Creating a sense of belonging is a key ingredient to a successful student recruitment strategy - students are more likely to enrol and arrive on campus on day one if they have formed a friendship group and made connections pre-arrival. They are also more likely to enrol if they have valuable touch points with your institution along the way: whether that's timely reminders throughout the enrolment process, or useful resources to help them make their decision.
It's also important to remember that one of the key reasons students cite for choosing an institution is not just the connections they make with peers, but the connections they’ve made with University Staff and lecturers before enrolling.
With that in mind, you could consider;
Incorporating lecturers/professors within your Community to give prospective students deeper insight into their area of study and future opportunities. We have seen great traction with well publicised AMA sessions in academic department Groups.
Directing to key teams/staff members from your Community, from Student Finance to Accommodation. You can pin contact details or departments in relevant groups, or post a PDF of key contacts in your Updates tab.
Introducing Office Hours for any Staff Ambassadors participating in your Community, so that they don't feel pressured to keep up conversations around the clock.
Inquiry Stage
As your prospects begin to make their initial decisions, now is a great time to bring them together.
You can use Community to complement and reinforce your recruitment campaign messaging, promote open events, and provide a space for students to feel reassured about choosing your institution. Here’s how:
Create Groups based on subjects of interest, and include relevant Ambassadors.
Add professional services staff so they can address those early concerns about financial aid and career prospects.
Start building relationships between students who might already have their offers in hand.
Offer Stage
Once you have sent out your offers, keep those accepted students warm by inviting them to their Offer Holder Community - an exclusive space where they can make friends, receive Updates from your team, and keep your institution front of mind.
Approve student-requested Groups to ensure your cohort can meet others who align with their interests and experiences.
Fill your To-Do's tool with valuable reminders, deadlines, events and links.
Post Polls and PDF docs in relevant Groups to gauge sentiment, gather real-time insights, and share the resources that students need to stay on track.
Orientation Stage
Orientation is a pivotal point in the student journey. This is the time when students have the most questions, so it’s important to create spaces where these burning questions are welcomed. Use your Community to:
Ensure everything students need in order to get oriented is posted in your To-Do's tool, from Welcome Week events to medical registration forms.
Enable students to meet others who will be studying on their course, living in their accommodation block, and with shared interests, by creating Groups to fit.
Promote your Orientation events through your Updates tab, so that students are prepped with key dates for their diaries.
Retention Stage
The key is to provide your student base with a space to create genuine bonds with others like them, whether it’s through shared life experiences, interests, or backgrounds. Community facilitates these conversations and provides an organic way for friendships to be formed. We’ve put together some ideas below on how to use Community to help with your retention efforts:
Create special interest and region-specific groups so students can bond with other students within the Community (ie. a drama & theatre group, the university/college football team, students from China, mature students, local commuters, neurodivergent students, LGBTQIA+ students etc).
Enable your existing clubs & societies to recruit new members through Community, so students can feel part of your thriving campus community before they’ve even joined.
Continue to showcase the great facilities, events, students, and services your institution can offer.
Remind your incoming students that Unibuddy Community can be accessed via the Unibuddy app - making it accessible from anywhere at any time.
We’ve seen great success with different use cases - from widening participation to exchange students, parents/guardians to peer mentorship schemes. Get in touch with your Customer Success Manager for more information on alternative Community use cases.