Maximising high-intent engagement on your Chat platform

Attracting both high-intent and discovery-stage prospects to your Unibuddy Chat platform helps you to cover all stages of your recruitment funnel.

High-intent students arrive with specific questions and are close to making their final decision - so connecting them with your Student and/or Staff Ambassadors builds trust, removes barriers, and increases application conversion.

Meanwhile, prospects who may be early in their research benefit from authentic, low-pressure conversations that help them form a positive first impression and stay engaged with your institution longer. By capturing and nurturing both audiences, you can create a more robust pipeline, increase qualified enquiries, and guide more students towards enrolment.

First and foremost - and one of the mistakes we have seen made - don't bury your Chat platform widget! The below example pages already attract warm prospects, so are the perfect place for a pop card or other Traffic Driver, directing interested students straight to your Chat platform:

You might even add your own custom CTAs to drive even more traffic:

CTA examples

This captures prospects at the exact moment they need reassurance.

Students are more likely to sign up to chat with your Ambassadors when they see someone whose experiences and insights they identify with.

You can use tailored traffic drivers such as Pop Cards, Buddy Cards, or Carousels:

You also have the option tp add a custom filter to your Chat platform - a valuable customisation which increases sign-ups and fosters belonging.

Add Unibuddy CTA blocks into:

These are extremely high-yield if placed near the top of the email.

Use social Ambassador-generated content:

Remember - students trust the opinions and experiences of other students!

Some institutions even integrate Unibuddy into their paid marketing campaigns across social platforms. They use Unibuddy Ambassadors in:

Link directly to your Chat platform, and consider UTM source tracking, so you can get a sense of how much traffic these ads are driving.

It stands to reason that many of your high-intent prospects will attend some type of virtual or in-person session.

This keeps the engagement alive after your events and webinars end - and provides

Audit your student recruitment funnel and identify where students tend to drop off:

Recruit Student Ambassadors who can fill those information gaps, and make sure you promote those profiles proactively.

As an example, you could interview an international Ambassador and create a “How I handled the visa process – chat with me” campaign - sending email comms, sharing the interview on your blog or international pages with the Ambassador's buddy card embedded, promoting on socials, and adding a slide into webinars.

Do you use guides or brochures to generate interest in particular subject areas, or your institution as a whole? Simply put, a lead magnet is a a piece of valuable content or resource that you offer in exchange for a prospect’s contact information.

In other words: it’s something attractive enough that a potential student is willing to “opt in” to your marketing funnel. Here are a few examples:

These attract higher-intent prospects than more generic guides - such as an overall university prospectus.

I'm sure we can all agree that attracting more prospect leads is a good thing, but attracting more qualified, decision-ready leads ensures you know where to direct your resource and energies.

Here are some suggestions for improving the quality of leads coming through to your Ambassadors:

This ensures you funnel the right prospects to the Ambassadors best placed to answer their questions.

Indicators to track include:

This allows you to reallocate or reinforce traffic, such as adding a Traffic Driver to your highest-converting page.