The University of Auckland adapts to a new Chinese student recruitment landscape with Sinorbis
When it comes to Chinese international student recruitment, the University of Auckland in New Zealand had long established a well-performing offline presence. “Historically, we’ve been able to depend on the strength of our brand and the presence of in-country agents to recruit Chinese students,” says International Marketing Manager Shane Ball of the cohort that makes up over 50% of all international students at the University of Auckland.
However, the pandemic changed the international student recruitment landscape virtually overnight to become much more digitally driven. The sudden need to transform recruitment operations threw up some challenges in the Chinese market where local internet regulation makes it much more difficult for international organisations to manage and maintain a digital presence.
“Because we opened learning centres at partner universities in China, we were able to keep our existing students engaged when the borders closed”, says Shane. “However, we found that, after COVID, we were losing prospective Chinese students because of our slow website loading times. And when I say slow, I mean up to a minute in some parts of the country.”
A virtual Open Week event – fully optimised for the Chinese digital ecosystem
Shane and his team recognised that these digital performance issues could seriously impact the success of their recruitment efforts. “Obviously, these kinds of loading issues can prompt potential students to simply leave the website. What’s more, slow website loading times can impact our rankings on Chinese search engines, meaning fewer Chinese students can find us.”
To help overcome these challenges and set up a high-performing digital presence for China, the University of Auckland decided to partner with Sinorbis. They leveraged the China digital marketing platform to launch a website to host their very own virtual Open Week that was fully optimised for the Chinese digital ecosystem.
“The results were incredible, and the loading times outperformed our most ambitious KPIs,” says Shane about the event. “Via our new website hosted and enabled by Sinorbis’ technology, we received over 300 registered attendees from China for our Open Week. It really exceeded our expectations, and we didn’t have to worry about having to overcome all the Chinese regulatory hurdles which was a big relief.”
Gaining control and visibility over the university’s Chinese digital presence
The intuitive user experience of the Sinorbis platform proved to be another key benefit for the University of Auckland’s lean international recruitment and marketing team. “We’ve loved the ability to manage every aspect of the website through one simple interface,” says Shane. The Sinorbis’ platform has given the University of Auckland team control and visibility over their digital assets, meaning they’ve been able to identify what is and isn’t working in their China digital marketing campaigns.
“So, the technology is fantastic, but I also want to highlight the work of the Sinorbis team. They’ve gone above and beyond and have been a real pleasure to work with throughout the whole project.” - Shane
And now that the University of Auckland has got a glimpse of what the platform can do through their Open Week pilot project, the software will be a core component of their future digital marketing strategy for China, starting with a complete SEO overhaul that will be implemented over the coming months.