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Like many schools around the world, Dulwich College Singapore knows the importance of recommendations from other parents; their own research shows them that 75 per cent of parents rely on them.
The college wanted to harness those insights but, until recently, it was done in an informal manner. When they decided to formalise that process and be sector leaders in using the experience of parents to inform others, that’s when The Ambassador Platform (TAP) came in.
The challenge
Dulwich College Singapore is an international school founded on the ethos and values of the British independent schooling system and its founding school in London. But it also has a global outlook and contemporary approach that reflects the diverse backgrounds of its students – who join the college from many different countries.
The Singapore school opened in 2014 and has since become one of the leading international schools not just in Singapore, but globally. It has around 2,730 students and more than 50 nationalities represented among its student body.
Dulwich’s own research told them that three-quarters of their new pupils’ parents rely on the recommendation from existing pupils, despite these conversations and connections happening in a fairly informal format. Not only did the college want to formalise that process and maximise the insights that parents of current students can offer parents of prospective students.
They also wanted to take the lead and show themselves as innovators across the schools sector, which is why they decided to partner with TAP, becoming the first school globally to harness the power of their parent ambassadors in a formal, digital manner, to help close the insight gap and positively affect its recruitment.
Their TAP Feed went live in November 2020 with our first-ever use of parent ambassadors; through our platform, Dulwich College Singapore was able to connect parents of prospective students with those of current students for both lead generation and conversion.
The college has worked hard to promote their TAP Feed since it went live; they’ve embedded TAP promos throughout their own website — focusing on high-traffic pages — as well as using paid ads on Facebook and Instagram to drive more traffic, and making the most of their existing communities, for example Facebook groups.
Why TAP?
Direct conversations
Our chat feature allowed for authentic conversations between parents of prospective students and Dulwich College Singapore’s team of passionate Parent Ambassadors. These conversations helped answer burning questions, and help families make empowered and confident decisions about their children’s education.
Harnessing and formalizing existing channels
Dulwich College Singapore’s community of parents were already incredibly proud advocates for the school and were already having conversations across a variety of channels. Using TAP enables them to formalise this process in a space owned by Dulwich College Singapore and with a platform where admins can track prospects from the first question they ask all the way to application and enrolment.
Safeguarding by design
Our “safeguarding by design” approach to building our platform — with in-built checks and alerts — offers a safe space for conversation.
See Dulwich College’s TAP Feed
Results
In the first nine months of their TAP Feed being live 9,274 unique visitors checked out the page. From those users, 329 created accounts and started 381 individual conversations, and 28 per cent of prospects who used the TAP Feed went onto apply.
Each conversion saw an average of 10 messages sent, and ambassadors responded to initial messages within two hours.
41 per cent of prospects were based in Singapore, 59 per cent from overseas.
The Facebook adverts promoting the launch of their TAP Feed generated 482 visits to their landing page during the first month.
Jason Hoppner, director of admissions and marketing at Dulwich College Singapore said:
“Each year, international schools invest heavily in traditional advertising and promotion to build and maintain brand awareness, however no amount of money can substitute the power of word of mouth and parent advocacy when it comes to helping parents make that all important decision around which school to apply to.
“Our vision at Dulwich College Singapore is to be at the forefront of innovation in the way prospective parents engage with our community and we are excited to be partnering with The Ambassador Platform to bring this vision to life.
“TAP provides us with the means to harness the power of parent advocacy by providing a platform where prospective families can chat directly to our passionate community of parent ambassadors and gain first hand insights into what life is really like within our school.”
Impact
In just the first four months of launching their TAP Feed and using our platform, Dulwich College Singapore has already seen terrific results and it has had a noticeable impact on applications, with 28 per cent of prospects going on to apply.
Not only that, it is already positively impacting the experiences of the parents of prospective students, who enjoy using TAP to learn more about the school and talk to parents of current students.
While some institutions might worry that using ambassadors in this way would see them lose control, Dulwich College Singapore has actually found using TAP in this way has given them more control, because they are able to see and monitor conversations, gain first hand insights into the type of questions and concerns parents are raising and easily track results.
See Dulwich College’s TAP Feed
If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you tell prospects what it’s really like to be part of your institution then why not book a demo of The Ambassador Platform?