đĄ Spend 10 minutes now, benefit all year
Your peer institutions are selected once, so taking a few minutes to choose similar universities will give you more meaningful benchmarking insights throughout the year.
To protect customer privacy and ensure fair benchmarking, your five chosen peer institutions can't be changed later. This also prevents institutions from swapping peers to identify another university's performance!
The good news is that you don't need to find the "perfect" five institutions. Aim for universities or schools that are broadly similar to yours, so your benchmarking insights are realistic and actionable.
A simple checklist
When selecting your five peers, ask yourself:
Are they a similar size to us?
Do they recruit a similar type of student?
Do they operate in similar markets or regions?
Do they offer comparable courses and/or programmes?
Would we realistically compare ourselves to them?
If the answer is "mostly yes", they're probably a good fit.
Think carefully before choosing very large universities
One of the most common mistakes is selecting institutions with significantly larger recruitment volumes.
For example, a smaller European institution might choose several large UK universities. While these may be well-known competitors, some UK universities often receive substantially more traffic, enquiries and applications, which naturally leads to higher numbers of sign-ups and conversations.
That doesn't mean your performance is weaker, it simply means you're comparing yourself against organisations operating at a very different scale.
Choosing peers of a similar size, brand recognisability, and offering will give you more meaningful insights and help you identify opportunities that are genuinely relevant to your institution.
You don't need to overthink it
We know the list of available institutions is extensive, and finding your five peers takes a little time.
A simple approach is to:
Scroll through the list and make a note of any suitable institutions.
Discuss peer candidates with your team, or with your Strategic Partnership Manager / Enablement Manager, who can also assist.
Once you've identified five candidates, enter your final selections.
Remember, these benchmarks are designed to provide helpful trends rather than create a league table. Choosing institutions that are broadly similar will give you the most useful context for understanding your own performance.
How to use your Peer Benchmarking data
Here are a few examples of how you might use your peer insights:
Your sign-up rate is lower than your peers
This could indicate that fewer prospective students are discovering your Unibuddy Chat platform or choosing to sign up to chat with an Ambassador.
Consider:
Promoting Unibuddy more prominently across your website with Traffic Drivers.
Adding more calls-to-action on course and subject pages.
Including links to your Chat platform in applicant email campaigns.
Reviewing whether your Ambassadors, content and landing pages are relevant to your key audiences.
You're seeing fewer student conversations
If students are signing up but not starting conversations, think about what might encourage engagement.
You could:
Add new Ambassadors representing popular courses or student groups.
Try some quick wins such as encouraging Ambassadors to add GIF profile images - a small touch that makes Ambassador profiles more engaging and approachable.
Publish fresh Content that answers common applicant questions.
Create Saved Answers for Ambassadors.
Review Ambassador response times to ensure students receive timely replies.
Your peers are reaching more countries
This may highlight opportunities to better support your international recruitment goals.
You might:
Recruit Ambassadors from priority international markets.
Put a call out for Ambassador Content tailored to prospective students from specific countries or regions.
Promote your platform within country-specific recruitment campaigns.
Different programmes or conversation topics are emerging
Your benchmarking insights may reveal trends that you hadn't considered.
For example, if comparable institutions are seeing high engagement around accommodation, student finance or employability, consider whether you could:
Encourage new Content covering these topics.
Recruit Ambassadors with relevant experiences.
Run campaigns that answer these questions earlier in the applicant journey.
Launch dedicated Community Spaces for high-interest topics.
Remember: look for trends, not league tables
The most valuable benchmarking doesn't tell you whether you're "winning" or "losing", it helps you spot patterns and identify opportunities to improve.
Small changes, informed by meaningful comparisons, can have a significant impact on student engagement over time.