Dive Deeper with Unibuddy: From A to Gen Z: Catering to the Students of Today

The cake.

Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon depending on where you were joining us from in the world.

My name is Peter McKay, one of the assistant directors of service here at technicians, and I'm joined by several friends here today who will introduce themselves coming up in a few moments. This session is called dive deeper with you. The money from age to genz, catering to the students of today and Rachel Martin from anybody will be taking us over in one moment as soon as I pass over this one small, important housekeeping slide, which is all the things that you need to know about today's session. So today's session is being recorded and it will be made.

Available to you and you'll be sent to that information. You can share that with others who have those permissions. Closed captioning is enabled up at the upper right hand side. If you need that, just click on that C button. Right next to that is the full screen button if you'd like to go full screen for yourself, and if you're finding some audio issues, if things are starting to echo or something like that. It's sometimes help for you to refresh the page and that will log you out and log you back in and you should be good to go. At that point, if you have questions, there will be questions that they will.

They had.

Answer later on in the chat. So go ahead and start putting those into the chat window over on the right hand side and you can also turn off that chat if you would like with the chat icon up in the upper right. Housekeeping is now done. I will now pass it over to Rachel Martin from anybody. Rachel?

Just.

Alright.

Fantastic. Thank you, Peter. Hi, everyone. I'm Rachel Martin with the unibody team and I'm extremely excited to be back on this late stage to have a conversation. I've got some really great friends joining me today. As Peter mentioned, the topic of our conversation is from A to Gen Z, catering to the students of today. And I know you're not a shy group and I already see some of you saying hello. So everyone, tell us your name, what school you're from and let's keep it interesting. What's your pets name? Your dog? Your cat? Your salamander, whatever the case may be.

I think that.

Let's get to know you a little bit better, so let's go ahead and dive right on in. I'm going to go through the agenda first, just to set the stage. So first, I'm going to go ahead and provide a brief introduction about why we're here today. Then we'll go ahead and dive right into it and share insights gathered from our machine learning powered analysis of over 1,000,000 messages sent through the unibody platform and our recent survey of over 1200 Gen Z students, which showcases what students truly care about, how they want to be reached.

Yeah.

Yeah.

13 hours.

And when discussions are happening and how those topics differ based on maybe their individual demographics, next we'll be chatting with Jake Babb and Jane Johnson, members of the Washington State University Marketing and student recruitment teams who are using both unibody and slate to boost their impact in attracting the best and the brightest. I'll then go ahead and walk through how unibody approaches higher Ed recruitment and how we plug into your slate higher Ed instance. Then I'll go ahead and open the floor from you all. So again.

Part.

Most importantly, this is a conversation and a discussion. Please get involved. Submit any comments or questions that you might have. As I mentioned, I know you're not a shy group, so don't hesitate to jump in, but I'll go first. So I'm Rachel Martin. I'm a university partnerships manager here at Uno buddy, the number one peer-to-peer engagement platform throughout the student journey. I'm here in Kalamazoo, MI with my dog, Jelly Bean. I'm hopefully she don't have too much to say today and I have the pleasure of moderating today's session with the amazing Shane Johnson and Jake.

This one.

General.

Um so Shane is the manager of marketing and communications for WSU's international admissions. He supports WSU international recruiters and admissions counselors with marketing materials and informative communications for students in the admissions process. Jake is the international new student coordinator at WSU. Jake works with incoming international students from the time they're admitted to picking them up at the airport. I'm curious if you offer that service to friends and family as well.

And getting them connected to resources in the first few days of campus. So, Shane, most importantly, what kind of pet do you have and what are their names?

Can you hear me OK?

I can, yeah.

OK, I got.

Thanks everybody. I'm Shane and I have two cats I have Dan and comet are my 2 cats.

Fantastic. Thanks, Shane. What about you, Jake? What do you got?

Yeah.

Ohh.

Um, just some fish? Yeah, no, that's. I do have a awesome newborn baby here, so hopefully she will behave. I guess. Fortunately get to work from home, so hopefully she stays. Stays behaved for now, but yeah.

Hello.

Grenade.

They're very good. We like children, too, you know? They're great as well. And congratulations on the newborn baby. Excellent. So why are we here today? We want to provide you with an overview of how reaching Gen Z is different and why digital Ed tech tools are important for reaching today's generation of students. We also want to show you the power of combining unibody with slate and how this can change the way you recruit incoming classes of students. And of course, the best part of today's.

Presentation as we're going to be asking our lovely WSU team on their experience, they're going to go ahead and share insights about student recruitment and how they use the technology like Slate and unibody to meet their goals. And we're really curious to see what the future of higher Ed recruitment looks like them for as well. Excuse me, but first I'm going to go ahead and start off by walking you through some of the amazing insights on the Gen Z unibody survey that we've collected and how we've analyzed that data, collected both.

From gensy and higher recruitment professionals and also the millions of messages that are sent through our higher Ed student to student platform. So let's go ahead and dive into some of this information. I'm going to start by grabbing some market insights on Gen Z, so your primary target audience. We recently conducted our annual Pulse Student survey amongst Gen Z. So this study pulled insights from over 1200 student respondents tailored to their admissions journey and what we found.

That although authenticity is king, there's more to the story. One of balance. While authenticity is defined by personalization, the reciprocal can be said of personalization. You need to meet them in the middle. Gen Z is disinterested in mass messaging. They're wary of advertising. They want equal parts pathos and logos. But how do you even meet the sweet spot and scale to a digital audience? More importantly, how do you create an authentic experience on scale?

Without losing that personal touch. So according to survey data, it really does come down to peer-to-peer.

So moving right along, Generation Z is the first generation in history made-up of digital natives. Digital technology has been available at their fingertips since the day they were born. They're more comfortable with digital communication and use it as an extension of themselves. We've all seen that phone attached to their hands that they wouldn't part ways with for many millions of dollars, I'm sure, but they still want to be, they still want to feel special and to feel wanted. So our survey data.

Echoes this claim with supporting calls for personalized digital communications. Specifically, 69% of respondents would be open to using a new communication tool like unibody if it helped to make them more informed decisions during their research. But in addition to academics, they're also looking for tailored digital approaches to earning their attention outside of the classroom. So what does that include? Mass form emails are regarded by this demographic as spam and rank among the most ineffective.

Ways to reach them, as are most traditional methods like snail mail. Your website still does need to provide this information to them though, because 72% of respondents said that they rely on higher Ed websites to pre qualify themselves for further research. So they're checking programs in their area if it's in their price range, scholarships, financial aid items like this directly from your site.

But they're also looking for information that you might not be able to provide on just a website. They're arriving with a whole variety of concerns unrelated to the formal recruitment process. Our data found that flat spreads across a variety of worries, from making friends to academic failure to simply making the wrong choice. Over half of respondents said connecting with fellow students prior to arrival would help to alleviate these concerns specifically, 92% saying that just speaking with the current student.

To help them with their search process, they want to speak with someone who has been in their shoes. This is that pathos first logos balance 42% said that. The same with connecting with professors prior to class starts. So maybe they want to talk to faculty, understand what the curriculum really looks like, and more than one in 10 students said that they look to feel good vibes, if you will, as soon as they arrive at your website. So what are the takeaways here? Reaching Gen Z through e-mail is only effective with heavily personalized content.

Respondents single out mass e-mail form emails as considered spam and pulling students to your website is effective when you answer their questions regarding programs, tuitions and costs. But you also need a way to provide them with self initiated personalization and those conversations that come with that with staff and students to ask questions that are really important to them. So what does that mean? In other words, authenticity through personalization.

I also want to take a minute to highlight some key takeaways from a recent poll survey that we did where we spoke with 798 higher Ed professionals. So your very audience across 52 different countries. These respondents were asked to answer 26 questions related to attracting the next generation of recruitment students. So here is what we found in that study. Number one, competition is fierce and you need to make your logo stand out among the crowd, so not surprisingly.

Respondents were primarily concerned with great career progression, financial aid, and where are your university ranks? Yet increases in student expectations and demands are seen as the biggest disruptions coming to higher Ed over the next five years. Much of Gen Z wants universities to take stands on issues from climate change to social justice. But to avoid making generalizations, respondents stress the importance of gathering and consulting data on what makes students tick with tools like.

Anybody, for example. In other words, you need to blend your logos and pathos to stand out from the crowd. #2 reaching Gen Z students is not difficult, but you need to crack that code. So there are a couple of things to remember. They distrust ads. They spend the vast majority of their day online, about 8 hours on average per day, and they're entrenched in social media and look to their peers or influencers for real and authentic opinions. This is why 95% of recruitment.

Professionals believe current students are the best individuals to place that and deliver that message.

And #3 prospective students should have the option to connect with current students and who's living that experience right now. So 81% of respondents. So your group said that they're using or considering using ambassadors, 95% say peer-to-peer is critical, and 84% of respondents have a formalized student ambassador program already. So with all of that being said, I think it's a perfect segue into the next segment of our conversation. So how do you?

How do you authentically connect through personalization on scale and on demand? How do you ensure students can initiate personalized conversations with you from the moment they say hello? You might try to leverage your in person events to provide a more welcoming experience. But what about students who live across the country? In person is always amazing and we totally complement that. And we want to make sure that you are able to reach folks who are remote in a very similar way. So how do you share your good vibes? And.

How does that permeate through to students the moment they search your brand?

As we mentioned before, we've got some great members of the Washington State University team here today, a university who's actively leveraging tools like Slate and unibody to help reach the students of tomorrow. So I'm going to go ahead and reintroduce Shane and Jake, but I'm going to let you on. Tell us a little bit about yourselves first. So, Shane, I'm going to put you on the spot. Tell us a little bit about your role.

Sure. Thank you, Rachel. So I manage marketing and communications for our Internet international admissions and recruitment team. So we have recruiters, some based around the world, some here in our office and we have our student recruiters, our ambassadors that we talked about and and so I help make sure that they have marketing materials that make our interface university look good. Of course, there are printed materials for in person events, but a lot of this is digital now as we attend a lot more virtual events.

And try to have a a virtual presence that that students can engage with anytime and and also support our admissions counselors and they help talk our students who are in the middle of that process through all the technical details of getting admitted and enrolled at WSU. And so that's a really informative role. So there's some marketing involved in that, but a lot of that is making sure they have the information they need. We use this as late as our CRM for e-mail campaigns and other communications.

Really it's the, I'd say like the system of record for students that are in our admissions process, so.

It's also where we see basically where they're at in the process and what they need and what communications we've had with them.

So yeah, that's how I support my team.

Fantastic. Thank you, Shane. All right, Jake, you're up.

Right.

Yeah.

So yeah, so I'm the international student coordinator.

And, um, can you hear me? OK, is there an echo? I think we're good. OK.

I think we're good now, yeah.

OK. Yeah, and.

So yeah as as you mentioned Rachel in the beginning, I from the moment a student is admitted they kind of fall into my basket. And along with the ambassador team that we have using unit buddy, we reach out to students admitted students to try to you know convince them to come to WSU and that it's the right fit and Shane is very hands on with the ambassador team and then I really believe more into even more the confirmed.

Students at students who have, you know, went in further down the line, paid their deposit and helped them out with all the visa, US visa process and travel and finances and all the way until they come to the university. And and yes, we do offer airport pickup services. Yeah, Yep, Yep, Yep. We have midnight flights at the Pullman campus as well. There's a few flights a day and and.

So yeah, we offer it at all hours and you know I think that also is a big, I would say it's not really part of our full on marketing.

Uh, strategy, but uh, I think it's a pleasant surprise for students when they arrive, and it really adds an extra touch when they when they come to the campus for the first time.

Yeah, for sure. It's almost a nice greeting. Like your family's picking you up from the airport. That's fantastic.

Well, very good. Thank you both. You both are your beautiful campus is nestled in the hills of southeastern Washington state and we have the honor of working with you and that slate instance together. So we thought it would be a really great example of how higher Ed institutions can leverage both recruitment success through both systems. So I thought it would be a great opportunity to ask several questions here audience. If you have any questions that we want to sprinkle in, please don't hesitate to to go ahead and drop them in the Q&A.

In chat, but let's go ahead and start by painting a picture of what your university is like. So tell me a little bit more about your school. Where are you located and how big are you?

Sure it. So we are located like she said in Southeast Washington state. So most people know our state for Seattle, WA and that's the opposite side of our state. So we're known for our mountains, our forests and the Puget Sound are part of the state is rolling farmland and it is not very densely populated. And so we're in a very rural setting, but we're a large university in that rural.

Settings that's kind of unique to a lot of the students that we engage with. So our university is actually bigger than the town we're in, in Pullman, WA. So there's quite, you know, maybe twice as many people at the university. Then in the actual town itself, we're about 80 miles from the nearest real city, which is Spokane, WA, about 80 miles north of us. So that's a very rural setting, but it's a setting that completely revolves around campus and campus life. So our student body is very close knit.

Creates a very close knit alumni network after they graduate and so they feel feel very connected to their experience here. And we also are right next door to Idaho and Moscow. ID is about 5 miles away and has the University of Idaho, another small town with a large university. So it really kind of enhances that feel to our community.

And so I think, you know, it's a place that doesn't have a lot of name recognition with the students that we reach out to, but we are always excited for them to get to know it because we do think it's pretty unique and offers a lot of really enticing things for them.

OK, yeah, the pictures are stunning so I definitely need to come out and visit sometime.

Pictures of sunny.

Well, it sounds like we've got a bit of an echo happening, so.

You'll get picked up. We'll pick you up at the airport.

I will ask that maybe Shannon and Jake, if you're not speaking, we mute just because I think we're getting an echo effect here. So I'll go ahead and start the next question. Why should a student study at debit WSU? What is something unique about studying at your campus specific?

I can I can go here.

Yeah. I I just my background actually is in STEM education. I have my bachelors and masters in STEM education and we're a big comprehensive land grant university in the state of Washington. But you know, we are our one research institution and you know, it's kind of like going off of what Shane was saying. You know, we're in a rural area, but it's it's not I mean the the town itself is.

Um, you know, quite centered around the university. There was over 12,020 thousand students at the Pullman campus and.

And anyway, it's a, it's a small college town, but it's a big university, big research university and you know, like like some other land grant universities and different states around the country. You know, it's really nice to have such like powerful funding and opportunities and you can just focus on it in a not get sucked away into New York City or Los Angeles. Nothing against them, but, you know, it's just very focused and and lots of opportunities.

And um, I think also what I see from a lot of students too is even though we are about a 5 hour 5-6 hour ride from Seattle, we're in the same state and we have a big flow of graduating students who eventually go and have internships with a lot of companies on in Seattle on the West side. And so that really is a tangible reason for students coming to want to get an internship with with Amazon or.

For Boeing and all these big companies in Washington and then we also have Schweitzer Engineering, which is a local Internet like Big Global Company for electrical engineering especially so. And that's just 10 minutes outside of town, not Even so, yeah, I think while it's a remote place, it's definitely got a lot of of power and opportunity as far as research and.

And internship opportunities.

Fantastic. Sounds like there's a lot of draw and I no one self declared that they're from New York or LA here. So I think you're safe, but but we'll find out after today's event. So besides your school, I'm curious for you both, how did you end up working in higher Ed and marketing and recruitment and what do you like about it?

Yeah, it was kind of a.

Long strange journey for me, but actually my wife was pursuing a PhD and so as I I left a communications marketing position in Seattle to go on that training with her and ended up in university fundraising. So it's my third land grant university that I worked at and just happened to be when I applied here that the position that came open for me was in in international programs. It didn't end up being in fundraising.

Running some exchange, some summer exchange programs for visiting students and scholars and you can imagine those kind of went away for a couple of years there during COVID. So I transitioned to a marketing and communications role here on our international admissions team. So I kind of by accident, but a happy accident for me for sure.

Oh, that's fantastic. It sounds like international got ahold of you and and never let go.

All right, Jake, your turn.

Very cautious of this audio thing. OK, yeah, I mean, my whole background education has always been my my world. Education, education wise, being majoring in education every, every step along the way.

Um, and so yeah, I think UM, kind of like Shane. Oddly, my wife started her PhD at WSU and then I followed, but I was looking for all the.

Yeah.

Yeah, I ended up getting a job in a study abroad. Um department actually at first. You know, I've been living and working internationally for some years. And then when I came to WSU, I wanted to stay in the international realm and kind of combine it with my background in education, like teaching and learning type of education focus. So yeah. And I've switched over from the study abroad, Americans going outside to.

The international missions side and I just, I really, I love it. I would say I I I prefer it. I've talked to my old global learning, my study abroad boss. We're friends and and she understands too. It's no hard feelings, but yeah, it's just fantastic. I love it.

Excellent. So now the softball questions are over. We're going to dive into the nitty gritty here. So talk to us about your recruitment team, if you can. Tell us a little bit more about the size. But also what are some of the challenges of presenting the unique vision and setting of WSU to a broader international audience?

Sure. So right now our recruitment team consists of we have a recruitment specialist in based in China, obviously a huge market for new students over there, but can also cover a lot of things in those time zones, which is great for us. We also have a recruiter, we just hired this person, but replacing it. We had somebody previously in this position based on the West side of our state, so in the Seattle area and we draw a lot of international students.

Let's start off at especially at community colleges in that region of our state. So they will be focused heavily on recruiting there. And we have our director, Doctor Daniel Saud is also a recruiter. So he's on the road right now traveling and he's in the Middle East at the moment. And then because we haven't, we're kind of recruiting a little bit more than our team has has the capacity for us. So we all kind of get drawn.

Into it. I have done virtual recruiting conferences in the middle of the night because they're in, you know, Malaysia or something. We have one of our.

Actually admissions coordinators is out in Vietnam at the moment attending recruiting events as a recruiter. So just kind of everybody's a recruiter while we continue to fill out that recruitment team. And so the recruiters are supported by, we have 3 admissions coordinators who I explained are also kind of doing some recruiting at the moment.

Myself doing the communications and marketing.

Jake doing our new student programs and that's really, that's our team we do work with.

A lot of agents as well in other countries and and yeah, that's that's us. I forget what the second-half of your question was. There was something else there too.

You know.

I think that was perfect. I think, you know, our intent was just understanding a little bit more about how, you know, how you paint the picture of the WSU setting to your international audience. What are some of the things that you communicate to them to really get them excited about WSU?

Yeah, I think you know we for starters, like I kind of mentioned earlier, we don't have name recognition necessarily like some of our peer institutions. So there can be a lot of confusion with us and the University of Washington for example, but so we really.

Want to you know first of all just introduce people to Washington State University and what type of university who our peer institutions are. So maybe there is an institution they're familiar with that they can use for an example of kind of the especially like the R1 status, like the size of the of us as a research institution. So that really our peers are places like the University of Washington and UCLA and and places like that. So we really have to tell that story kind of put ourselves in perspective of the over 4000.

Universities across the US.

But then we also like to tell the story that, you know, we're based in a small.

In a small rural setting, it's friendly, it's welcoming, it's safe. And we also like to present that about our university, that even though we're a big research university, that you do get a personalized experience here. And we try to show them that right up front with whether during the admissions process you're having, you know, communications with students such as our ambassadors from the moment you arrive. And Jake has arranged your airport pickup and your dorm check in and trip to Walmart for provisions and stuff for you.

To like our university small class size for university this size, like I think we have a 15 or 16 to 1 faculty to student ratio and and we really promote it as even though this is a large university, that it's a family that's close knit and that you'll get a lot of personal attention. You won't just be a number here.

That's fantastic, excellent. So in that in that vein and and understanding how things have probably changed and you are participating in those virtual events, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how recruitment was traditionally handled and how it's been done in the past and maybe some of the things that you've changed because you know of COVID or just needing to meet a larger audience internationally. What are some of the things that you've incorporated in comparison to how things might have done, been done in the past?

Shane, do you wanna take this one? No.

Well, we.

Sure. Yeah, happy to. Yeah. We obviously for a couple years there for our virtual events were all we were really doing. Travel ceased and in, you know, meeting our students, prospective students in person stopped. And that was actually when I started in this role. So from the beginning, the virtual events were really all I knew. So for me it's been, you know, adapting kind of going back in time a little bit, so.

Adapting again to having printed materials and physical things to hand out at events, you know, being prepared for to be physically in the presence of our prospects again. So that was different. But I do think that we, you know, we're not leaving the virtual world to go back to the in person world. It's here to stay. Virtual events are a permanent and a growing part of our things that we attend now and so having digital supports for that.

This is really critical. This is the time too, when we started our ambassador team, so it's brand new, it's just a year old. And so that was something that you and your statistics showed that clearly. It was, it was the thing to do and it's what everybody's doing and that's the the state-of-the-art in this field. So we established our ambassador team and now have that, you know, connection to a WSU student. So we have really our admissions counselors who can tell you, you know, walk you through the process of getting admitted.

Yeah, yeah, I've only known, um, that point setting.

Yeah, I haven't. Um, I wasn't in this particular position during the pandemic when it was just.

Remote crazy but.

We have our student ambassadors who can talk to you. What life is like on our campus with being a cougar is like what life is like in our community also can talk you through that process of what you know they're going through getting their visa interview and just trying to get here and all those difficulties that our students have been through that and can talk them through that and give them those tips better than really I can because I haven't gone through that process. So yeah, I don't know, Jake, if you have anything to add to that.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think another thing that really helps with us too is like not me, but the position is a new position that specifically with new student like post admission. And so basically I do a lot of calling too. Umm. And so I think that's another thing that's a very like I guess kind of like the airport pick up like a personal touch and I think a lot of students.

If there's ten students eight out of 10 are are really surprised and happy that they're just getting a random call from the university and one wanna you know, find out how you're doing and where you are in the process. I would say the other two are probably like thinking I'm a scammer and not they they don't like getting a cold call. So and I also host like one-on-one zoom meetings, two with with any student that wants to.

You know, has just wants to talk things out, so I think that's another really great personal touch.

Fantastic. Thank you for sharing. That's an interesting perspective that almost, you know, during the pandemic was your original norm and now you're getting, you know, used to a little bit more of that in person supplementing. So thank you for sharing that. I'd love to transition to unibody and slate and how you're utilizing this system. So the first question I have for you here is when did you first encounter unibody and Slate?

And so I encountered Slate just when I started this position. So just about two years ago, I think September of 2020, I started in this role and we it was brand new to us then and we were developing our e-mail campaigns and just finding out what it could do for us at the time. And so we.

Then the following year began our ambassador team.

Are we really wanted a platform that allowed them to have good connections with our prospective students and unibody is that the platform that basically went out for us. So I was introduced to that after we had actually decided that we were going with it. I was introduced to anybody, you know, just over a year ago as we were creating the Ambassador team and so, you know, creating, creating their profiles, getting it integrated onto our website and then of course the communication.

When we have students that sign up for unibody, we can get that information in slate. So we can take them as leads and add them to slate as prospective students and be start including them in those campaigns and stuff for us. So yeah, that was my experience and I would say honestly, my student ambassadors are the most, they're probably the the real whizzes at the university platform. They're getting in there and using it every day.

That's fantastic. Love to get them involved on the next presentation here.

So before you even worked with you know, buddy, how do you heard much about peer-to-peer solutions? Was it something on your radar?

Like simultaneously.

But I heard about peer-to-peer solutions and then you and a buddy being a tool for them pretty much.

Well, maybe it was serendipitous. That sounds great. OK, let's move on. I think Jake might have jumped off. Hopefully he'll be here back again soon. But let's talk about the two systems working in harmony together. So can you give me an example of maybe a campaign or an instance where you use both unibody and slate, maybe in your marketing or your outreach that they worked well together?

Sure. So you know, our campaigns are, you know, part promotional but also part informational, kind of a blend. So as students are getting those, hey, you need to get this form to us by this date emails, they're also getting emails from us that are like, hey, look how wonderful your experience will be at the koog. And one of them is a couple of their emails are, hey, talk to us.

And we give them like different, different ways that they can communicate with us and one of the groups we're always highlighting.

Is our Ambassador group and giving them that link to you, anybody to sign up, pick an ambassador by their profile to chat with and start that conversation so.

You know buddy as part of our you know the information we send out using Slate CRM.

And, you know, there's really kind of.

Two flows of work for our ambassadors, there's we can pull a report out of slate about, you know, all the students we've admitted and give that to our ambassadors for them to reach out and make contacts, you know using the slate information. But we also have students that just reach out to us that contact us first and one of the platforms that allows them to do that is on unibody. So you know we can we can get in touch with students that we don't even, we haven't even known about yet that are just fresh leads.

Fantastic. Anything else take that you want to add on?

From us through unibody, and once they're contacting us and communicating with us, that information automatically goes to slate. Now we know who they are because they signed into, you know, buddy, we have some information about them and know enough to continue that conversation and start working with them.

No, no, I think that's that's good. I know in the past we used to use.

You chat, yes.

I can name name the enemy. I think it was our you chat. Yeah, we use you chat.

That was a pass. Uh, yeah, we did that.

OK.

Ohh yeah, I didn't know anything before that. So yeah, I I definitely prefer unibodies so far.

And we have transitioned.

I didn't want you to say that.

We we've transitioned to. It used to be you could contact our students from anybody, but if you contacted a member of our staff, our staff, it was in you chat and we've now transitioned our entire team to unibody.

Fantastic. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Sorry about the audio here.

Tell me a little bit more about the ambassador program itself. What types of students do you look for to, you know, hold this role? And what has been their feeling about participating in something like unibody?

And well, so I've been hiring and the students they really, you know, get their marching orders.

But as far as like recruitment, we're very fortunate in our International Programs Office here encompasses a lot more than just recruitment. So across our team we have a lot of students working for us all the time and I really just got recommendations for some of the best students available, I think for such a front facing position, being a representative of the university. And I really wanted students that had already established like a really good reputation with us that we knew would be positive.

Reflection on our university. And so I really had, you know, colleagues just recommending some of their favorite students to me is how I did it. And we ended up with a nice blend of not only students from all over the world, different languages, different countries and regions. We ended up with a really representative across the subjects at our university that you can study. We also have a blend of undergraduate and grad students. So it's not a big team. It's just seven students at the moment, but.

Still managed to kind of to be really represented to have across all those categories.

Fantastic. Small but mighty here.

So it sounds like you're getting a lot of information from the two systems and they're working harmoniously. Are you able to talk a little bit about what data actually has helped to either impact your use of unibody specifically or other areas in your marketing efforts and your enrollment efforts? Any of the information that you're finding through that peer-to-peer engagement that's been helpful?

Jake, I know you you've dove into this probably a bit more than me, but yeah, I would say I'm really at just because we just kind of completed our first year using it and we really started using it.

Fully in the spring semester, so last semester, I would say we're actually right now in the process of kind of looking back through all that and just seeing, you know, what we learned, what kind of students are we talking to? What did those conversations result in? I know right now we're trying to pull reports about all the students we engaged with in unit buddy, what were the results we ended up having with them in the admissions process and we just haven't had a chance to, to really break that down yet. But because we have that data, we can do that.

That's great. You know, we can look at all the students we had engagements with in unit buddy and we can compare them in slate and see what the outcomes were for those students.

So that's that's going to be really useful for us. I just don't know, you know what we're going to learn from that quite yet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And I think so far, I think Janine and the ambassador team has been very hands on with unibody. I think I've already admitted that, you know, I use unibody, but it's not like an everyday thing. I'm more like I'm pulling reports on on sleep and things like that to find out. That's my everyday data, you know, to find out, you know, who has I-20 cent and things like that. But yeah, I think so far.

An overall trend is that the unit body has been really good for students, especially like before they apply and just as they're applying, like in that introductory phase, it kind of get away out of the way like a bunch of.

Yeah. First, uh, questions that maybe isn't on our website or something like that.

Fantastic. Thank you, Jake. Thank you, Shane. Now let's talk about the future. If you have a crystal ball, what do you think the future is going to be like? And if you could have, you know, anything happened in the next five years, what would you like to see in digital recruitment and maybe even a decade from now? What are your thoughts?

Um I would like to see just like everything just you know more you know like what you know buddies doing with with just data. Having a lot of like more data because we have it with our CRM's. But to have it more on like the social interaction side, which is what you know body really does, you know how they're.

You know, it's kind of like a it's not social media, but it's like a way to.

Uh, quantify the conversations that are happening and we just quantify like administrative type things on slate. And so, yeah, I think.

Much more I'd like to see more like webinars, like engage engaging students to actually get on to webinars and have it be more interactive in that way instead of just.

Direct message type stuff which has been around, you know forever still has, definitely has a place. But yeah, to have it be more interactive and more, yeah, have those engaging opportunities with with webinars, that's what I'd like to see.

Umm.

But yeah, and then with recruitment, yeah, I'm kind of far away from the recruitment side. So I I'm not like as passionate as.

As far as that goes, but yeah.

No.

Fantastic. Shane, what are your?

One and.

We've started using um communities. We have a trial on that right now or you know, unibody community. So I'm excited to see, you know, what that can do for us. We kind of experimented with that conceptually in WhatsApp and so we are happy to have something similar to what we are trying in a system that we're already on. So we don't have to have all these systems everywhere, all these conversations all over the place, but if we can just do that right there and anybody excited about that.

One thing I like about, I mean it's great for engaging students and they want to engage, you know, engages them in a way that this generation wants to be engaged digitally. And but I really like it too for for my team. I like that this is an online platform that they can access at any time. And so my team has a flexible schedule, which is really attractive to students who have, you know, a busy schedule. I don't have like a shift that they have to come.

Sit down in a specific place and be out for a specific amount of time. They work kind of flexibly, you know, and we can, we have full visibility on their work because as an admin, I can go into anybody and just see, you know, who they've been talking to and what they've been doing. If they've missed any messages, you know, we can still manage their work, but it allows that flexibility that makes our job really attractive to them. So we can, you know, recruit the best students to work for us and it just works really well. I don't know if any of you have student employees if you're trying to schedule shifts.

For them, or I'd forbid any of you are trying to schedule something that you have all of them available at the same time. It can be.

Can be a real obstacle. So having a platform that gives us that flexibility and makes that a lot easier is really great for us. So I'm looking forward to, you know that when I look at the future, I look at that kind of, I think we've all experienced maybe more flexibility in our work because of virtual tools like this and as our first kind of student employee team to have that to start to experience that, which is great.

Also, think like, um with the press.

With onboarding process like to be able to have more virtual.

Engagement with like uh in the way of like orientation or like pre orientation type of things you know to help reduce melt. That's a big.

Thing again, like I feel like so far my engagement at or with anybody I've seen it very successful with like the very beginning of the admission process and it can also help at the end. But I've I've thought to myself like.

More like big scale things like how could this be built out even way more in the onboarding process even like as they're arriving. Like to be sending out messages maybe through community like hey welcome, now is your first day of orientation. Make sure you go here even though it's on the website, even though it's in their emails to be able to have like a live, a live onboarding and arrival platform as well. That's I'm interested in that of course.

Excellent. Thank you, Jake. Thank you. Shane and Jake and Shane are product manager might be calling you with those that type of feedback. So just so you're ready, we really appreciate you addressing those questions. It's really great to hear from your experience and what I'd love to do now is now that we've had this great conversation, I just want to help clarify exactly how you nobody and Slate can help your team get in front of more prospective students and why it even matters. So again, it's all about authenticity and good vibes.

So first, I want to go ahead and take a moment to look at exactly what we do here at unibody and how slate and unibody works so well together to help you customize your authentic communications and experience. So unibody my company is a best in class peer-to-peer, student to student platform built specifically for higher Ed student recruitment. Our platform empowers higher Ed institutions to recruit and engage prospective students by building meaningful connections through chat we also host.

Live events and then community like Shane and Jake were mentioning just now. So we want to go ahead and help you not only with those solutions but also talk to your partnerships. So the slide that's up right now really shows the student journey whether it is going to other websites like study in the USA or IDP or study portals and finding your ambassadors that are utilizing unibody and then also helping with your organic traffic. Any stealth applicants that might be coming to your site or just individuals who want to have a really great.

First conversation with your institution through chat and then our intent is to support that student journey through events. So the ability to have those virtual programs meet that international audience where they are anybody who can't come on site to your campus and then continue the conversation within community so they can meet folks that are like them that will be attending to ensure that they do show up on day one. It really helps to either usher a process along, maybe like housing or financial aid.

Or it can just be a really great space for them to meet other friends. So let's talk a little bit more about how we work with Slate. So as your higher Ed CRM, slate of course is your recruitment headquarters where all your student records live, your insights are organized and your e-mail and com plans begin. So how do we actually work with you, anybody? As a slate platinum preferred partner, unibody can be synced with slate and the unified interface so that outreach and communication students.

Access and retention and alumni or maybe even donor engagement, among other features, can really provide that authentic engagement for prospective students. Our mutual goal is to enable users using slate and unibody to do a couple of things. So we want you to be able to easily access student conversation data and automatic sync to Slate CRM with that student record. So when a user creates an account, it either creates a new record in slate or matches it with that existing record.

We also want you to track prospect interactions and progress throughout the admission cycle. We want you to be informed and to contribute to better marketing decisions from data and analytics. I think that's the intent of both slate and unibody as we don't want you to be successful in our systems alone, but using all of this great information to help in all of the processes and making informed decisions on how you want to improve your outreach. And then last but not least, optimize that student funnel for improved yield and enrollment.

Inverse. So what does that look like exactly? We here at unibody have three my main priorities. We kind of call it our mantra, and that's to help you throughout your student journey. So we want to help you create authentic engagements with your perspective students throughout the funnel. We want to help enhance your current processes through one-on-one chat engagements, virtual presentations, community group discussions and ensure your students do show up on day one, which is pretty important. And then Jake's going to pick them up.

From the airport. So hopefully they will be there. We also want to be your partner. Our dedicated team of client success managers really helps to guide you through that onboarding and that as little as one to two weeks. So this is where we're going to train you and your ambassadors how to get the most out of the system. And I think most importantly, we want to you to be part of our community of institutions that are finding success in building affinity with their prospective students as we're doing today. So we want to meet your perspective students where they are.

And we want to ensure your future growth by sharing success stories from our current partners and current clients so that you're getting the most out of working with you nobody. So with all of that being said, we've got a little less than 10 minutes here. I'd love to see if anybody has any questions either for myself or for our wonderful team here at WSU. We'd love to hear any comments or questions that you have to get the most out of today's session so as we are waiting for those questions.

Come through. I just wanted to go ahead and ask one of my own questions here. So students across different university sizes are, you know, interested in the same type of discussion. Do you find, you know, Shane and Jake that it was easy to implement at your school, this type of a solution? And do you think it would help at different size schools as well?

Yeah, I I think so. I think they used the usability of of each one independently is fantastic. You know, I don't feel burdened by anything or like restricted and.

Yeah, I think I'm just a fan of if they could be more and more integrated overtime than what they are now, that would make it even more powerful. Both of them.

Yeah, I would say.

Excellent.

One reason that we're still using it is that it was easy to implement. I when I bring on new team members like at the beginning of this semester, it, you know, it's always really easy to get them on board with it and get them to create their profiles and everything. So yeah.

Excellent. And and in regards to the safety of your students and your ambassadors, how do you ensure that they're safe using the systems and what kind of information do you all collect when you're creating those profiles that are then sent to Slate?

Like the safety of our student employees or our or the information about the students were.

So I think a little bit of both how and address both of those sides. So how do your ambassadors feel safe in the system? And then also your perspective students, what are your thoughts?

So far, I think we've been just really fortunate that I don't think my ambassadors have encountered any any times where they didn't feel safe. But we have talked to them about, you know, as far as they don't ever need to give up any of their personal information or share anything. They don't want to be public, obviously, like for instance, social media is a big deal.

These days it's a it's a way that they could communicate. We tell our ambassadors that if they do engage with somebody via their social media and that's the OR or prospective student, that's the way they want to communicate. It's always fine, but it's their choice. We would never require them to use like their personal contact or personal social media or anything in these roles that could, you know, expose them to dangerous situations so they've all felt safe using it and they create the the.

Profile themselves using just information they feel comfortable sharing about themselves. So I don't say oh, you have to tell them you know where you live, or give them your phone number or anything like that. They get to put in there just what they want to share and feel safe with.

Excellent. We also had some questions come in before the webinar started, so I think I can address both at the same time. One was, I'd love to know what subject lines are most appealing and successful, enticing students to open emails, and what are the best times and days of the week to reach out by text or e-mail. So unfortunately, I don't have the secret, you know, sauce here on exactly what the right e-mail subject might be. I'm still trying to find it myself, but I think the biggest take away is just understanding.

Your audience and really telling that authentic story of your institution and the things that are captivating that would entice someone to open that e-mail that you've thoughtfully planned and sent out at the perfect time. I don't know, Shane or Jacob, do you have any secret e-mail subjects that have worked for you in the past? Anything?

All right.

No, we have one ambassador that is that is known for getting a response to her emails and we've and other ambassadors have copied her emails verbatim and I don't know really know what the secret is. I could tell you we try tip tricks that are just kind of everybody practices like using the RE colon you like. It's a reply as as part of your subject that will trick certain spam filters as well.

But it's like, oh, this is a reply to something. I should click on it and read it. That's one trick. I know we will insert just through some of the automations available that the individuals. And even if it's a mass e-mail, we can insert the individual's name to the subject of the e-mail or even into the first line of the e-mail so that they get a personal call out of their name from the e-mail and that be effective. But yeah, it is kind of. Everybody wants to know how to do that. I don't know if there's a magic bullet.

It sounds like your ambassador might have a master class in their future.

I know, yeah, I agree.

I I love that. All right, we've got one more question here. I just want to conclude with one more. But feel free to submit any more questions you might have.

How do you compete, and I think you kind of spoke about this a little bit, but how do you compete with other social media or, you know, controlling that external dialogue, kind of bringing them back to the safe space and to the ability to kind of organize and and make sure that you have insight into what people are talking about or how do you live harmoniously with using social media at the same time?

I mean that.

I I haven't been very involved with the social media. WhatsApp is technically social media, right? And so I think that's a a lot of students from a lot of countries feel very comfortable connecting on there, but.

Yeah, I don't know. Shane could probably talk more about the social media.

I'd say we are philosophically, we really want to live in harmony with it. It's where our students are and so it's where we need to be, but there's limitations. So you know for instance, one of the biggest markets we want to students from is China where it's completely different social media world, they're like you don't have Facebook and you know, so you need to be on we are we chat, yeah, Weibo and WeChat to be on social media there. So it also.

You know, for your like student employees, they might not necessarily want to use their personal contact like a social media channel as a work.

As a way to communicate during work. So, you know, there are limitations to it. And I would say we're trying to steer these interactions into platforms like anybody, but we also are trying to live harmoniously with it. And just, you know, we make sure that at least we have a presence on the social media platforms where our students are and they can engage with it there. But we also use those social media platforms to drive people back to unibody. So, you know, like when we announced joined this community.

That social media is one of the ways that that information would go out asking students to join like a unibody community. So we're shooting for harmony.

I would say.

I I just thought of something else as well from the last question and timing and reaching the students. I think one thing over the last few years of what our office has done is literally just get people in different time zones. I know that's not possible for for all offices. You know I think we are really in the in the minority as that goes. But yeah we we have people who are now based recruiters and people in different like departments in our office who are all based in different time zones.

And we can really connect with students, uh, you know, like especially at different countries in in Asia, China and Taiwan and that can be really hard on the West Coast. So we've met that with, with kind of just staffing and that way.

Fantastic. Well, I appreciate both of you today for joining, for letting us ask you all of these questions and your phenomenal responses. I also want to thank the audience for joining us. It was so great to present for you all today. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. I've got my e-mail on the screen there. Most importantly, I think Jake has a very a much cuter person to look at. Congratulations on your new baby and I hope I wish you all the best and I wish everyone else a very sweet.

Some cute afternoon as well. Thank you for participating in today's event. Have a good one.