Shaping the future of HE Marketing

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

The Future of HE Marketing Conference 2014

This week saw the culmination of a months hard work and preparation as Paul Fryer (Digital Marketing Manager) and I made our way to London for this year's Inside Government 'The Future of HE Marketing" Conference 2014. Paul and I were invited to speak at the event, focusing on "Enhancing Postgraduate Recruitment Through Developing A Digital Presence." Well, we were more than happy to oblige, after all, PG is one of my favourite subjects!

Paul and I taking centre
stage

Before we knew it, the day had arrived, and there we were armed with our nifty USB stick (always carry a back up!), ready to share our PG knowledge with approximately 100 delegates, most of whom were either Directors or Heads from other universities from across the UK. After overcoming some initial nerves and stage fright (bar Paul who was raring to go!), we successfully delivered our presentation to what we thought was a really engaged audience. There's nothing like a room of frantic pen scribblers to make you second guess whether you've over shared or not. Nonetheless, we were pleased to be sharing best practice and have our work recognised by our peers, after our recent success in generating a 30% increase to PGT applications for our September 2013 intake, especially given that the national picture suggests that universities are experiencing a 12% decrease year on year.

And the feedback from some of the delegates was great...

@Sarah_Hampton @deep_phat @InsideGovt fantastic presentation.. Thanks for sharing some of your secrets ;-) #ighemarket
— Joe Etchells (@JEtchells88) April 29, 2014

Back in the office, things have been equally exciting, as we push forward with our conversion activity and publications; both the PG 2015 and UCMK 2015 prospectuses. We're fast approaching the proofing stages, so it's always great to see how your work slowly comes together. Stay tuned over the coming weeks for some sneak peaks into how some of the visuals are progressing.

Heading on out to Koz
in search of sunshine

For the next week I leave you in the very capable hands of the Marketing team, as I take some very long awaited annual leave in search of a spot of sunshine. I'll be back soon with more updates on our new CRM system, and may even share some of our PG secrets from our presentation earlier this week.