There's no quiet before the storm, not yet anyway!

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

Marketing wants your votes!

With the new year, comes the start of 'awards season', and the first one to catch my attention was the UK Blog Awards 2016. It's the first time we're entering a blog, and best of all it was free to enter; so our Market Research Manager (a regular contributor to the blog) and I thought, why not?

We've entered this very blog into this years awards, in the categories of PR, Media, Marketing & Communications; and Education. So, if you are a regular reader, enjoy having a browse and are inspired by our insight, then be sure to vote for us! Voting is open until Monday 25th January, and then the short-list will announced soon after. Ok, shameless plug now over, ahem.

We do love a good excuse to enter an award, but it's not all fun and games within Marketing at the moment. It's what we currently call 'crunch time' - one of our busiest times of the year. The run up to Christmas is always quite hectic as we juggle campaigns, but now that the 15 January deadline has passed, the work continues to come in thick and fast.

As Kylie mentioned in her previous post, we're juggling a lot of publications at the moment with the 'biggie's' being our main Undergraduate Prospectus for 2017 and our Mini Undergraduate Prospectus, both of which are at the final stages of design and proofing. The process has run surprisingly smoothly this year, which had many of us questioning, what's about to go wrong. But no, our schedules have stood firm; even when faced with a massive audit of entry requirements to prepare for the new tariff being rolled out for 2017, all has gone surprisingly well. We're days away from approving for print - hurrah! So stay tuned in the next week or so, for an exclusive preview of our cover.

Influencing our applicants -
all in a day's work

We've now seamlessly moved into what we call Pre-Clearing and Conversion, aka the time after the initial UCAS deadline, but before Clearing starts to take over our lives. It's a key time for us marketers as we send out a series of meaningful communications to further support our applicants in their decision making. And so, another flurry of activity is about to take place. It's all go, go go, as we send out our applicant newsletters, and advice features to welcome the newest crop of potential students, and gather lots of exciting content to showcase why Beds is Best. We've also got an exciting web project being rolled out to further cement our positioning and verbal brand messaging, which we're all really excited about, and keen to share with our applicants. It should be up and running in February - so more on that later.

A constant state of change

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Back to the day job
after a wonderful few
weeks!

This weeks post is focused on change. No matter how much we all try to resist sometimes, its the one thing that's always remains constant. And for us fellow Marketers, embracing change, and being responsive to change is all in the job. The sector and marketing environment is constantly adapting and changing, and therefore so must we!

Slightly off topic, but a change nonetheless, is me! After three long weeks, I'm back in the office and back to the day job after taking a few weeks off to get married. So, if you start to see Sarah De Guzman popping up every now and then in your inbox don't be alarmed, it's just me!

Getting back into the daily grind always takes some time, especially when there's literally hundreds of emails to catch up on. And so that's exactly how my first few days have been spent. It's amazing how quickly you can switch your mind off as you go into holiday mode, and then all the information, meetings and work updates come flooding back upon your return, as though that holiday was a thing of the past. I wish the same could be said for the jet lag!

Pretty much what my desk
looks like at the moment!

Well, it's now week two, post holiday, and the emails have been read, the calendar has been updated, and it's pretty much back to normality for me. Clearing is still underway, just about - we expect this to slowly tail off in the next week or so, as we firmly focus our attentions to the 2016 cycle, which has quietly been ticking along in the background since April this year.

Change in tactic
Ok so back to the focus of my blog post - change. The main focus of the marketing team has been in supporting the Recruitment team in the promotion of the September open day and lots of changes have been made to this years plan; from the media inventory selected to the times of communications. We've implemented a much more aggressive Digital Marketing campaign this time round, pulled back some communications based on intelligence learnt from previous plans, and we're very pleased with the results. If you happened to be on campus (Luton and Bedford) on that day you'll have seen that it was very busy indeed, and had a great vibe on campus, and that's always great to see. Take a look at our open day picture gallery - kindly taken by Sara, Marketing Assistant. And a big shout out to the recruitment team who really pulled it out of the bag with the number of schools in attendance. The day was a resounding success. That's one event down and on to the next, as we're already busily preparing a promotional push for our October events.

Krystle, far left, is setting off for
new adventures

Team change
This week will be offering up a bit of a mixed bag for the Marketing team. Krystle, our Campaign Officer is sadly leaving us on Wednesday, after being part of the Marketing team for about 18 months now. We're really sad to see her go, and to see our mighty marketing team reduced to just three colleagues now. In the relatively short time that Krystle has been with us, she's made a significant difference to the way in which campaigns are planned, implemented and evaluated, and she will be very much missed by us all. We'll be sending Krystle off and wishing her well over lunch on Wednesday. And, to pick up our mood, the remaining Marketing team will be heading off to Homerton College in Cambridge on Thursday, for this year's coveted CIPRide awards. We're up for two awards: Best Integrated Campaign for our 2014 Clearing campaign, and Best Low Budget Campaign for our September 2014 open day promotions. So a good evening out shall definitely pick up our moods, and provide a much needed evening out to re group, celebrate our achievements and look ahead to the future.

Keep everything crossed for us, and follow @CIPR_Awards to watch the evenings events unfold!

So change can mean many different things to many people. And boy are we experiencing a lot of it at the moment. From changing the way we do things and implemented planned changes to be more effective, all the way through to adapting to unforeseen changes, and changes in team resource and dynamics, we remain a positive marketing force to be reckoned with - it may just take us that bit longer to reply to your email, so please bear with us!

What's my name again? Clearing, campaigns and creative pitches - all in a days work

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

What's my name? Where do I live? What do I do? What day is it? These are just some of the many questions you'll find us asking ourselves over the next few weeks. With the mad Clearing rush in full force, all of the days start to blur into one. The multi-tasking marketers strike again...

We're making it happen for many
students who we hope to join this Sept!

Clearing...
And so Clearing has finally begun for many students in search of that university place. But for us over in Marketing, Clearing has been high on our agenda for months now. Although results day was all but yesterday, planning for this infamous campaign first started way back in November, so it's great for us to finally see the campaign taking shape, and to hear the busy phone lines ringing, whilst we constantly refresh our dashboards to track our performance and make adjustments to our campaign targeting.

Whilst Clearing often ensues months of organised chaos, I always particularly enjoy the chance for us marketers to do what we do best - be creative! Each year in Clearing, we have the opportunity to trial new innovations and initiatives to grab the headlines, boost traction in the media, and beguile and inspire the minds of our audience. Following on from last year's Flash mob, we've had heaps of fun working with the press team to launch some Guerrilla marketing techniques in the run up to results day; this involved projecting our marketing messages and campaign creatives on to a series of buildings and landmarks. If you haven't already seen it, check it out below...

Our nice and new shiny
shell scheme

We've also been supporting the Recruitment team as they gear up to lead a series of community events in a whole host of locations, including: Luton, Bedford, Milton Keynes and London. You can see left, a new shell scheme which I put together (design wise of course - I can not take any credit for assembling the actual thing, and so a big well done is due to recruitment for overcoming the ultimate flat pack challenge). These 'Pods' as well call them lead on our verbal brand themes, and this nice, new piece of kit enables the team to offer more engaging and interactive sessions with the local community - providing a real insight into what exciting subjects we offer. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how the team gets on.

Campaigns...
Whilst Clearing remains at the forefront of our minds for the next few weeks, we've already been looking ahead and turning our attention to our 2016 enquirer recruitment, which we officially started back in March. The photoshoots have taken place, the artwork is almost finalised, and the plan is moments away from being approved (I'll get round to it shortly, I'm sure!). But if working on two consecutive intakes and recruitment cycles isn't fun enough, let's throw a third one in there for good measure shall we? Yes, not only are we working on 2015 and 2016 recruitment, but we are well away and are already working on our 2017 marketing. And this comes in the form of our publications tender which took place this week, over at the Putteridge Bury campus.

And creative pitches
I always enjoy the publications tenders. Whilst the admin aspect can take a lot of time, it's really refreshing to meet the different agencies, and see how they respond to the challenges and brief that you set. This tender was particularly interesting, as 4 of the 5 agencies were entirely new to us. So we set out on a fact finding mission to grill each company in turn, to make sure we haven't just got a stand out creative, but the man power behind it to deliver it. Although a long day, the panel had lots of fun, and came away feeling inspired. Keep a look out in future posts for more on this - as we'll share more, once the agency has been appointed.

For now, it's the end of my blog post, and back to the day job and the ever growing list of things to do before my holiday (woo - 2 weeks to go!). So whilst I'm slowly getting excited, there still seems to be an awful lot to do before that holiday milestone even starts to begin to feel like it's within my reach - right, back to work - what year is it again?

Welcome to the Marketing team...

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Welcome aboard!

A very big welcome to the Marketing team, and yes, I'm talking to you! Everyone is a marketeer, or a part-time one at the very least. Aside from the day job, if you give talks in schools or colleges, man a stand at a UCAS fair, meet and greet students at an open day, or speak in any way to our enquirers and applicants, you're part of the team!

Why do I say that? Well, not only have I been covering this topic in some depth in the latest round of my CIM Diploma studies, but it's actually very true. Each and every single one of us will engage and interact with a potential student at some point along the recruitment journey, and each and every single interaction counts and goes someway to making an impact on a student's decision as to whether to study at Bedfordshire. Therefore, whether we like it or not, we are all marketeers, selling the university experience; selling a brand. So, welcome aboard!

So, what have we all been up to recently I hear you ask. Our conversion activities are in full swing, as we approach the next set of UCAS deadlines, and our Open Day season has now come to a close, so it's number crunch time for the team as we plough through the reams of stats and data to evaluate our activity and determine just how successful and effective our work has been. We'll be sure to share some highlights with you once this important work is complete. And whilst our heads are still firmly placed in 2015 recruitment (with the infamous Clearing campaign already well underway), we've taken some exciting steps to strategically pull all of our 2016 enquirer activity forward by a whopping six months, so we can start the enquirer conversion process much earlier in the cycle. We're well on our way, and have already sent out a number of exciting communications; it's been really positive to see 2016 enquirers already taking the time to visit us on campus, as early as April.

Pit stop by the beach in
sunny Bournemouth

We've also been out en-masse, supporting the recruitment team during one of their busy periods, as we travel the country to attend a series of UCAS events. Kylie has recently attended the London and Leicester events, whilst I made my way back to my former university in Bournemouth to man the Dorset UCAS event (and managed to make a quick pit stop for fish and chips by the beach while I was there - yay!), and Krystle will soon he heading up north to Livepool for three days. So, it's a busy time for the team as we juggle two intakes of students, but it's definitely a great experience to get away from the desk for a while and to speak to real students about real queries they have about Higher Education. Not to mention it's very rewarding when they tell you how helpful you've been after regurgitating our best marketing USPs to provide excitement surrounding our courses.  It's always great to make the most of the UCAS events, and spy on competitors as well, as we pose as students (just about!) to observe their exhibition stands, and marketing materials that they're handing out. I think our stand and materials looked amazing, but then I may be slightly biased. ;-)

That's all from me this time. I'll share some more thoughts, insight, and learnings from my course in my next post, as I will have had plenty of time to digest all of the notes and slides by then I'm sure. Until then!

Team away day

This Wednesday the CRM, market research and marketing teams escaped the office for an afternoon of team bonding at our away day at Putteridge Bury campus.

It provided the perfect opportunity to step back and look at the great things we've achieved as a team over the past year, and gave us a chance to have some fun too. From quizzes to photograph missions to drawing challenges, the day had something for everyone.  I was almost entirely useless during the quiz, but a highlight was my team's creative efforts during the Christmas selfie task.

The team put some serious effort into our selfie...

It was great to get out of the office for an afternoon, and to have some festive fun with the whole team.

Amongst all the fun I've been working hard on lots of different jobs, from the 2016 undergraduate prospectus and departmental conversion newsletters, to verbal brand notes and video filming for the next virtual open event. As always, there's a lot going on and there are lots of deadlines on the horizon.

On a slightly different note, this may well be my last blog post! I'll be leaving the University and my last working day will be Christmas Eve. In the new year I'll be going to America for a couple of months to travel. I've really enjoyed working for the University and a huge bonus has been working with the really great people in the MARC department. I'll definitely keep in touch!

Have an excellent holiday and a very happy Christmas.

Clare

Back to work

Having spent last week exploring Berlin and carving pumpkins to celebrate hallowe'en, I’ve arrived back in the office feeling energised and ready to work, which is just as well really because there is so much to do!

The East Side Gallery, Berlin

A day off and a pumpkin later...

Now I’m back I’ll be turning my attention to the 2016 undergraduate prospectus. Kylie has been working hard on the flat plan - the working document that we’ll be able to refer to throughout the production process. Once that’s complete I, along with the rest of the team, will get involved in copywriting for the general sections of the prospectus. Writing is always a highlight as it's a chance to get creative.   

This week I’ll also be spending some time writing a selection of short news articles for our subject newsletters. With the help of academics who have shared some interesting stories with me, I’ve been able to pull together some of the highlights of the past year. Now it’s a case of writing them up into striking news items to help with our conversion efforts.

Over the next week or so I will be having meetings with potential new student bloggers. Our student bloggers come recommended by their lecturers, and will be blogging on a weekly basis about their time at the University of Bedfordshire. It's a great (and paid!) experience for them, and it means we gain lots of valuable content that allows us to showcase the student experience here to our future students. Hopefully we'll have the blogs up and running in the next few weeks.

This week marks the end of my first year at the University. It's hard to believe really but, when I look back on all the things I've learned so far, all the deadlines I've reached, and all the work I've helped to produce, I feel quite proud of what I've achieved. And, now that I've done it all once, finger crossed the second time round will be even better!

Clare

Another busy month!

I'm finding it hard to believe that a whole month has passed since my last post; it feels more like a few days! So much has happened in the last few weeks so I'm just going to pick out a few highlights to talk about…

Tender Pitches
As Krystle mentioned in the last post, the team was recently part of the panel listening to agencies pitch. My particular interest was in how the agencies presented their creative ideas for our 2016 suite of publications; as I'll be working with the team on the 2016 prospectuses, I wanted to know lots about the look and style of the publications but also the processes that will be help us reach an outstanding final result without too many issues along the way.
It was fascinating to see how each agency approached the tender process in their own unique way, and some of the creative ideas they came up with were really impressive. I found it a massive challenge to pick a favourite at the end of the day!

Can't wait to see what the 2016
prospectuses will look like!

 2016 Prospectuses

While we finish off our work on the 2014 entry and start work on the 2015 cycle, the Marketing Team has begun work on the 2016 suite of prospectuses! So, as well as trying not to get confused, I've been working with Kylie to arrange a photo shoot for prospectus images. The shoot is due to take place at the end of October. We'll be taking profile photos of students and also photographing as many of our brilliant facilities as we can.

Verbal Brand

In that past week or two I've met up with colleagues from the Students' Union and the Department of Computer Science and Technology. In these meetings we've discussed the University's new Verbal Brand strategy.
As ever, it's great to talk to colleagues. I always come away from meetings like these full of new knowledge about the impressive things that are going on in the University. The verbal brand project is exciting because it's going to allow us to use all the information we find out to positively explain what we do here and why we do it so well.

Catch up soon.

Clare

Pride of place: Beds Marketing team going for Gold

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Making the final cut: Short-listed
for two CIPR Awards

With Clearing activity now in full swing, I completely forgot that Friday (1 August) was a very special day in our working calendar - it was the short-list announcement for the CIPRide Awards 2014! As it suddenly dawned on me what day it was, I had a sneaky peak online and was very excited to see that we'd been short-listed for not one but TWO awards this year: Best Publication (for our 2014 Undergraduate Prospectus), and Best Low Budget Campaign (for our work on increasing PGT Sport applications by 60% for 2013 entry).

We're up against, 4 and 5 other organisations respectively in our short-listed categories, and will find out the final result later this year in November, so watch this space (and keep everything crossed for us).

Yay very pleased to see that we're short listed for not one but TWO @CIPR_Awards - Best Publication and Best Low Budget Campaign #CIPRide
— Sarah Hampton (@Sarah_Hampton) August 1, 2014

As many of you will know from my previous posts, writing award entries is no easy task. You always know when an awards deadline is approaching, as both Paul (Digital Marketing Manager) and I are scrambling around to get our entries in on time - a fine juggling act when you have your day job to carry on with too! And as always, a big shout out to the Market Research team whose data filtering and analytical skills are always much appreciated :-)

Entering awards has become quite an important focus of my role. Not only is it a great pat on the back, and testament to all of the hard work that the team has completed over the year, but it's a great benchmark against our peers and the wider sector - a glowing example of best practice. For me personally, it's a great way to elevate our teams' profile amongst the wider University, further reiterating that we are specialists in our field, with tried and tested initiatives that yield great results.

Planning ahead for 2016
and beyond...

Ok so back to work, and back in the office. Aside from Clearing, there have been a number of other exciting projects going on recently. The first of which has been preparing the 2016 tender documents. Yes, you read that right: 2016! It's an interesting challenge here in the Marketing team, as in any given day we can find ourselves working on collateral across three consecutive years: We're still working on the 2014 intake (through our Clearing campaign); and we're already engaging with our 2015 enquirers and gearing up for enquirer open days which will take place from September in preparation for the 15 January 2015 UCAS deadline. And now to add to the mix, we're planning ahead for 2016 intake, which involves the production of our core corporate publications.

Over the past few months we've been meeting with a selection of new agencies to discuss the tender process, our suite of publications, and to find out a little more about their structures and ability to deliver on a series of quite demanding and time sensitive projects. The tenders have now gone live, and we're excited to see which of the companies will submit to work with us over the coming year, and help shape the look and feel of our publications - we'll keep you posted on this process, and may even share an exclusive first-look of publication visuals, once an agency has been appointed, so stay tuned!

Clearing the way forward: 2014 and beyond

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Getting Creative: On set with one of our
current students, Joseph, who came
via Clearing

For many, the months of June and July signify the end of term. Students are winding down after sitting their final exams and submitting their final assessments, and all of a sudden the campus seems to feel like a bit of a ghost town, as everyone starts to kick back, relax, and enjoy their summer break - but not the Marketing team! For us, the summer months are some of our most busiest and important, as we gear up for the Clearing Campaign, which is without question, our biggest burst of activity throughout the academic year. But Clearing doesn't just start on 14 August when the A level results come out. For us at least, Clearing involves months of preparation, as we plan and book in a host of activity, and devise a creative concept which we know will deliver results.

So in the last few weeks, we've been working with our agency Z3 Design, to come up with a number of concepts for this years big campaign. We're really pleased with the one we've chosen, as we feel that it really pushes the brand to an exciting new level, and is a bit more commercial in its approach meaning it will definitely not fall into the 'safe' box, and will most definitely turn heads in a rather crowded market place. We ran two days of photo shoots last week, which were crammed packed full of weird and wonderful shot lists with our current students. It's taken a while to get the creative to where we wanted it to be, but we're happy that it's direct and functional enough to drive enquiries, and quirky enough to show personality and differentiation, so we're really excited to share the visuals with the wider University over the coming weeks - keep a look out in future posts, for a first look of this years visuals.

We're live: our CRM system
is up and running

Although our activity is firmly rooted in Clearing - for 2014 entry, we're already beginning work to communicate with our 2015 enquirers by inviting them to Open Days and sharing relevant content via our CRM system: Belong at Beds. But what many don't know is that we're already thinking ahead to 2016. We've been meeting with agencies over the last few weeks to discuss our plans and publication timelines as we slowly approach the tender stage for our 2016 activity. It takes up a lot of time meeting so many different companies, but is nonetheless important; it gives us a chance to find out more about the agency, their resourcing and project management capabilities, to ensure that they don't just offer creativity and innovation but have the processes in place to deliver on the development of the work, which is no easy task. By widening the pool of companies we may work with we're able to bring fresh and exiting ideas to the table.

New campus: our UCMK
prospectus cover

Aside from this, we've also been busy progressing the Postgraduate 2015 Prospectus, as we approach second proof stage, and have been supporting the recruitment team with a high volume of jobs for both the June set of Enquirer Open Days, and the upcoming UCAS convention which is taking place on 23 and 24 June. We'd had a large numbers of requests to produce leaflets and other marketing communications to ensure that each department and faculty has a variety of collateral available on the day to promote their courses effectively to potential students, and provide them with a snap shot of the courses and successes within their subjects. We've also got the UCMK prospectus off to print (see cover right), and this 40 page publication will be printed and delivered just in time for the event, so we're pleased to be able to use this great platform, to promote our new campus location.