Introducing TAP 3: a conversion service powered by peer-to-peer

The landscape of international student recruitment has shifted dramatically in recent years. Political turbulence, changing student flows, and tightening budgets have left higher education institutions asking themselves a crucial question: how can we do more with less while still delivering exceptional student experiences?

The answer lies in harnessing the authentic power of the student voice throughout the student journey. To learn more about the impact of peer-to-peer engagement, we spoke with Chamalee Karunanayake, our Partnerships Director for TAP, who joined the IDP Partnerships Team earlier this year.

Hi Chamalee. We know that students rely on a lot of different sources when researching their study options, but why is fostering peer-to-peer connections become such a crucial component in that process?

C: Our research consistently shows that 85% of prospective students consider talking with real students either extremely or very important when researching study options.

And that really comes down to two things: expertise and trust. Current students have unmatched expertise when it comes to the lived experience – what it’s actually like studying at a particular institution, on specific courses, in a certain city. But more importantly, they provide the trust that validates the information they get from university websites and other marketing material.

Take Elle, for example. She’s a UK student considering the University of Manchester we interviewed alongside 28 other domestic students as part of our research. She read about corporate partnerships on the university website, but it was her conversation with a current student that provided the crucial detail about how accessible these opportunities were, what the application process involved, and how many students successfully secured these positions. That authentic insight transformed her interest into genuine confidence and secured the University of Manchester's spot as her first choice.

So, it’s not just about information – it’s about reassurance?

C: Exactly. Students need peer support throughout their entire journey, especially at the awareness stage, when they're overwhelmed by choice and instead want more authentic, relatable content. During research, they're trying to figure out if a university is the right fit beyond what appears on paper. Through application and offer stages, they need reassurance and practical guidance. And pre-arrival? They're managing excitement alongside anxiety about the unknown.

At every stage, the student voice provides something that institutional marketing simply cannot, and that’s genuine, lived experience from someone who truly understands their perspective.

TAP 3 was recently launched in May. Can you tell us more about this new conversion service and any research that led to its development?

C: Yes, we conducted extensive research with The Ambassador Platform's 150+ university partners between June and September 2024, and three key insights emerged – insights that ultimately shaped our complete platform rebuild.

First, conversion is king. No surprise there - universities told us their number one priority in today’s challenging market is nurturing prospective students along their journey towards enrolment. In the case of peer-to-peer, it means that it's not enough to simply facilitate conversations – institutions need a service that actively improves conversion rates whilst making students feel genuinely supported.

Second, we found that teams are just stretched too thin. Our partners, grappling with tighter budgets and the challenges of having to wear many hats, want a service provider that doesn't drain their valuable time and can deliver successful outcomes with minimal internal resource investment.

Third, impact measurement matters. When budgets are tight, every investment has to prove its value. Universities needed better tools to track how peer-to-peer programmes actually influence recruitment outcomes.

These insights led us to completely rebuild our platform from the ground up, complete with a new database, new architecture, and new approach. Everything about TAP 3, now a product of IDP, is designed to solve these core challenges.

What sets TAP 3 apart from previous iterations?

C: Perhaps the most significant shift in TAP 3 is our evolution from product company to service provider. Previously, we operated as a platform company (in other words, SaaS) in the student recruitment sector. Now, we're a student recruitment service that's powered by peer-to-peer technology and leverages the expertise of the largest student recruitment company in the world, IDP Education.

This distinction matters enormously. Instead of just providing tools for universities to manage themselves, TAP 3 delivers conversion outcomes through active management and strategic intervention. We're not just facilitating connections - we're driving results.

What are the most important features of TAP 3?

C: There are several! TAP 3 isn’t just a platform - it’s a full-service conversion tool designed to engage students at every stage of their journey. Here’s how:

1. Community Building on One App

For starters, students can build profiles to make their personality shine and interact with current and prospective students. This is all with a little help from generative AI to eliminate the pain of bio-writing.

The platform tracks where each student is in their journey, so they get the right kind of support at the right time. Maybe that could be through an online event when they're just exploring, a chat with an ambassador when they're getting serious, or joining an offer-holder community when decision time arrives.

An added bonus is that prospective students on the app will only see your community, and unlike with other peer-to-peer apps, won't be able to access communities of other partner universities. It's all ring-fenced to ensure your leads remain yours.

2. Intelligent Community Management

Each prospective student profile captures far more than basic demographics. The system identifies personal interests, topics of research, engagement patterns, and progression between journey stages. This creates a rich understanding of who each student is, what they're looking for, and how best to support their decision-making process along the way.

A new 'engage' function allows targeted re-engagement of each prospective student on the platform with relevant peer-to-peer content, conversations, or community activities designed to move them to the next stage of their journey.

3. Active Management Service

What’s great for our partners is that our team will do it for you.

Our Active Management Team works alongside your Client Success Manager to understand your target audiences, ambassador constraints, and priority prospective student groups. This way, they have everything they need to re-engage prospective students on your behalf, connecting them with relevant community members, student ambassadors, and content.

They can even collaborate with your ambassadors to create the right types of engagement opportunities and content. In short, you remain in control of strategy and brand, but we handle the day-to-day nurturing that drives conversion outcomes.

4. Impact Reporting and ROI Calculation

TAP 3 tracks student progression through recruitment stages and collects feedback at each transition point. The impact report allows you to input key data points – platform costs, ambassador hourly rates, average tuition fees – and receive a comprehensive output showing total platform costs, progression outcomes, and student experience data.

You can download prospective student data to cross-reference with your enrolled students, validating the platform's capture accuracy and ensuring no enrolments are missed from your calculations.

What have results for TAP 3 been like so far?

C: There’s been plenty of high praise already from our early adopters of TAP 3, on how us folks at TAP feel like an extension of the recruitment team. Here’s some examples:

What does TAP 3 mean for the future of student recruitment?

C: TAP 3 represents more than platform evolution. It's a fundamental shift towards service-driven student recruitment that puts authentic student voice at the centre of conversion strategy.

By combining intelligent technology with active management, we're enabling universities to deliver personalised, peer-powered experiences that drive both student satisfaction and enrolment outcomes.

The question isn't whether peer-to-peer connection matters in student recruitment; it's whether institutions are ready to harness its full potential through a truly conversion-focused service.

Ready to explore how TAP 3 can transform your student recruitment outcomes? Get in touch to learn how it works, what you can expect, and special benefits for IDP clients, or book a meeting with Chamalee to learn more.