All change, all change on the marketing front

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Lots of new friendly faces!

A lot has been happening on the staffing front since my last blog post a few weeks ago. I think I've spent most of my time sat on interview panels lately, but it's great that we'll be welcoming lots of new friendly faces to the Marketing team in the coming weeks.

First up; we've been joined by James Blackburn, a final year BSc (Hons) Advertising and Marketing Communications student from the University. He's joined us for 10 weeks as Temporary Marketing Assistant to help us during a busy time in the recruitment cycle. It's great to have James on board as he's able to provide some valuable student insight to enhance our marketing initiatives.

As I mentioned above, I've been on countless interview panels, with the most recent one being for the recruitment of two brand new and shiny Faculty Marketing Assistants. We've only just appointed and so it's still very early days, but we're really looking forward to being joined by two new recruits. I'm now looking to get out and about into the Faculties in the next few weeks to discuss key priorities and to cement our focus on collaborative working before our new colleagues join us. More on this in early March.

New recruits - coming soon!

And what better way to round of my week, than by sitting on an interview panel once more; this time for our vacant Marketing Assistant position. We'll be meeting a group of fantastic candidates over the next two days, and we're really excited, as the quality of applications has been really high, and so I'm sure we're going to be in for some tough decisions. Hopefully by early April our team will be fully replenished, and so we'll be back up to full speed as we approach what we can only describe as our busiest time of the year, also known as Clearing!

As we come to the end of February, the team is rejoicing as our 2016 publications have now finally made their way to print. We're working with a new printer this year, so we're really keen to see the finished product in early March. But if you can't wait to take a look, then why not have a sneak peak at our Undergraduate 2016 Prospectus and Undergraduate 2016 Mini Guide online - go on, we know you want to!

Checking out the new Gateway building, Bedford

In other news, of the none staffing variety, I was able to spend an afternoon over at the Bedford campus yesterday, and so I took the opportunity to check out the new Gateway building whilst meeting up with colleagues from the Department of Education Studies to discuss short-term and longer-term marketing and recruitment strategies for our PG courses. It was a really productive meeting and it's always a real treat when we're able to step away from our desks for a while and mingle with the wider university. Dave, our Head of Recruitment was there also, and so I was able to get a quick tour around the building, which I have to say looks fantastic. It's always really useful for us to be able to get out and about once in a while to see the new facilities and developments around campus, as it helps us to keep an ear to the ground and get a good feel for what our students experience, which in turn helps the way in which we market and get our messages out.

As I come to the end of this weeks blog post, I can't help but feel sad that my partner in crime and digital counter part, Paul Fryer, Digital Marketing Manager, is leaving the University for pastures new. I've worked with Paul for a number of years now, and we're all really going to miss him. And the office will certainly be a quieter place without him! We are however, looking forward to giving Paul a great send off in the usual Brewery Tap after work drinks style,  and we'll look forward to hearing all about his new adventures with Kier Construction.

Bye bye sunshine, hello real world!

Dressed up in the Cuban sunshine!

I’m fresh back from Cuba and back into the swing of things after a few days back at the office. The holiday was great- I attended a lovely family wedding and met lots of people from around the world; Scotland, Prague, Canada. It really was a fab holiday! Here’s a little picture taken just before the wedding...

As I’ve not been here since my last blog post, this one is going to be pretty short.

My priorities for the next couple of weeks are implementing the remainder of the activities from the UG February open day plan, including creating and sending emails, posting on social media, working with the CRM team on conversion and reminder communications and finishing open day brochure inserts for the students who come along to see us on the day.

I‘m also working hard on my backlog of open day evaluation reports; looking at activity performance to ensure we are putting together well thought out plans which provide good ROI. This will then feed in to my next open day campaign plans for future events. We love a good evaluation report here!

A newbie on my list is working with the recruitment team on new marketing collateral for forthcoming HE and UCAS fairs. I’m going to be creating a large banner for the team to use when they are travelling around the country talking to our prospective students. I’m also working on a UCAS convention brochure for the summer.

A sneak peek at our prospectus cover

And, while I’ve been away Sarah has been busy signing off the undergraduate 2016 prospectus; so all that’s left to do is sign off the book proof when we receive it from the printers at the end of the week. The undergraduate 2016 mini guide is also signed off- Sarah has been a busy bee- nothing new there!

So, I should really finish with a big ‘thank you’ to Sarah for picking up some of my work while I was away!!

Speak soon,

K

In the heart of the Clearing data jungle

Krystle Hall, Campaign Officer 

It’s all about the analysis right now.  As current campaigns have been delivered and some are now coming to a close I have begun evaluating the activity. The ‘mother of all evaluations’ is Clearing, which is currently at about 52 pages and counting. I have been looking at trends in the market as a whole, as well as, our direct competitors. Our Market Research, Admissions and Digital teams produce reams of quality data and I have been able to use their findings to measure the success of the campaign in greater detail. You want it; they’ve got it, the old ‘kid in a candy store’ chestnut.

I have created a campaign map that indicates what activity ran where across the country and it is really telling. It captures the sheer volume of advertising that we ran and our practical utilisation of geo-targeting. I nearly broke google maps (don’t be giving me none of that ‘no more layers’ google, no one’s got time for that). I have then been able to plot that against applications and enrolment figures. Outdoor and print based activity has been the most challenging to pin down as these platforms are notoriously difficult to track and evidence, so I have been formulating more innovative metrics to squeeze as much information as possible.

Really, I need to bring it to a close now, for my own sanity’s sake. There is such a wealth of data that you can really get lost in it if you’re not careful. *David Attenborough voice* Here we are in the heart of the Clearing data jungle, and it really is a thing to behold. To my left the radio schedule, its rich spots on full show. To my right the digital display stats scrap; the Student Room ready to do battle with Hotcourses. In the distance the tall bars of the SOI graph waving in the breeze, Google adwords towering over his brothers; perched just on the edge we catch a rare glimpse of the regal twitter bird flying high above its social media counterparts. Here we have a bright outdoor demographic pie chart spreading its wings to ward off predators; a young print readership line graph looks to its mother and cries ‘what are my proof points’…Like I say, for my own sanity…

The next step is the campaign plan. I already have a head start on myself last year and grand plans afoot. We have highly ambitious targets to hit so I am determined to use all the information that I have gained on performance to produce the most robust plan to date. The team has already been discussing what bright ideas we can come up with to give a unique spin on Clearing; I’m looking forward to seeing how they develop. Lest we forget, keeping it fresh, at the forefront and allowing room for experimentation is essential.

What else; I have been doing some gap analysis looking at the platform spend across campaigns to determine where we have made cost savings and where there is room for negotiation. I have really been scrutinising and crunching those numbers and made some interesting findings. Sometimes it isn’t until you really strip apart the components of a project that you really find clarity.

Over the past couple of weeks I have delivered the last bits of Aylesbury and Pre-Clearing copy, the Radio LaB brand guidelines are pretty much complete, just a case of final approvals, and I have been monitoring current activity to see if there is any room for optimisation. I have also been updating some of our online profile copy. We now have an enhanced profile on WhatUni.com with new images, video and content. Lots of other little projects chugging along in the backdrop too. And back to the jungle I go.

Later skaters,

Krystle