Unite Students

Background & Objectives

The UK is now the No.1 destination for Chinese students, who make up around 40% of the British International Student population. Chinese students stay in the UK for 2-4 years on average and when selecting student university accommodation, they have a plethora of requirements.  

Unite Students is the UK largest student accommodation provider, housing 76,000, across 27 cities. As over 15% of their students are Chinese, they were looking for a long-term strategic marketing partner to work with them on China strategy to grow and retain their customer base.

Strategy

• Transform Unite Students from being merely a market leader, to a unique hospitality brand appealing to the new generation of Gen Z students
• Articulate the Unite Students brand using a clear brand voice, that proactively engages young Chinese consumers. Rewarding advocacy is a key KPI across all activations.

Our Work with Unite Students

• Rewarded customer loyalty and advocacy within all communications and promotions, encouraging peer to peer promotions.
• Grew our KOC numbers by creating communities on WeChat.
• Created a multi-faceted content strategy to appeal to different student and parent groups, resulting in resonating, relevant and, most importantly, profitable social outreach.
• Leveraged social monitoring tools to monitor customer sentiment and respond appropriately. Monitoring the student market in real-time to identify vital consumer insights.

Our Activations for Unite

• Through a mixture of marketing activations, both off and online, we established strong brand awareness and customer advocacy.
• We provided digital PR outreach, paid search, social media advertising and community management to maximise campaigns.
• By optimising the website and lead generation sales funnel, we were able to provide a more streamlined journey for Chinese students.
• We were able to deliver hugely successful seasonal campaigns to drive sales for Unite, with KPIs for both customer acquisition and retention being exceeded from 2019, despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
  
  

Our Results

• We generated 3000+ enquiries and triple-digit bookings during 2020 campaigns
• Over 30% growth in followers across main brand accounts
• No. 1 WeChat readership amongst similar competitors
• 112.5% + increase Y.O.Y in the number of pageviews and impressions