Switching peer-to-peer platforms

Huron at Western

Switching peer-to-peer student recruitment platforms


About Huron University College

Huron University College, also known as Huron at Western, is a small Liberal Arts University in Ontario, Canada, and the founding member of University of Western Ontario. It has 1,500+ full time undergrad students.

The Challenge

When it comes to engaging prospective students in their enrolment journey, connecting them with current students is a key piece of the puzzle, and one that can lead future students to make decisions more confidently. As a believer in peer-to-peer marketing, Huron implemented an alternative platform to enable their team of student ambassadors to share their experiences with future students. 

Only, it didn’t quite deliver the results they were expecting, to the point that the team started looking for alternatives in the peer-to-peer space. But how do you switch platforms smoothly without disrupting existing processes and adding to a busy workload?

Student

Why The Ambassador Platform

Huron's team needed a solution that would deliver on three key problem areas:

The Ambassador Platform ticked all three boxes (and more), prompting Huron University College to take the leap.
 

See Huron at Western's Feed
  • More engaging content - their previous platform focused on long-form content like blogs, making ambassador involvement challenging, and there was no real sense of community among them.
  • Better student engagement - they found that the alternative platform didn’t showcase student life in an accessible and eye-catching way.
  • Better reporting - They needed a solution with strong reporting features to track ambassador activity and prospective students’ engagement.

User-Friendly Interface

The Ambassador app is user friendly, making it easier for Ambassadors to engage with it regularly.
 

Powerful Admin Dashboard

With its analytics and reporting tools, the team can effectively monitor engagement and plan their next steps accordingly.

User Generated Content

The social media-style UGC section of the Feed is authentic and vibrant, creating  a sense of community.

 

 

The Switch

The idea of switching providers from an established service is always daunting - the Huron team had questions round the length and difficulty of the transition process. Would the staff embrace it? Would the ambassadors be resistant to the change? Once it was all said and done, they found the switch easier and quicker than expected:
 

  • Some of the TAP team visited the Huron team in person to provide initial support and guidance. 
  • The onboarding guides and resources on the Dashboard were very handy.
  • The Ambassador Training Centre made ambassador onboarding a smooth process (and the team didn’t need to personally chase and train ambassador.
     

“Our team faced challenges in how to motivate students to create content, where to gather this content, and where to showcase it. One of the key factors that attracts students to our university is our strong sense of community, but it's been difficult for prospective students and their families to truly understand what our community is like. TAP's content tab is the perfect solution to this problem: our Student Ambassadors enjoy sharing their day-to-day experiences, and this has made a significant difference in allowing us to share their stories while our recruitment team travels the world to attract the next generation of students!” 

Linea Strong, 
Director, Recruitment
Huron at Western

 

The Experience

The Huron team fully embraced The Ambassador Platform, and deemed the rollout a success. Since then:

  • Collaboration between admin staff and ambassadors has improved, and so has the content output, thanks to some friendly competition with prizes awarded to the most engaged ambassadors.
  • The quality of peer-to-peer conversation has increased. More engaged ambassadors = faster responses and longer interactions with prospective students.
  • Comprehensive student engagement tracking led to better leads for the Student Recruitment team.
     

“Using TAP has completely changed how I interact with potential university students. I love that I can use the application like social media, and display pictures of my university life. Building an identity on the platform allows students to have a better perspective of what student life at Huron looks like. Personally, I find it to be much more engaging than the platform we were using before because it is more user friendly and modelled more similarly to apps I interact with on a daily basis” 

Student Ambassador
Huron at Western

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