University of East Anglia leverages Unibuddy and UCAS partnership to compliment its events strategy

The challenge

In December 2021, University of East Anglia (UEA) was looking for a way to leverage its partnerships with both UCAS and Unibuddy (UK-based Universities and Colleges Admissions Service). Keen to foster a culture of innovation within its marketing and recruitment teams, the goal was to do something different to complement its existing webinars.

With the January UCAS application deadline looming, the team at UEA had to act fast if they wanted to catch students at this pivotal point of the admissions cycle.

The solution

Using the Unibuddy Events webinar experience, the team at UEA hosted an hour-long Q&A event entitled “It’s not too late to apply! Uni application tips from UCAS and UEA experts.” Through the Unibuddy Events live stream feature, prospective students were able to ask their questions directly to UEA staff and students as well as a representative from UCAS and receive their answers through a live video stream.

Paul Napleton, Head of Digital Automation at UEA, described Unibuddy as “the glue” that helped facilitate and enable the collaboration between UCAS and UEA.

Throughout the set-up of the event, the university found Unibuddy’s help center useful and gathered inspiration from it to create its own UEA-specific guides for staff and students alike. The team also spoke about how helpful running test events were prior to the big day, allowing staff (both internal and external) and students to familiarize themselves with the tech before the “real thing.”

“Unibuddy is really user-friendly and has a really good support network,” said Head of Digital & Marketing Automation Paul Napleton at UEA.

The results 

The event itself was attended by more than 60 prospective students (a 35% attendance rate), with 80+ messages exchanged including personal statements and conversations about references, applying for multiple courses, combined honors, and how to talk about online qualifications (and MOOCS) within the UCAS application, to name a few.

UEA was able to gather information about its prospective students through its sign-up fields, including course(s) of interest, year of entry, level of study, and country. This data is integrated into its CRM system, allowing them to send more personalized and dynamic communications based on the student’s interests, using data that added value to continue building an authentic relationship.

Another touch that UEA incorporated into its post-event strategy was creating a blog post for students who couldn’t attend or who wanted a recap, also meeting its accessible brand guidelines, which covered a helpful timeline of the application process.

The event was promoted in several different places, and with such a short turnaround time, it was important to make sure that students were aware the event was happening. Amongst all of its promotion channels, the team found that the average conversion rate through UEA marketing channels (including social channels) was 17% and 3.8% for third-party display advertising.

Going forward, the staff at UEA are excited for future opportunities to explore their existing partnerships in exciting and inventive ways—through true collaboration and mutual value exchange.