Queen Mary University of London (QMUL)

"Prior to partnering with Unifrog, we had far less opportunities to understand what the market prior to application was doing. By engaging with Unifrog, we now have more-or-less real time insights as to where students are looking at shortlisting from, but also importantly which demographic they’re from."

Jack Fox, Head of Student Recruitment and WP, and Alice Stonehouse, Student Recruitment and WP Officer
 

The problem

At Queen Mary, we have a real commitment to social mobility, and one of our main aims is to be the most inclusive university of our kind. We know that our undergraduate cohort has 92% from state schools and just under half of those are first in generation to go to higher education.

Prior to partnering with Unifrog, we had far less opportunities to understand what the market prior to application was doing.

The solution

By engaging with Unifrog, we now have more-or-less real time insights as to where students are looking at shortlisting Queen Mary from, but also importantly which demographic they’re from. We’re no longer waiting until January when the UCAS deadline hits, and we’re able to target our resources far better mid-cycle.

Unifrog has a lot of engagement with state schools, and school and college staff had really highlighted that fact. So we were keen to partner with them to ensure that we can grow our provision and also better understand that cohort.
 

Widening participation

We worked with Unifrog on a Widening Participation report, which we found incredibly useful and insightful. From that report, we were able to see the breakdown of the number of students that came from IMD deciles 1-3, as well as how many students from that group were specifically interested in studying and applying to Queen Mary.

We had a large percentage share from the South East and the East of England, so we then used that information to target students from Kent and Essex in our WP programmes. And since then, we have found that we do have a larger enrollment of students from those regions.
 

Using insights

With Unifrog, we get a number of matching campaigns throughout the year. These are really helpful, as they enable us to target particular activities and events to students with defined demographics. For instance, we’ve been able to target some of our intensive outreach programmes to the students who most need it.

The Insights tool has been particularly helpful to see where our competitors are doing well in terms of shortlisting for certain regions, or broken down by local authority. That’s allowed us to see where there is opportunity for growth, and where we should be targeting or putting our energy for our recruitment and marketing strategies.
 

Getting support

The customer support from Unifrog has been excellent. From the point in which we engaged Unifrog, we had a dedicated account manager, Freddie, who always takes into account the needs of our specific institution, which is particularly helpful. When we’ve got data requests or need a bit of information and guidance, we always have a tailored package based on our institutional needs.

Not only do we have meetings remotely, but Freddie and the team will come into our offices and present quarterly findings and insights reports. They’ve really been amazing.