The reality on the ground:
Huddersfield’s international recruitment was generating strong interest, but the team lacked a scalable way to nurture offer-holders in the crucial pre-arrival window. A previous peer-to-peer community had been trialled, but it relied on staff to seed and sustain activity. Engagement was patchy and the workload crept up. Large information days helped, but they were heavy to run and hard to personalise at scale. As Ryan Parker, International Marketing Manager – Recruitment, put it:
“We’ve never really had the capacity to run a community properly. It’s a big time investment, we need something that works with our bandwidth.”
From the outset, the objective was clear: Huddersfield needed to lift offer-to-enrolment conversion by building confidence and connection before arrival, but do it in a low-effort way that wouldn’t add set-up or day-to-day workload for a stretched team. The answer had to be one trusted home for chats, groups and events - private, safe and GDPR-compliant, where offer-holders could meet “people like me,” get accurate answers, and see what’s coming up without the noise of scattered channels.
Setting up a student-led space:
Instead of a software-only community approach that requires continuous staff tending, Huddersfield and Uni-Life launched a serviced community model - a fully managed, invite-only community branded for the university. Every offer-holder received a tailored invitation and a unique code to join. Once inside, students could post in discussion threads, start one-to-one chats, join groups, and browse pre-arrival events.
Uni-Life handled set-up, moderation and day-to-day engagement, and provided data insights so Huddersfield could see sentiment and activity without extra workload. As Ryan summed it up: “Low effort, high relevance - that’s what we needed. If it could launch quickly (which we did!) and start helping this cohort, it would be a real win.”
From invite to activity:
Rollout was intentionally light: Uni-Life prepared the community and templates, while Huddersfield sent the invites. Within days of launch, the community felt busy in the right ways: questions flowing, intros happening, events being bookmarked. As early impressions came in from students and staff, the qualitative and quantitative pictures lined up.
“I’ve spoken to a few students, and they seem very happy with it. There’s a lot of good engagement and the applicants are asking lots of questions.” Ryan said.
The numbers back that up. 408 offer-holders created profiles since launch. Inside the space, students started 797 private chats and sent 14,227 one-to-one messages; Conversation wasn’t only in private messages: 215 public threads drew 989 replies and 167 likes, with accommodation, course mates and visa/CAS consistently topping the agenda. As one student summarised their experience: “The app is wonderful! I made a lot of friends before coming to Huddersfield, and they helped me secure accommodations around the campus”.
Discovery clicked into place too: 68% said they found relevant webinars, meet-ups and orientation they might otherwise have missed. In a student’s words: “The student union events are really helpful for new students to know the culture here.”
Those early connections translated into outcomes that matter. 80% felt more prepared to study at Huddersfield; 75.5% felt more confident about enrolling. One student put it: “It is very helpful for international students. When they face an issue, they can get information from other students, which makes them feel more comfortable.” noted one student. As Ryan puts it: “It let students meet each other and get answers fast. By the time they arrived, they weren’t strangers - they already had a network.”
The plan from here:
Following a joint evaluation session, where we celebrated the first-intake results and identified clear opportunities to improve. The timeline is already aligned for the January intake. Huddersfield and Uni-Life will continue to work closely, reviewing feedback, refining touchpoints, and tailoring the experience to the university’s context. The operating model remains bandwidth-friendly for staff, while Uni-Life stays flexible and responsive to recommendations, with a standing commitment to continuous improvement so the community keeps feeling relevant, trusted and easy to use.
