Post-Easter catch up

On my first day back after a relaxing Easter break, I attended some photography training, kindly organised by Heidi for the Comms team. During the course we went into a lot of depth about how to make the most of our cameras. The course leader reminded us on several occasions that humans are far more intelligent that cameras, but I’m not convinced I supported that theory for a lot of the day! 

The day was fairly confusing at times but I left feeling far more confident in my understanding of which setting to use when. I learned about how RAW files allow you to better edit a photograph and how to manually focus too. I suppose that time will tell as to whether it all sunk in but I’m hoping that with a bit of practice my photos will improve a lot.

Now the Easter break is over the marketing team is working really hard on the 2015 postgraduate prospectus, and the UCMK prospectus too. After lots of hard work by Sarah and Kylie on flatplans, we’re ready to bring these publications to life. Watch this space!  

I’ve been doing lots of work on promoting the postgraduate Jubilee Scholarship and spreading the Open Event coming up on 22 May. Other tasks have included sending out recommendation emails to all our third year students by department, to suggest PG courses that might suit them. As ever, I’ve been filming and editing lots of videos to brighten up our PG Life ezine.

word about the postgraduate

As you can probably tell, it’s very busy here but it’s really exciting to see more big projects get underway as we continue our efforts to show prospective students why Beds should be their first choice!

Clare

It’s all go, go, go!

Happy belated Easter wishes to everyone. After a relaxing six day break, we’re back into the swing of things in the MARC department.

I’ve been here eight weeks now, and it’s really flown over! So, what’s going on…what’s keeping me busy…

Prospectuses are coming

We’re now in the middle of not one, but two prospectuses- UCMK and PG. So lots of proofreading, liaising with departments, coordinating content and updating information. We’re expecting the first proof of the UCMK prospectus from the design agency on Monday 28 April, which will be very exciting- I love seeing a piece of work come together!

Open day

Our Bedford Campus

We’re hosting our next PG open day on 22 May at Luton and Bedford. As conversion is really important to us, I put a six week plan together for the event and I’ve been pushing those plans through with the help of my colleague, Clare. From setting up Google ads with the Digital Team and pushing messages on social media, to placing ads in external newsletters and around our campuses. We’ve had a lot of people sign up so far, which is great news with almost four weeks left to go before the event.

In between my larger projects I have been working on our next edition of B4 Beds- our undergraduate e-zine, briefing course specific leaflets for our UCAS event on 23 June at UoB, filming graduations, and attempting to edit videos (I’m still getting to grips with the software).

My development

I’m really excited that I have been signed up to attend our next PG forum in London at the beginning of May- an introduction to PG. This is an opportunity for people from different universities to get together and discuss their thoughts on postgraduate study and share ideas and best practice for increasing student numbers. I’m looking forward to attending and I’ll have an update on this in my next blog. I am also going to be attending a print workshop later in the year and spending some time shadowing the Digital Team. I’ve learned a lot already in my eight weeks and I'm looking forward to that continuing.

So, as expected, lot’s going on and I’m loving it!

And we're live! - Getting to grips with CRM

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

LIVE: Our new CRM personalised web portal:
Belong at Bedfordshire

Hi everyone. It's been a short while since my last post. But now that I'm back from my staycation, I'm already ploughing through hundreds of emails and getting my calendar filled up with meetings to progress some exciting initiatives. First on my list was to progress the launch of our new CRM system, Belong at Beds. This has been a long project in the making, headed up by our CRM Manager Amanda, and Digital Marketing Manager, Paul. Since I took up the Marketing Manager role last June, I've been getting my teeth into it also; understanding what it is, what it can do, and what we need to do to get it up and running. After a few initial delays in development, we're finally ready to go live, which we're all very excited about. Training complete, data at the ready, content schedule devised. We're going for a soft launch whilst we settle into working with a live system and live data, but that's not to say we're scrimping on the content. So what are you waiting for? Take a look for yourself.

Now that the March cohort of students have arrived, it means that our MSc Project Management Distance Learning Marketing plan has come to an end. Over the last few days I've been collating stats and assessing the performance of our digital communications to pull together into an end of campaign report. Here, we'll be able to look at what activity has worked particularly well for us, and what hasn't, all of which will help us plan for future campaigns and make recommendations for improvements. So far it's looking good in terms of traffic generated and reach. I've also got my hands on our student numbers for the courses, and it seems that we've met the original targets set at the start of the campaign. It's always great to see when a campaign has gone well and delivered on it's initial objectives (Well done team!). The report will soon be available on the Staff Intranet site in.beds, so if you're an internal member of staff reading this blog and want to know more, be sure to take a look, and do get in touch to discuss how the Marketing team can support your courses.

New UCMK, Milton Keynes Prospectus
ready June 2014

In other news, work is now well underway on the UCMK prospectus. Kylie, Marketing Officer, and Clare, Marketing Assistant, have been busily updating text, imagery, and auditing courses to feature in the 2015 publication. We're now ready to brief this in to our agency, and so look forward to seeing 1st proofs shortly. We can then turn our attention to the PG 2015 Prospectus. I've audited all of our Postgraduate provision to form a flatplan, and we're now ready to start reworking content over the next few weeks. We'll keep you posted on the progress of these publications, and make sure you keep checking back to get a first-look at the visuals.

Presentation preparation: Boosting our PG
Profile

In between all of the above, I've also been doing a fair bit of number crunching to look at our Postgraduate student numbers between 2011 and 2013. Paul Fryer, who heads up our Digital team, and myself have both been invited to present at the Inside Government Conference: The Future of Higher Education Marketing 2014 later this month on the success of our Postgraduate marketing. Our talk title is: Enhancing Postgraduate Student Recruitment Through Developing A Digital Presence. Wish us luck!

Hello

By Krystle Hall, Campaign Officer

I am Krystle the new Campaign Officer at the University of Bedfordshire.  Trinidadian born and Wirralian raised I find myself living in Hertfordshire, which I have found to be a quaint and friendly part of the world.  I join you from a London based advertising agency where I project managed a portfolio of accounts.    

   

I have been at the University of Bedfordshire for almost 2 weeks now.  I received a very warm welcome on my first day with a tasty Thai lunch at Nakorn where I enjoyed a green Thai curry punctuated with good conversation.  I have since had the pleasure of meeting everyone in the MARC department and was given the opportunity to sit down with a number of colleagues to pick their vast brains during my initial induction.  I feel like I have learnt an awful lot already and look forward to expanding my knowledge further.  I have also had a chance to tour the labyrinth campus which I hope will become familiar to me in time. 

Last week I found myself on the set of our new cinema advert, shot “on location” in the Student Village.  The director stalked the scene, technicians honed set and lighting whilst the cameraman found that perfect shot. I even got to feature as a passing student in one scene, the most challenging part of which was resisting the plate of Haribo sweets that had been placed in front of me.  Look out for my acting debut where you may get to see the side of my head in a couple of frames.  It was a lot of fun seeing the Digital Team hard at work; their ideas being brought to life.

It has been all GO already! 

Walking, new face, ‘hello!’ handshake; meeting, listening, reciting, note take; talking, phone rings, ‘hello!’ pondering; what’s this? Where’s that?  Who’s this? Why do that? What’s his name? That’s that; print out, copy, ‘hello!’ typo; staff card, door card, parking card; line chart, pie chart, bar chart; note pad,  ipad, gel pen, empty pen, read, tap, type, write, click, send.

I am now getting my first taste of planning, working on our Clearing Campaign.  I will keep you posted as the campaign develops.

Type to you soon,

Krystle