Case Study: The University of South Australia

The University of South Australia (UniSA) is the largest public research university in South Australia. It has six campuses spread across the state, including in the capital of Adelaide. As an enterprising and inclusive university, UniSA seeks to constantly improve the quality of engagement with its many prospective international students.

Fully believing in the importance of peer-to-peer connections and wanting to maximise the impact of their student ambassador programme, UniSA implemented an alternative peer-to-peer platform.

But something wasn’t quite right: while the University’s international team had plenty of experience in using ambassadors to engage prospective students, middle-of-the-funnel conversions were a bit low. They also found that their platform just wasn't delivering clear insights into prospects' behaviours. Fortunately, The Ambassador Platform was there to save the day.

The University of South Australia had already established a connection between their ambassadors and prospective international students. The challenge was taking that engagement to the next level, and The Ambassador Platform’s user-generated content (UGC) feature provided the perfect opportunity to do just that.

By creating their own content, ambassadors can show exactly what makes student life in Adelaide a unique experience, in a way that comes across as more authentic and relatable than other types of content.

UGC went a long way in boosting the effectiveness of their social media, a channel where 82% of all prospective students initiate their interactions with a university.

The International team at UniSA also needed to report on the incredible work their ambassadors were doing for them. The AI-enabled reports and insights on the platform allow them to measure engagement across the recruitment funnel, track the ROI on their ambassador initiatives and shape their marketing messaging based on the topics and themes prospective students are interested in.

Seamless CRM integration

The API integration from the platform to UniSA's CRM shows the impact of the peer-to-peer connections formed by student ambassadors on their conversion data.

Easy user-generated content

User-generated content brings UniSa's TAP Feed to life, showing off what life in Adelaide is really like.

Data insights

The AI-enabled reports and insights mean that UniSA can measure engagement across the recruitment funnel, and track ROI on the ambassador initiatives.

In the first 8 months after switching to The Ambassador Platform, UniSA saw some incredible results:

Their offer holder conversion rate increased by 3%, from 11.73% to 14.75%. That translates into a 26% increase in offers accepted.
600+ prospects from 66 countries have engaged in peer-to-peer conversations with student ambassadors and saw some of the 150 pieces of user-generated content shared by the marketing team at UniSA.
11,277 messages have been exchanged between prospects and ambassadors about student life, courses, learning experience, Adelaide city and much more.

“What has impressed us at UniSA International the most is how important the International Student Ambassadors are to The Ambassador Platform team. When the Co-Founder of the company takes the time to meet with your ambassadors, listen to their feedback and provide personal advice to guide them to become expert users of the platform through authentic engagement, you know it’s a winning formula for success”

Aleicia Shekhar
Deputy Director: International
University of South Australia

University of South Australia

The Challenge

Why The Ambassador Platform

Seamless CRM integration

Easy user-generated content

Data insights

The impact

“Compared to the previous year, our offer holder conversion rate increased by 26%.”