Panels, planning and Postgraduate Awards - all in a weeks work

By Sarah Hampton - Marketing Manager

Well firstly I do apologise for the late blog posting - it's been very busy within the Marketing team lately and since our last posting there's been lots going on that we can share with you. So do bear with me whilst I rattle through and bring you up to speed...

After all of our efforts over the past few months, our Clearing campaign for this year has finally come to a close. Freshers' Week is now just a stones throw away and so we're excited to see our campus get filled up with this years' new cohort of students as we start to see them settle in to their new surroundings and breathe new life into our campuses, after the last few months of summer seeming like a ghost town. But, as one job finishes another begins, and so it will be no surprise to hear that we're already straight into our 2014 marketing campaigns.

Failing to plan is
planning to fail!

I've been busying myself with meeting colleagues from our Digital Marketing, Telemarketing, Market Research, and Recruitment teams to discuss our plans and activity for the next academic year, as well as changes we'd like to make, and looking at ways that we can, as a team, implement some new and exciting ideas (more on these in future posts). It's all in the early stages at the moment and still quite hush hush, so I'll be able to share more with you as ideas progress.

Getting ahead of the game
with our Sports webpage

Some information that I can share with you is the success of our recent Postgraduate Sport campaign which ran between June and September. Working with our Sport departments based at our Bedford campus, we devised a marketing plan which involved trialling some promoted tweets for the very first time, direct marketing, as well as course features on Prospects and Masters Compare.

I hope to have the report on this activity finalised shortly, but some interim highlights include a 42% uplift to our PGT Sport applicants (post campaign), and a 65% uplift in applications compared with the previous year. A job well done if we do say so ourselves!

Role reversal with many candidates
posing some interesting questions to
the panel 

I'm always quite amazed at how much we're able to plough through, considering the amount of time I've actually spent at my desk in the last week or two. For the last week in particular I feel as though I could give the X Factor a run for their money as I don my interview attire and sit on panel after panel to meet new candidates as we interview for some vacancies within the wider MARC team. First up was a two-day stint to support the Recruitment team in their search for a new Recruitment Assistant. Candidates delivered excellent and insightful presentations into our many Postgraduate audiences and how we can better target them. With Postgraduate marketing being quite close to my heart I really enjoyed hearing what everyone had to say and what challenges they felt we faced. Over the last two days I've been on another panel, this time we've been recruiting to a role within my own team - Marketing Assistant. I found it fascinating to hear what questions we were asked at the end of the interviews, which definitely kept us all on our toes. From: "Why do we work here and what do you enjoy about your job", to "How will you manage my performance and development" to some out there questions such as "Tell us about the strategy for the next year".

Roll on Monday! It's prospectus
pitches time

Coming up next week are the 2015 prospectus pitches which we've been waiting for, for a long time (don't believe me? Scroll back through the blog posts to recall our excitement!). Well the time has finally arrived, so we'll be heading on over to our Putteridge Bury campus next week to form yet another panel, and meet with a number of agencies. I always enjoy seeing how our 2015 publications begin to take shape. Read more about this in next weeks post! We'll give you all the exclusive details right here.

The Postgraduate Awards will be the first event in the UK to celebrate and showcase marketing excellence in postgraduate recruitment.
— postgradawards (@postgradawards) April 2, 2013

Although we've been incredibly busy I've still managed to squeeze in some time to submit another awards entry; this time for Prospects' very first Postgraduate Awards. We've entered for Best Postgraduate Prospectus, alongside some entries from the Digital team, so keep everything crossed for us, and we'll keep you posted on whether we're lucky enough to have another awards dinner on the cards. After the hectic week that we've had I definitely think we deserve a treat or two!