Taking current students online at Rotterdam School of Management

Rotterdam School of management, Erasmus University (RSM) recruits domestically and internationally for a range of courses at both Bachelor’s and Master’s level.

They implemented Unibuddy to get their best advocates – their current students – online.

Unibuddy’s range of tools for monitoring, management and insights has meant it is the perfect tool for peer-to-peer.

As Johanna Goossens, Recruitment and Communications Manager, said:

“We’ve been using ambassadors and peer-to-peer communication for a while, but we used to use Facebook. It had no lead generation and no monitoring capabilities, so Unibuddy has really enhanced our capability in that way.”

“It is very important for prospective students to hear from current students and it is very impactful, hearing from a current student really will make the difference.”

The university recruited 50 ambassadors from a range of programs to be on the Unibuddy platform. Within just one month, there were over 180 sign-ups

Johanna Goossens, Recruitment and Communications Manager, explains how they recruit their students:

“Our Master’s programs are only one year. We start the recruitment process once they’ve accepted their offer, in the summer.

“We send them a mail asking them if they’d like to be an ambassador, and there’s an interview process in the first week of September.”

They limit their Bachelor’s ambassadors to second-year students, who have had more time to get to know the school, the city, and the student life.

What Johanna is looking for throughout the recruitment process is students who want to make an impact: “We try to look for students who are in it for the right reasons and really want to help prospective students.”

Unibuddy has made ambassador training and management easy. We provide ambassador training webinars, as well as training materials.

Johanna complements this with relevant information about RSM, such as links to key pages about visas and financial aid.

Ongoing ambassador management is also straightforward, thanks to Unibuddy’s dashboard:

“With any kind of ambassadors, you have to monitor their work and Unibuddy makes this easy. It’s not too intensive – we look through unanswered conversations which usually takes about 1 hour a week.”

Just one month after launching, RSM’s Unibuddy platform had 182 sign ups.

As Johanna says: “It is very important for prospective students to hear from current students and it is very impactful, hearing from a current student really will make the difference.”

Rotterdam School of Management uses the main widget, pop cards and Buddy Cards embedded across the site to drive traffic to their chat page.

They have also created their own graphics and widgets, linking to Unibuddy. They are marketing it across a range of channels.

Johanna said: “We are also using it more and more in our e-marketing mailings to our leads. We’ve run an Instagram campaign, highlighting a particular ambassador.”

One of the benefits of Unibuddy is the ability to get a real insight into student conversations and profiles.

RSM found that students from outside the EEA had very different concerns about higher education, and will use these new insights to inform their marketing.

They also gained insights into how conversation topics different between their Bachelor’s and Master’s prospective students