Community is the next best thing to being on campus: it helps incoming students get excited about their new life by connecting with other offer-holders and current students during the application journey. This makes them more likely to pick your institution as their first choice.
With Community, you can create customised spaces for your future students to interact in (particularly offer holders) organised around interests, backgrounds, and study subjects. Set your community up on the dashboard, invite your prospects via email to join, and get them chatting in our Future Student App.
Once they accept the invite, your prospective students will be able to take part in group conversations, connect with current students or other prospective applicants in 121 chats, and access media created by peers.
As an admin, you’ll be able to oversee all conversations and have the option to step in when needed. You can keep track of invite acceptance and engagement rates all from your admin dashboard.
Why is it important?
In a recent survey, we found that almost 80% of prospective students said that it was important for them to have a sense of belonging to the university before applying or accepting an offer.
We know that prospects are typically engaging on social media and often create their own group chats through these channels to fill this gap and create connections with their future classmates. This can make it difficult for universities to understand what prospective students care about, and keep students safe and correctly informed when these interactions take place.
We also asked prospective students if a digital community for students would be appealing to them. Similarly, 80% of respondents said that they would appreciate a community space to chat to current students and other applicants.
How is Community different from the Group Chats feature?
Group Chats are a solution better positioned to support early stages conversions, particularly at application stage. While the ability to chat in groups is one feature of Community, it offers much more:
- Community lets prospective students connect with each other and then start 121 chats with fellow applicants (not just with ambassadors)
- Community is about much more than just chatting: it gives members access to tailored media and (if you're using our Streams feature) online events
- Community can be an invite-only space exclusively for whitelisted students (read more about our safeguarding functionality to learn more!)
Building a digital community sounds great! How do I get started?
If you don't currently have access to this feature and would like to learn more about it, please reach out to your Dedicated Customer Success Manager or email support@theambassadorplatform.com for more information.
We have also created a short guide on how to create and manage your Community spaces. We look forward to seeing your digital community come to life very soon!