Choosing Your Uni matches prospective students with universities and degrees that best fit their unique interests, preferences and career goals — significantly reducing dropout rates and saving universities millions. It’s all done through a custom-built software powered by sophisticated AI technology.
Case Study
Choosing Your Uni: Streamlining content creation with Ontraport's built-in AI and Dynamic CMS
$150k
saved per year on development
50 hours+
saved per month on blog
150 segments
reached automatically
Company
publicSydney, Australia
Industry
Education
Key features used
Automation
Dynamic CMS
AI Assistant
Email + SMS
CRM
Custom Objects
Dynamic CMS
AI Assistant
Email + SMS
CRM
Custom Objects
Introduction
After having to close his successful Australian study abroad travel company due to the Covid pandemic in 2020, Rob Malicki quickly pivoted to a new business supporting Australian students. Choosing Your Uni transforms the way students select their ideal Australian university.
As a long-time Ontraport user, Rob already knew the value of using the platform to manage the marketing and CRM side of his new venture.
He soon realized how Ontraport’s new Dynamic CMS (Content Management System) and AI Assistant tools opened possibilities he hadn’t imagined. He’s using these tools to streamline content creation and build custom web experiences, such as a “reviews” site and news repository, without the cost and slowness involved with a developer.
Ontraport is a game-changer for us. With its Dynamic CMS and AI Assistant, we've dramatically streamlined our content creation, saved countless hours, and launched complex, dynamic web experiences in days rather than weeks. Choosing Your Uni wouldn't have scaled this rapidly without Ontraport.
Co-founder, Choosing Your Uni
The Challenges
The Challenges
Through his previous companies, Rob had seen firsthand how disconnected tech systems created headaches for marketing and sales. He knew that starting Choosing Your Uni with Ontraport’s all-in-one platform would avoid those problems altogether. The team also looked to Ontraport to solve these challenges:
Creating content across multiple formats
Rob and his five-person team had a lot on their plates launching a new company. They needed to free up time by streamlining essential but time-consuming marketing tasks, including blog content creation, podcast promotion, and creating a “reviews” site.
Managing complex relationships
With three different types of relationships to manage — the students who would use their platform, universities who would be featured in the platform, and investors they were pitching — they needed a solution that could keep everything organized.
Testing new ideas
As a new business founded by a serial-entrepreneur, the team had many ideas for how to optimize their AI-driven tech platform and gain more interest from their potential users. But hiring their development team, who was building their core platform, to build out those untested ideas would be far too costly — and too slow.
The Solution
The Solution
Creating SEO-optimized blog content at scale
The Choosing Your Uni team now publishes one blog article a day using Ontraport’s AI Assistant and Dynamic CMS.
Here’s how: They start by generating 50 topics using ChatGPT and importing them into a custom object in Ontraport. Then, they use the AI Assistant to generate a full article — including the SEO title and description — based on the topic and audience (students, parents or career advisors). The content is created directly inside Ontraport — right in the custom record — just like you’d draft a post in WordPress or any other CMS. The SEO markup is added automatically to the page code. Once the team reviews the article and adds an image, they publish it with a click.
Because everything is written and stored in the same place it’s published, there’s no need to copy and paste between tools. And since their AI prompts are built into automations, each article follows the same structure and voice without needing to re-train the AI every time.
Here’s how: They start by generating 50 topics using ChatGPT and importing them into a custom object in Ontraport. Then, they use the AI Assistant to generate a full article — including the SEO title and description — based on the topic and audience (students, parents or career advisors). The content is created directly inside Ontraport — right in the custom record — just like you’d draft a post in WordPress or any other CMS. The SEO markup is added automatically to the page code. Once the team reviews the article and adds an image, they publish it with a click.
Because everything is written and stored in the same place it’s published, there’s no need to copy and paste between tools. And since their AI prompts are built into automations, each article follows the same structure and voice without needing to re-train the AI every time.
Launching AI-generated, dynamic podcast pages
Ontraport’s AI Assistant and Dynamic CMS also handle the heavy lifting for Choosing Your Uni’s podcast promotions. The team starts by putting the transcript from each podcast recording into an Ontraport record. Then, using a built-in automation, Ontraport’s AI Assistant pulls from that transcript to generate the podcast title, short and long descriptions, and a LinkedIn post. Once they set a release date, the episode is automatically published on the scheduled day — no manual follow-up required.
“Essentially, the amount of work we have to do is paste the transcript in,” Rob said.
“Essentially, the amount of work we have to do is paste the transcript in,” Rob said.
Building a Yelp-like “reviews” site
One of the benefits to students who participate in Choosing Your Uni is getting to see reviews from current and past students who attended the universities they’re interested in.
The Choosing Your Uni team is using Ontraport’s Dynamic CMS to create a site where students can submit their reviews via a simple form on a page, and the reviews are then automatically displayed on the website. Viewers can filter by university, degree, rating and various other factors to get the insight they need.
The Choosing Your Uni team is using Ontraport’s Dynamic CMS to create a site where students can submit their reviews via a simple form on a page, and the reviews are then automatically displayed on the website. Viewers can filter by university, degree, rating and various other factors to get the insight they need.
Managing various types of contacts with ease
Choosing Your Uni serves students, parents, universities and investors — all with different needs and touchpoints. Using Ontraport’s custom objects and relationships, the team keeps every connection organized and personalized.
They can see which parents belong to which students, which contacts work at which universities, and which investors they’re actively in conversation with. This setup powers automated messaging that’s both relevant and timely, while giving the team quick access to the full picture of each relationship.
They can see which parents belong to which students, which contacts work at which universities, and which investors they’re actively in conversation with. This setup powers automated messaging that’s both relevant and timely, while giving the team quick access to the full picture of each relationship.
Testing new features rapidly
Ontraport allows Choosing Your Uni to quickly prototype and test new functionalities before they build them into their core platform.
For example, they’ve created a news repository in Ontraport that allows universities to submit their published research articles so prospective students can get more insight. The AI Assistant in Ontraport scans the submissions to do sentiment analysis, determine who they’re relevant to, and identify reading time. Everything then gets published on the front end, and prospective students can filter by university, topic and other factors. Ontraport will also automatically email the content directly to relevant Choosing Your Uni members, putting the article in front of the right person at the right time.
“That would take our devs probably a couple of weeks to develop, at a high expense,” Rob said. “We built it in Ontraport in a couple of days and were able to start testing it really quickly.”
The team is currently testing different page layouts and user experiences using Ontraport’s no-code, drag-and-drop page builder.
For example, they’ve created a news repository in Ontraport that allows universities to submit their published research articles so prospective students can get more insight. The AI Assistant in Ontraport scans the submissions to do sentiment analysis, determine who they’re relevant to, and identify reading time. Everything then gets published on the front end, and prospective students can filter by university, topic and other factors. Ontraport will also automatically email the content directly to relevant Choosing Your Uni members, putting the article in front of the right person at the right time.
“That would take our devs probably a couple of weeks to develop, at a high expense,” Rob said. “We built it in Ontraport in a couple of days and were able to start testing it really quickly.”
The team is currently testing different page layouts and user experiences using Ontraport’s no-code, drag-and-drop page builder.
The fact that we can iterate so quickly using the system is a major advantage.
Co-founder, Choosing Your Uni
Results
Results
Saved ~$150,000 per year of development costs by building no-code prototypes in Ontraport
Saved ~70 hours per month by creating blog and podcast content using Ontraport’s built-in AI, dynamic CMS and automations
Saved ~$100,000 by using Ontraport’s no-code Dynamic CMS to create a reviews site and news repository instead of numerous tools integrated together by a developer
Reach thousands of students across 150 segments automatically via email and SMS
Looking Ahead
Looking Ahead
Choosing Your Uni aims to partner with every Australian university, becoming the nation’s go-to solution for university selection. Ontraport remains central to this ambitious growth, enabling swift innovation, efficient scalability, and exceptional value for both students and educational institutions across Australia.
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Chief Operating Officer
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