Connecting Prospective Students with Your Higher Ed Team
Edusakha plays a pivotal role as the bridge between prospective students and your higher ed team. This connection provides a convenient, authentic, and personalised glimpse into your institution. But why is this connection so crucial? Unibuddy data reveals that 92% of Gen Z students believe that speaking to a student ambassador can significantly influence their higher ed decision. Additionally, 50% of prospective students lack confidence in their core academic abilities, and this fear can be eased through a simple conversation with a current student.
This guide will show you how to seamlessly integrate Edusakha into your higher ed marketing, recruitment, and admissions strategies:
Personalize Your Higher Ed Brand for Prospective Students
- Add Student Ambassadors to Your Higher Ed Website
Your website is often the first point of contact for prospective students, with approximately 75% of them seeking initial information about higher ed programs online. Gen Z students, known for seeking authentic information, have an attention span of just eight seconds. Hence, you need to deliver the information they seek within one to two clicks. Otherwise, 40% of prospective students will turn to social media for a second opinion.
Edusakha, through Unibuddy’s higher ed solutions, can capture this audience before they bounce. We provide direct connections to student ambassadors or student-generated content through traffic drivers that can be embedded throughout your website. These traffic drivers enable instant connections with student ambassadors, individuals Gen Z trusts.
Edusakha Platform traffic drivers include:
- Popcards: These are compact, clear calls-to-action (CTAs) that guide prospective students to student ambassador, staff, or faculty profiles. You can customize the type of profile displayed based on attributes like program of study, degree level, or the country of origin for international student
- Buddy Cards: Single or multiple student profiles designed to snap to static page layouts, appearing in either left or right columns. Clicking these cards links prospective students to chat with the featured student ambassador.
- Chat Bubble: This is a floating chat button located at the bottom right-hand corner of a page. With customizable CTA text, clicking this button connects prospective student traffic directly to student ambassadors or higher ed staff.
When choosing the most suitable Edusakha traffic driver or version for a page or campaign, consider your objectives. If you aim to build engagement on a staff page or promote a specific course offering, consider integrating a carousel of related staff-specific profiles. If you want to highlight specific program diversity, use the popcard traffic driver to feature a student ambassador who can speak to this initiative. If you’re concerned about user drop-offs on specific pages of your website, consider adding a chat bubble.
Core pages on your site can also help direct students to more information. For example, you can embed a chat bubble on your ‘Contact Us’ page to provide prospective students with a direct link to speak with a student ambassador or staff member. Student experience pages or frequently visited pages are excellent areas to embed traffic drivers, as many prospective students seek second opinions on these pages (55% turn to social media for more information). However, avoid overwhelming your audience with traffic drivers, as this can lead to confusion. While strategically placing Edusakha Platform traffic drivers throughout your website is beneficial, we recommend adding no more than one traffic driver to a single page. You can also test alternative custom calls-to-action (CTAs) to drive traffic to specific pages where the Edusakha Platform is embedded.
- Support Personalized Outreach Campaigns to Students
While Unibuddy pulse data tells us that only 35% of higher ed professionals list email as a critical part of their outreach programs, over 50% of Gen Z students still find it to be an effective outreach method. In addition, 88% list student-to-student engagement as critical, and 75% emphasize the importance of social media. With Edusakha’s higher ed solutions, you can merge these outreach methods effectively.
You can launch various outreach programs, from email campaigns to prospective students to social media posts promoting your brand and featuring your student ambassador program. Mass form emails are no longer effective in today’s market. Instead, send customizable prompts to prospective students to connect directly with student ambassadors or join inclusive higher ed communities with their peers.
There are countless ways to embed Edusakha into outreach campaigns to add another layer of engagement. For example, when launching an email campaign to a specific target audience of prospective students, you can add additional CTAs for subsequent connections with relevant student ambassadors. These connections can be made through direct profile links, customized QR codes, or links to pages embedded with the Edusakha Platform. Adding links to student ambassadors not only makes your emails more personalized but also adds a dynamic and real tone to your communication.
You can also add depth to existing outreach programs. For instance, focus on a particular geographical region, subject area, or student group you wish to engage with. Include a student ambassador representing this demographic cohort in your outreach campaign to speak personally about their experiences. This approach makes your campaign more tailored, personal, and authentic, meeting Gen Z’s demands.
Additionally, promote your student ambassador stories through your social media channels. This is a cost-effective alternative to paid social ads. When coordinated with your social media strategy, student ambassadors placed strategically can create a clear path to authentic engagement with your team. Links or QR codes linking prospective students with student ambassadors ensure that conversations continue beyond static posts and lead your audience toward more consistent and accessible brand-owned channels.
iii. Enhance Your Student Onboarding Process
Edusakha data tells us that 90% of students feel nervous during the period between enrollment and arrival. These nerves can be caused by various concerns, from making friends to fears of academic failure, resulting in higher melt rates.
Edusakha’s peer-to-peer (P2P) solutions can help your higher ed marketing, recruitment, or admissions team support admitted students, ensuring they feel at ease well before arriving on campus. By connecting admitted students with student ambassadors or a branded community of their peers, you can provide them with the support they need to transition into school life.
Edusakha Community can serve as a tool to keep admitted students up-to-date with important information about their onboarding process, key dates, or events. By leveraging the ‘Updates’ section of Edusakha Community, you can easily share and pin updates for students in various formats, including PDFs. This ensures that students remain engaged and that your onboarding process stays organised.
Back Your Marketing Program with Higher Ed Data at Every Step
- Conversational Insights Help You Stay Informed
Edusakha Chat isn’t just a messaging tool; it’s a marketing tool that can provide valuable insights into your target audience. Through the powerful university dashboard in the Edusakha Platform, your team can filter anonymous conversational data to gain insights into key themes and topics that prospective students are concerned about. This data can inform immediate actions and help you understand what your target audiences want.
- Better Filters for More Higher Ed Funnel Visibility
Knowing where a student is in their journey is crucial for any higher ed marketing, recruitment, or admissions plan. Edusakha allows your team to filter students in real-time based on self-reported data and their stage in your higher ed funnel. These filters help you gain more visibility into students’ concerns, and the AI-powered conversational insights provide insights into where you’re succeeding and where you’re not.
Filtering your audience by funnel stage can reveal actionable items to inform your higher ed marketing or recruitment plan as a whole.
iii. Use Higher Ed Funnel Insights to Analyze Student Engagement
Leveraging conversational data and insights from the Edusakha Platform allows you to track how a student’s engagement with student ambassadors changes over time. By filtering students by decision stages, from exploration to acceptance, you can gain valuable insights for your student ambassadors or higher ed team. These insights can be condensed into internal guides, FAQs, or one-pagers for future use.
- Use Higher Ed Funnel Insights to Better Understand Prospective Student Demographics
By analyzing student funnel data according to the country of origin and interests in the ‘Prospect Analytics’ section of the Edusakha university dashboard, you can identify demographic gaps or issues in your higher ed funnel. This granular analysis can help you take appropriate actions.
For example, if you’re having trouble converting prospective domestic undergraduate students toward your STEM offerings, Edusakha’s conversational insights might reveal that these students drop off during initial exploration stages. An actionable insight would be to promote domestic undergraduate student ambassadors to this demographic earlier in their higher ed journey.
Conclusion
Edusakha, powered by the oneglobaluni, provides a holistic solution to connect prospective students with your higher ed team, personalize your outreach, enhance the onboarding process, and back your marketing program with data-driven insights. By implementing these strategies, you can engage with your target audience effectively and meet the demands of Gen Z students, who seek authenticity and personalization throughout their higher ed journey. Edusakha’s tools, such as chat, traffic drivers, and the community, empower your higher ed institution to create meaningful connections and provide valuable information to prospective students.
To learn more about how Edusakha can transform your higher ed marketing, recruitment, and admissions efforts, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team. We’re here to help you reach new heights in student engagement.
