Applicant community building is now a critical element in every recruitment and admissions enrolment conversion strategy. Your new incoming applicants expect to have access to their online peer communities before they start and this is a critical step in their successful enrolment and progression.

By integrating new students into their communities, you are strengthening the bond they have with each other, and with you, the admitting university. This means your team is likely busy signposting, moderating and supporting new students across different channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook groups and Snapchat.

However, for many teams there is no standardised approach, there's often lots of duplication and disparate communities across multiple channels - a mixed message for students and a missed opportunity to impact on student enrolment conversion. This two part workshop is designed to help student recruitment and admissions teams understand the principles of applicant community building and how they can be used to maximise value (conversion).

In November, Declan Sweeney and Daniel Hinkley, founders of CampusConnect, will run an online workshop in partnership with The IC Global aimed at those working in university recruitment and admissions.

This workshop has been designed for HE professionals to:

• Discover the value of communities and how they can support conversion activities.

• Learn about the characteristics of applicants and community members to build compelling messaging and campaigns that cut through.

• Learn how to develop, build, organise and evaluate student communities for conversion.

• Understand how to use data and insight to modify conversion campaigns and evaluate their impact.

What does the workshop entail?

The workshop involves hands-on, practical work towards:

• Defining the characteristics of an applicant community.

• Promoting your applicant/new entrant communities online.

• Organising applicant peer groups to support better integration.

• Moderating and curate content/comms within peer groups.

• Utilising existing resources to maximise impact.

• Building for future value through the network.

• Measuring performance & impact (conversion).

When does the workshop take place?

The workshop is split into two parts and will run on:

• Thursday 11th November 10:30-12:30

• Friday 19th November 10:30-11:30