Open day success

Open Days

Signage at our open day

I mentioned in my last blog that I was working on the UG open day. Well, the open day took place on Wednesday (24 September) and it was a huge success for sign ups. We had 315 students sign up for Bedford, with 191 people attending and 512 students sign up for Luton, with 204 people attending. We were all monitoring the sign up numbers on a daily basis and getting excited about the amount of signups we had generated. Although there is still work to do around the dropout rates (which we are working on), it was great to see that the activity in the open day plan generated some really good numbers. Recruitment also did a lot of work getting busloads of schools onto our campuses, so as you can image, we were busy, busy, busy!  I’m looking forward to doing the evaluation for this campaign and seeing where the signups correlated with the marketing activity.

Our next UG open days are in October and November, so next week I will be putting plans together for these events. However, due to the close proximity of the events, these will have a shorter lead time.

Our PG open day plans are also underway now, with Google adwords, emails to students and social media activity already taken place. And we have lots of activity happening around our campuses in the coming weeks, as the students return. It would be great to see the same success for the PG open day, as we seen for the UG open day.

UG16 prospectus

Work has also started on the UG16 prospectus. I have booked photography for the end of October, and put the production schedule together. In the coming weeks I will produce a flatplan and work with quality on the courses lists. We also have two days of agency pitches next week, where design agencies come in to pitch to us and show us their ideas for our prospectuses and campaigns. There are 10 of us sitting on the panel, and following these pitches we will collectively decide who we feel is the best agency.

Training

Myself and my colleague, Clare, also attended a print workshop this week with Belmont Press, in Northampton. It was a really informative day; we learnt about different forms of printing, paper stock and took a look around the facilities to see the machines in action.

Lot’s going on as usual.

Speak soon,

K

9 Weeks & 4 Days (but who's counting)

Sophia Meola, Marketing Administrator

Hello there everyone!

It has been a whole 9 weeks and 4 days (but who’s counting) since I started my position here at the MARC department and it is still as great as ever. If you read my first post then you would have got a little background about me, what I like and what my aspirations are. I am happy to be back and writing a second post for this blog and no doubts I will ramble on again like last time. Since we spoke last I have had quite a lot going on in terms of work around the MARC department. I am attending regular team and departmental meetings, working hard on my tasks, getting involved in new campaigns and just generally settling more into the department.

What am I currently working on? Well, in my last post I mentioned I was given the opportunity to work on a numerous of different tasks. One of which is still updating a handful of subject guides for the new academic year and students arriving end of September beginning of October (not long now). These are still being worked on, altered and re-designed; however, they should be completed considerably soon. The road has been a little bumpy with some specific subject guides but who doesn’t like a bit of a challenge right?! I can almost see the finish line and the official DEADLINE for that matter so I really need to push to get these completed. I am on leave from Wednesday 24th and return Monday 29th so ideally I need to get them completed before my leave…fingers crossed!

The photo library! I have been working on the online photo library for a few weeks now and it is slowly but surely coming together nicely. This task has involved me scrolling though all images available on the internal server and updating captions, tags and deleting duplicates. This has been a great task to work on and jump in to between everything else I am working on at the moment. I consider myself quite an organised individual so I have really enjoyed re-organising it all (I am such a dork).

On the theme of pictures I was actually asked to contribute and take part in the new 2014 winter campaign. This involved me attending a nifty photoshoot and answering a few questions in a video. I am extremely excited to see the final results and everything should be going live Monday 22nd of this month so keep your eyes peeled. I have refused to watch my video takes back as yet as I don’t know what to expect…did I say the right thing? Did I miss anything out? Does my hair and makeup look decent? – Such a girly thing for me to say haha. The thing is I want to start making videos to progress my personal blog and start the whole Youtube vlogging thing so ideally I really need to get it down to a T. I mean, otherwise it might be a tad tricky editing a video and uploading them. Ohh nothing is ever easy with me.

Now for a task that I have completed! A few weeks ago I was told to copy over the 2015 Undergraduate and 2015 Postgraduate prospectuses into single file documents onto the W drive. Just like the above suggests I went through a copied and pasted each page throughout the prospectus into word documents and then re-formatted the layout ready for when we start work on the new 2016 ones! I found it very therapeutic and also very interesting as I got to obtain a full understanding of all of the subjects we offer here at the university.

A few weeks ago now I completed my Business Student blogging internship with the university. It was such a great experience to get involved in and I love how it developed into an online diary format documenting my final year at the university. It is something I can always look back on in the future and reminisce. This was actually the first year introducing the student blogs and I think there is talk in the works that they will be carrying on…yay! During a team meeting on Monday I was told that the team wanted me to help recruit and train the new student bloggers. This really excited me because blogging is a huge part of my life and being able to incorporate that into a job role seems like perfection to me. Blogging has become a huge part of my life and it is such a glorious tool that can be used throughout so many different marketing platforms…the possibilities are endless.

On the theme of Monday’s team meeting, I was told that the MARC department wanted to elongate my contract a keep me on board a little longer than initially planned. For a Business management graduate who only graduated two months ago this is a great opportunity for me. Hopefully I will be able to stay the duration the team want me, however, I did make a few plans and commitments prior to finding out about the new contract as I obviously thought my last day would be 3rd October…fingers crossed we can work everything out.

What would be a Sophia blog post without something a little personal?! In my last post I mentioned that my blog was nominated under two categories in the 2014 Cosmopolitan Blog Awards. Since writing that post the voting has now closed and we find out results during an awards ceremony on 7th October in London. I am extremely excited to head down, meet up with some blogging friends and also meet a whole load of new bloggers. I am a little nervous and anxious about it all but just to be going to the awards for me is an achievement in itself so we will see what else the night might bring. I am planning on bringing my nifty Canon 700D with me so I may or may not write a little post about it all to update you guys on here or on my student blog…eeeep! P.S my blog has had it's little makeover now so if you fancy a little peek you can do so by clicking here. 

Overall, it has been a great 9 weeks and I am looking forward to starting work on some new projects...one of which will be the new 2016 prospectuses! Rightio, I think that is everything that is going on at the moment. I hope you enjoyed reading my rambles once again. If you have made is this far then well done, you deserve a gold star!

Speak to you all soon!

CASE Conference 2014

Last week I travelled to Edinburgh for the CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) Europe Annual Conference 2014, along with almost 1,000 delegates from countries across the continent.

I boarded a flight from Luton airport early on Tuesday morning and arrived just in time for midday registration and opening plenary. The two and a half days that followed were full of inspiring case studies, funny speeches, informative presentations and motivational advice. A couple of ideas particularly inspired me:

• Digital content marketing
  A brilliant session with Oxford Brookes’ Tim Gibson and Richard Sills sparked lots of ideas about how best to use digital content to content to engage audiences. Interestingly, the University magazine, Observe, is ‘going digital;’ the print version of the annual magazine is now available as a digital page-turner, and Observe will soon be supported by an online, interactive, content-driven social space where students will easily be able to share and comment on content
• Connecting with people can make us relevant
  Jason Simon from University of California (UC) got me thinking about how I could be talking about the University of Bedfordshire in the marketing material I produce. UC ran a great campaign focussed on connecting themselves to peoples’ every day, local lives: ‘Whether you know it or not UC has probably played a part in your day/life.’ This opened up opportunities for them to draw in research (ie. our researcher has created a tool kit to help social workers help you), specific courses (ie. our nurses are helping the people of Luton in the L&D hospital right now) etc. Making the most of our good news by making them into stories that really connect with people.

There were a few fun evenings of entertainment involved too! It was great to attend the Welcome Reception at the National Museum of Scotland at the end of day one:

Great space for the @CASE_Europe Welcome Reception tonight. Day one is complete. GO TEAM #ceac14 #Edinburgh pic.twitter.com/4YwVC5MyH0
— Sam Sciberras (@SamSciberras7) August 26, 2014

Of course, taking three days out of the office has left me with a hefty to-do list this week, but it's well worth it; I've returned to my desk full of ideas that I hope to put into action over the coming weeks and months.

We're still clearing that path, someone get a leaf blower

Krystle Hall, Campaign Officer

The Clearing Campaign is still going strong with all hands on deck in the MARC Department.  We have ambitious targets to hit and everyone is working very hard to achieve them.  It’s been great seeing all the artwork erected in various formats in the local area.  Passers-by have looked on bemused as I have tried to capture billboards and lamppost banners on my mobile whilst striving not to walk into any hedges.

I went to the Odeon cinema in Milton Keynes yesterday to see ‘Million Dollar Arm,’ my boyfriend’s choice, he is always forcing me to watch sport and related documentary’s about former basketball players that have succumbed to the dark, drug fuelled underworld of sport only to emerge on the other side as motivational speakers (!).  Needless to say I was hesitant to sit through a film about both cricket and baseball but it turned out to be a typical feel good Disney endeavour.  Anyway I digress, my point being as I sat through trailers for ‘Lucy’ and ‘The hundred foot journey’ I was proud to see our Clearing advert flash up on screen.  It was good to see that it is still going strong.

We have even extended, upscaled and added further activity to really strengthen and optimise the campaign.  We have extended and added outdoor advertising, expanded our events remit and added additional Student Room, UCAS, What Uni , Metro and other University sector advertising online.  We are using detailed tracking and analytics to augment the campaign and ensure that we are using the best possible methods to get the brand out there.  I am also working on a new radio advert to refresh the message that it’s not too late to join us.

Winter is coming

For the past few weeks I have been working on the new artwork concept for the Winter Campaign.  We want to take the current Clearing concept of the student journey and develop it further to show the graduate journey.  We have been looking at how to retain what we created with Clearing but take it to the next level.  Coming up with creative ideas is easy, the hard part is making your ideas work on the page; making a functional advert that delivers whilst retaining edge and innovation.  And time is never on our side.  After playing around with different ideas we have now developed a mocked up design.  But you can’t see it yet, because it isn’t ready; our (proverbial Frankenstein’s) monster is yet to have life pumped in it.

But I can tell you that the strap will be ‘Discover a path to your future’ which continues and develops the ‘clearing a path to your future’ message (see what we did there; of course you did it’s not that deep).  The artwork sets out to visually represent UoB unearthing students hidden talents/skills/passions in the form of a glowing image against a dusky backdrop; it’s very dramatic. 

I was out of the office last week doing the photography and videography for it.  We have some great graduates on board from a range of disciplines.  It was really fascinating to hear about the different experiences and journeys that they had undertaken.  I found it inspirational to see what our graduates have achieved and it was great to hear how passionately they felt about their experiences here.  Some were recent graduates who had obtained scholarships, some had high profile jobs at well know companies and others ran their own businesses.  Our resident Marketing Assistant Sophia Meola had her arm twisted to represent Business.  I got some lovely ethereal, ballerina shots of her.

As ever we are very ambitious in our vision. For our Sports graduates Joe Strange and Ryan Freckleton I wanted to get dynamic motion shots of them running and jumping which meant taking shot after shot to get the image just right.  A photo shoot with us isn’t any ordinary photo-shoot it’s a chance to both pose and get your sweat on.    

We experimented with directional lighting to create extreme states and produce depth and interest in the photographs.  The test was articulating the vision in my head so that the photographer and model understood exactly what I was trying to achieve.  A lot of it was trial and error as solutions which made sense in theory didn’t always work out in practice.  Nonetheless I am confident that the resulting shapes and hues will really give this campaign a sophisticated, corporate feel that will set us apart from the competition and take the brand from strength to strength.

I’m sure you can tell that I am really excited to start working on the artwork properly now that we have got all the photography sorted; can’t wait to see it come to life.

Anyone who knows me will know that I love a spread sheet, sad I know, and I have been too busy of late to give my spread sheets the attention they deserve so off I go to love and nurture them back to present day accuracy.

Type soon,

Krystle   

Is it 2014, 2015, or 2016??

Clearing

As Clare mentioned in her previous blog, everyone in MARC has been heavily focused on Clearing, trying to recruit last minute students for the 2014 cycle. Every day we’re monitoring numbers and working on additional activity to further support the original campaign plan. There’s definitely a busy buzz around the office!

Workshop banner

As part of the Clearing campaign I recently manned the Clearing stand in Luton Mall and supported the flash mob during their performance at the Mall a few weeks ago. I’m sure you’ve all seen it, but if not, take a look here. As well as that small contribution to Clearing (its minor compared to some of my colleagues), I’ve created pull-up banners for the recruitment team to use for the workshops they are running in Luton Mall as part of some additional Clearing activity. And I’m sure there will be more jobs to come as we continue through the process. It’ll all be worth it in the end!

Open days

The next round of UG and PG open days are approaching, trying to recruit for 2015 entry.  After evaluating the previous events, and taking in to consideration our new target of increasing footfall to open events by 25%, I’ve been working on the open day plans for our 24 September UG open day. So far we have implemented mostly digital activity; Google adwords and display ads, emails to enquirers and website banners. We’ve also printed postcard invites for enquirers and pushed promoted tweets, which is a new feature on Twitter, which we are experimenting with. We have more activity to do over the coming weeks with external agency activity, CRM snippets, further emails and ring rounds. This is the first time we have run a UG open day in September, and due to the Clearing campaign running alongside the open day campaign, it’s been quite difficult to get the balance of activity right. We’ve already utilised most of the activity for Clearing, ie homepage banners on the website and Google activity, so we’ve had to be even more strategic when implementing these open day plans.

Our Luton Open Day brochure

On top of implementing the plan, I’ve also been working on the open day brochures, which we send out to all registrants ahead of the event to let them know what to expect on the day. They went to print last week, and will be arriving in office on 4 September, ready for our first mail out on 8 September. Following these going to print, I will now be working on our UCMK and Aylesbury open day brochures.

Our next PG open day event is also approaching on 16 October, so I will be putting plans together for this campaign this week.

Planning ahead

As well as the above, I will be starting work on the 2016 publications from early/mid-September, so I’m already thinking about photography requirements and how we can progress the prospectus for the next academic cycle in light of the verbal branding work that we have been doing.

I’m also working on an e-zine recommendation report, so we can progress the e-zines for the next academic year. As we have now completed a full cycle (12 editions) of the e-zine, we are looking at how we can improve these, as they are an important part of our conversion activity. I have been analysing the stats on all of our e-zines to see what worked well and what didn’t work well, so we can look at improving the content to get more traction and clicks. I’ve also been looking into what other universities do in terms of newsletters/ e-zines, to see if they can inspire us to do anything differently. So far it would seem we are ahead of the sector in terms of our e-zine activity, which is a nice feeling!

And a few other bits…

I mentioned previously that I was working on updating five of the subject guides. I am still working on these; I have had two back from the designer to proofread and I'm still working on amending the other three.

I’ve also been working on August’s edition of B4Beds, which was sent on Friday 29 August, and this was the last applicant edition. This month’s addition will be aimed towards enquirers, so a big shift in content.

I also mentioned last time that I had put together a content schedule for out PG social media platforms to ensure we are posting regularly and engaging with our audience. It’s been great to see that we have seen an increase in the amount of people our posts are reaching, which is a real positive. We’ve also seen a steady increase in likes/followers. Keep a look out for our #wisewednesdays posts every week.

Well, that’s the biggies from me for now; I won’t bore you with the rest!

Speak soon,

K