Five tips for making the most of your Core Partnership

In today’s ultra-competitive environment, it can often prove challenging for institutions to determine which marketing approach will achieve their strategic goals. IDP’s premium end-to-end recruitment solution, Core Partnership, effectively addresses and eliminates these challenges, ensuring a seamless experience for students and institutions alike.

With a Core Partnership, institutions have the opportunity to be at the forefront of a rapidly expanding global community and can accelerate their growth in key recruitment markets. With our global network of student-facing websites, as well as our physical presence in 35 countries around the globe, we ensure that our Core Partners’ visibility and content effectively reach key source markets and prospective students.

With these innovative and forward-thinking capabilities at-hand, how can institutions leverage them to ensure their strategic recruitment goals are being met? While becoming a Core Partner is a strong starting point, it’s essential to understand the full range of data, tools, services and added benefits offered through an IDP Core Partnership to maximise its potential as a strategic marketing solution. In this article, we will explore five ways institutions can make the most of their Core Partnership with IDP.

All Core Partners have access to our self-service data tool, IQ Demand. Drawing on the world’s largest live student dataset, IQ Demand helps institutions to stay abreast of the latest changes and trends in student demand, as well as helping institutions to identify opportunities to diversify their recruitment strategies. This tool’s advanced capabilities allow institutions to analyse prospective student behaviour up to two years prior to their key decision-making stages.

Additionally, with the sector landscape facing ever-evolving changes and challenges, it is important to remember how beneficial IQ Demand can be in observing the impact of policy updates on prospective student demand. These capabilities are vital for any institution looking to run highly effective student recruitment and marketing campaigns.

In fact, it was through the use of IQ Demand and other IQ tools that Deakin University was able to strengthen their course innovation and course review process. Learn more about Deakin University’s experience with IQ Demand here.

To further help inform recruitment strategies, all Core Partners have access to IDP’s wide array of market intelligence. This includes exclusive reports – such as our source market and destination reports – as well as the latest webinars. Core Partners also have an exclusive first-look at new IDP research, such as our Pulse surveys and Emerging Futures research reports. Furthermore, enrolment and visa data from AEI, MBIE, Hesa, and Open Doors is also available to Core Partners through customisable data visualisations.

Access to this market intelligence – which is the result of our global presence and expertise – provides Core Partners up-to-date insights for key source markets, granting them a data-driven experience. Furthermore, Core Partners can look forward to being front-of-the-line when it comes to accessing data from the upcoming Emerging Futures 7 survey findings, which will be available in May 2025.

Some of our recent examples of market intelligence includes our October 2024 report on Vietnam as a growing source market. From this report, Core Partners were able to gain key insights on this cohort, including the fact that Vietnam boasts the fifth-highest number of global Tik Tok users, suggesting a key advertising platform for recruiters.

Our Enrolment Matcher Tool (EMT) is available for all Core Partners to have greater understanding of non-commission return on investment. This highly useful tool takes both applied and enrolled student data from an institution, as well as Hotcourses registered leads, and looks for matches in these two datasets. From here, a document is generated showcasing the return on investment.

Not only does EMT show how students have engaged with your institution, but it also shows the role IDP has played in a particular student enrolling at your institution.

In today’s oversaturated online market, institutions must establish a strong presence in high traffic corners of the web. Equally vital in this attention-limited environment is ensuring their visibility is clear, eye-catching and impactful.

As part of Core Partnership, institutions have access to Content Hub. Content Hub are central to your digital campaigns and provide Core Partners with dedicated profile pages across our suite of international student websites, all of which receive roughly 100 million annual users. Through Content Hub, your institution can ensure greater ROI thanks to market-specific, translated content across our sites resulting in a growth in enquiries.

Replacing traditional text-heavy university profiles with the immersive, video-led content and compelling unique selling points of a Content Hub profile is a must for Core Partners aiming to build brand awareness and boost student campaign activity.

Marketing and building brand awareness amongst target student audiences is obviously desirable, but building a ‘human’ connection with your prospective students can be significantly beneficial for both parties.

Powered by The Ambassador Platform, our P2P Conversion and Community tools enable Core Partners to have multiple touchpoints across our websites and app. Through Conversion, prospective students can chat with current student ambassadors via an institution’s profile and course pages on the IDP Live app. With Community, prospective students can access student-created content. P2P Conversion and Community not only enables institutions to have unrivalled brand exposure and digital reach, but also unique insights into key student questions.

For more information on how The Ambassador Platform can benefit your institution, check out the University of Waikato’s story here.

Core Partnership offers a superior global service, empowering institutions to achieve their goals through best-in-class data, marketing tools, and expert counsellors. Simply put, it is the gateway to students through IDP’s global digital presence and physical counsellor network.

To learn more about the numerous ways Core Partnership can help both diversify and supercharge your institution’s recruitment efforts, reach out to arrange a meeting with a member of our IDP Partnerships team today.