This article will share five ways digital ambassadors & TAP can enhance your Open Day experience
For both education providers and future students, Open Day is one of the most exciting and important days of the year! After two years of adapting to COVID-19 and hosting virtual equivalents, many institutions and students are looking forward to meeting on campus for their 2022 Open Day. While the buzz on campus is an exciting aspect of the day, it’s important to have information accessible to students who can’t make it in person whether domestic or international, and have interactive ways to keep the conversation going before and after Open Day. Digital ambassadors provide the opportunity to showcase your unique student experience and show your prospective students what life is like at your institution.
Here are five ways digital ambassadors can enhance the Open Day experience, whether yours is on-campus, online or hybrid!
1. Providing insight into student life through one-to-one online chat
While your prospects might be attending a few Open Days, by connecting them with your digital ambassadors through one-to-one online chats, prospects can hear first-hand about life at your university from a current student, building genuine relationships with them and making your institution memorable.
“Live chat platforms give our University a space to invite prospective international students to connect with our current students, academic staff and support teams - allowing our Ambassadors to share their first hand experience at our university and answer direct questions relevant to the applicant. During the 2021 University of Waikato Virtual Open Day TAP played a key role in making the event a success. TAP’s live chat function was one of the top five links visited on our website during this event and international interaction totalled 227 messages sent during the event.” - University of Waikato
2. Engaging prospects before the Open Day
The best part about digital ambassadors is that future students can reach them quickly and easily! Through TAP, you can set-up group chats with your digital ambassadors and create a buzz before they even attend the Open Day. Furthermore, you can ask your ambassadors to answer FAQs about Open Day, such as "Why should I go to Open Day?" or "What happens at Open Day?" to encourage more prospects to attend. We also recommend implementing carousels or pop-cards to direct students from your Open Day webpage to your feed.
As part of their International Online Open Day, the University of Sunderland embedded a carousel of staff ambassador profiles on the event’s microsite. Prospects were able to ask their International Development Assistants anything - from how to make an application, what courses are available, and entry requirements. International offer holders were also able to ask about the status of their application, find out about how to apply for a visa, and next steps.
The University of Sunderland saw 63 new prospects sign up as a result of the carousel placed on their Open Day microsite. 893 messages were sent on the day asking about ongoing and future applications, and prospects from 17 countries participated. Want to learn more? Read their case study here.
3. Capturing prospects who couldn’t attend
As always there are students who simply cannot attend the Open Day in person even if they were planning to. If you have students who have registered to attend Open Day but didn’t make it, you can send them an email to direct them to chat with a digital ambassador. This engages them in an interactive way without them having to travel to your campus. The ambassadors can help make your institution memorable and answer questions they were hoping to ask on the day.
4. Keeping the conversation going
Similar to the above, giving prospective students the opportunity to continue the conversation after they leave your campus is a great way to keep them engaged with your organisation and answer any of those questions that pop up after they’ve gone home from the event. If you have a feed, you can direct future students to continue the conversation with QR codes on prospective guides, banners as they leave your campus or even on staff T-shirts.
5. Showcase engaging user generated content
Open Day is the perfect opportunity to collect user generated content from ambassadors. Many institutions will use the same ambassadors for their digital and in-person marketing efforts, so when your current students are out and about on Open Day you can ask them to send epic pics of campus to share on your website and socials later! We recommend our content groups, and content schedule tool on TAP to do this. With Image-first design becoming more and more powerful when marketing to today’s future students, the user-generated content provided by your digital ambassadors can clearly and quickly show what life on campus would be like for the prospective student.
Good luck with your Open Days and if you need any more help getting the most from our platform please contact your Customer Success Manager or contact support@theambassadorplatform.com.