of ‘Is my work going to be good enough?’ They often ask our students to see some of their work,” said Richter. “It makes Otis College feel less intimidating when they’re actually connecting with a real student who got in and is here doing the work and doing well.”