Springing into action

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

The January UCAS deadline date may now be a thing of the past, and Clearing still remains some way off, but life for the Beds Marketer hasn't quiet quietened down yet. Far from it actually! This so-called 'in-between' period, is a critical part of our recruitment cycle - where simply driving applications and pushing 'apply now' messaging isn't enough.

Conversion is key

Between January and June, we're working on a campaign known as Conversion - where the focus is firmly placed on nurturing leads. We do this through sending out a series of tailored, personalised and bespoke communications to our applicants and offer holders at key times over the Spring months to keep them engaged, as we support their decision making and guide them through the next stages of the recruitment funnel. There's a lot of content curating that goes on in the team - so you may see us out and about on campus quite a lot as we showcase the student experience, our fantastic facilities, and provide a lot of functional information that helps inform and influence.

A treat to get out of the office

On top of the day-to-day marketing work, March presents a nice treat for the team, as we get to get out and about even more than usual, as we get involved in graduations.

I'd like to say that a lot of planning goes into this, but we just embrace the mayhem. We've discovered over the years that to get the most from the events (from a marketing perspective anyway), you have to get right into the very heart of it - so no pre-planning and scheduling of interviews. We're there as they come out of the church, are diving out of the way of all the hat throwing, and are capturing those very real, raw and genuine emotions of celebration.

A really nice, warm and fuzzy part
of our jobs :-)

Graduations are a really nice thing to be part of. Yes it can be chaotic on campus, with swarms of excited graduates trying to get their gowns, get their pictures taken and make it in to the Church on time, but for us, it's really rewarding to see the ultimate 'end goal' - our students achieving their dreams, as proud family and friends look on. It's also a time for us to have a touch point with our outgoing students, and to hear their experiences, their stories, and share their words of wisdom; after all they are the people who have lived and breathed the Bedfordshire experience over the last few years, so who better to speak to and hear from?

Award season has sprung

Not only is it a busy time in the recruitment cycle, and a busy and bustling time to be on campus as we see our students graduate and celebrate their success, but it's also the start of award season (did I mention the word busy enough here?). And that means many an hour spent dusting out the evaluations, reflecting on our metrics and performance, and crunching data in our best efforts to cobble together a solid entry or two! Beverley and I have spent a good few hours devising our award entries over the last few weeks - after all, these things take a big commitment to carve out the perfect submission. The Heist awards are notoriously difficult, and there's always a lot of fierce competition amongst the creme-de-la-creme of the HE world all vying for those coveted marketing accolades; and so to stand out from the other university big boys, we have to really know our data, be able to evidence our success, and convey a compelling story about what we've achieved.

Hurrah! That's our 2nd award submission done and dusted, and entered for the @heistawards. Go #TeamBeds #heist2017 #marketingteamoftheyear pic.twitter.com/vpQxoiFHoU

— Sarah De Guzman (@Sarah_Hampton) March 16, 2017

This year we've entered our Clearing 2016 campaign for the Best Undergraduate Student Recruitment Initiative, and we've also had a go at entering Marketing Team of the Year. We've never entered a team award before, but we've implemented some great projects and strategic initiatives over the last 12 months, which in turn have yielded some great results, and so we've decided that this is the year to share the story of the Beds HE Marketer. Wish us luck! We'll keep you posted on the short-list in the coming months, but for those of you who, like us, are well into awards season, take a look at the work you've done and see whether you have what it takes to enter - check out my previous blog post on writing award entries, and assessing whether you've got the evidence base to lead you to success.

If a picture tells a thousand words, what does a video do?

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager

Keeping on top of the latest
information and content trends

My last blog post was focused on the importance of imagery in marketing work. This post follows a similar theme, but this time highlights the value of video content. With online communities on the rise, as well as a real appetite for quick information, marketers have to evolve their content strategies to make sure they are getting their messages out in the most effective way. Video content is fast becoming the future of content marketing. That is, if it already isn't an expectation of many students.

Here in the Marketing team, we've been working on producing a series of location videos to support our 2017 Conversion campaign which launches next week, following on from the January UCAS deadline. As part of our conversion strategy we send out a series of communications to applicants to help them make an informed choice. But this year, we wanted to build on our work further, by telling stories, and through adopting a 'show don't tell' approach to our communications.

On location in MK

Our work has culminated in the production of two new location videos - one for Milton Keynes, and one for Bedford, as well as some social media teaser edits. It's been a big team effort to bring these videos to fruition in quite a tight time frame. There may be more of a desire for video content, but it definitely requires a lot of planning to make sure the creative output is both of a good quality and most importantly, relevant to our audience: from appointing a video production company, setting the briefs, working with the local town Councils, agreeing the film schedules and timings, all the way through to accompanying the film crew on location, and working on the edits, there's a lot of elements to fit into our working day.

Happy Birthday Milton Keynes!

But why the tight time frame, you may say? Good question! And for that, there are two answers. Firstly, our conversion campaign kicks off from next week - it's a key time in the recruitment cycle to deliver key information to encourage applicants to pick up as one of their top two choices (firm or insurance). Secondly, in order to get the best engagement from our location videos, and specifically our Milton Keynes video, we wanted to release the video to coincide with #MK50 - Milton Keynes' 50th birthday anniversary which is taking place on 23 January. And so being able to seed out the content at the optimum time is almost as important as the content itself.

Multi-channel marketing - the recipe
for success

A key part of producing any new content is considering how to get the content out and seen by the right people, and so a seeding strategy is needed. For anyone who is a regular reader of this blog, or indeed an avid social media user you couldn't help but notice our location campaign last year. It was a great success and even landed us in the top 100 University social media league table for the first time – securing a top 50 position. Social Media forms a key part of our seeding strategy, but in order to be successful, a multi-channel approach is needed. In order to realise the video's full potential and to maximise on engagements, we need to make it as easy as possible for our audience to find it and share it..

Taking inspiration from Sean Bean

For many marketers original video content is starting to dominate their strategies, and it's really not difficult to see why. Videos have the potential to go viral, or if done well, can demonstrate their share-ability, meaning our potential students will spend longer viewing our content, visiting our website and interacting with our brand - all important aspects of building up brand advocacy. Keep your eyes posted on our social media channels: Twitter and Facebook over the coming week's to see our big reveal of video content and the first pieces of what we hope to develop into a longer video content strategy.

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.

Marketing, Media and Emerging Trends for 2015

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Being able to monitor trends is a key part to any marketers role, as this is fundamentally the best way in which we can stay ahead of the competition. Now that we're well and truly back into the swing of things after the xmas break, I thought I'd start off our blog this year with a series of tips on what to watch out for in 2015 from the Marketing department. So, this post is more of a focus on our own emerging trends for 2015 if you like: take a look...

Content is king

1). Content is king
Marketers are being called upon to place less of a focus on the hard marketing sell, and more emphasis on providing information and useful content to support potential students in their decision making. And whilst this is an emerging theme across the sector as a whole, we're already one step ahead as we continue to develop our content marketing strategies here in the Marketing department. For 2015, we're building on last year's introduction of a variety of new initiatives, which all focused on one thing: providing relevant and useful content which our customer really wants, so that they can better engage with, and buy in to, the Bedfordshire brand.

As we approach the Conversion stage to the recruitment cycle, we'll be implementing a number of key communications such as themed emails, the B4Beds Undergraduate e-zine, and our CRM personalised web portal, in order to share a wide variety of rich content with our applicants.

Peer-to-peer and user
generated content

2). Offering value through content marketing
Building on the above, as the demand for non-university generated content increases, we'll be shortly rolling out Student Bloggers for 2015. This year we have even expanded on the number of bloggers we have, to generate even more subject specific content which is written by our very own current students. We're really excited as we continue to build up the peer-to-peer content which focuses on real experiences of real Bedfordshire students.

This idea of offering value through our marketing, also translates over to our PG recruitment too. Last year saw the pilot of 'PG Tips' in our monthly, award-winning Postgraduate e-zine. These short videos act as a mini lecture series, and are loosely modeled on MOOCs (Massive open online courses ie free online classes) which some other universities have dabbled in, in order to reach and engage with an audience in a more meaningful way.

Moving towards mobile 

3). Welcome to the mobile age
Through our many post campaign evaluations and live campaign reporting, the one thing that was clear from 2014, was the major shift towards mobile usage from our prospective students. And that's why we've been working with the Digital Marketing team to produce and launch a brand new set of email templates for 2015. These new templates are all optimised for mobile use, making our marketing messages more easily readable across the vast array of media devises currently available. The new templates will be in use from 15 January onwards, so keep a look out for our new professional, and 'snazzy' looking templates, coming to an inbox near you!

Keeping one eye on the competition

4). It's all about who you know
Last, but certainly not least, we'll be continuing to work with our Media Planning and Buying Agency to meet different suppliers and HE advertisers so we are fully clued up and get the latest on the latest technologies and marketing products currently out there. We'll be hosting our very first set of meet the supplier days later this month, where the wider MARC department is able to meet the key players, movers and shakers in the HE advertising industry, and they share their insight on changing consumer behaviour, what works, and most importantly, what our competitors are up to!

Stay tuned throughout the year, as we keep you posted on the many initiatives that we'll be rolling out over the coming months. We'll be keeping you posted on what's worked particularly well, and what developments and insight there is from our university neighbours.

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

New month, new starters

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Welcome to our new Marketing
Officer, Kylie

For many, the month of March signals the start of spring, and a time of new beginnings. And the same can be said for our very own marketing department. As we get going with a new month we extend a warm welcome to our new Marketing Officer, Kylie Aldridge who has started today. Later this month we'll also be joined by Krystle Hall, our new Campaign Officer. It's a very exciting time as we welcome new members to the team, and get going on lots of exciting new projects. Kylie will be working her way through her induction this week, as she gets to grips with the University environment, and the many teams that make up the MARC department, and so I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this when Kylie posts up her first blog in the comings weeks.

Snapshot from our email
communications - promoting
Project Management

In other news, we've been busy working with the Business School to devise and implement a bespoke small-scale campaign to generate enquiries for the new MSc Project Management (by Distance Learning) course which starts later this March. We've been working to a set budget, and have been actioning a mainly digital marketing plan over the last few weeks. We haven't had much time to work on this, as we usually would like a longer lead time to make any real impact, but we're already starting to see the fruits of our efforts, as the academics keep us informed of the enquiries that are coming through via email as a result of our marketing efforts. Teaching starts week commencing 17 March for this course and so we still have a few weeks for the campaign to continue to take effect. We'll keep you updated on the progress of this.

It's a particularly busy time for us in the marketing team. Now that the UCAS deadline is well and truly out of the way, all of our efforts are focused on conversion, and what we call pre-clearing - a campaign that runs until June to encourage late applications from a mature audience. It also doubles up as the start of our clearing activity, in generating interest amongst those who haven't secured a university place, or may be considering us after the August results are out. Michelle will be sharing more with you about the finer details of the campaign. The visuals have almost been firmed up, the media is being booked in and so you should be seeing this campaign up and around the local area very shortly! Let us know what you think.

Waiting to hear if we've made it into
the short list - fingers crossed!

In other news, after juggling the many marketing tasks we've had going on recently, we finally managed to get an award entry in for the CIPR Excellence awards, and with only a day to spare. We've put in for Best Low Budget Campaign, for some work we did late last year with the Faculty of Education and Sport, to drum up enquiries and applications to our PGT Sport courses. After evaluating the marketing campaign we were successful in increasing applications by 40%. So we're keeping everything crossed as we wait to see whether we've made it into the short-list.

New year, new initiatives

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Happy New Year! Well, we're finally back after the Xmas break, and already there is loads to tell you. But before bringing you up to speed I thought I'd share some pre-Xmas updates with you.

The CST staff away day

Just before the Christmas break I was invited by the Department of Computer Science and Technology (CST) to deliver a presentation at their staff away day on how to improve recruitment to their undergraduate courses. So, with only two days to prepare, and having never delivered a presentation to such a large group, I set about harassing all the other Managers in the MARC department to dig deep for the latest market research, application figures, recruitment initiatives, and web developments. Before I knew it the day had arrived and I found myself standing on a stage in front of the entire department. After overcoming a few technical difficulties (and by that I mean there being no laptop!) and we were ready to go. The presentation went really well, and all of the staff were really engaged and interested to see what market intelligence we could share with them. From where their applicants come from and the schools they attend, to what their most popular/viewed course is online and what factors may influence their decision; it was all in there.

One of our newsletters:
Art & Design

Now that we're in 2014 our attention has turned to conversion: whereby we encourage our applicants to select us as either their Firm (1st place) or Insurance (second place) choice. So a lot of work is currently underway preparing a range of marketing materials to send out straight after the 15 January 2014 UCAS deadline. For the last few months we've been working on producing a series of departmental newsletters (see left) which provide the latest information, achievements and happenings from the applicants' area of interest. We've also got our bloggers up and running for most subjects (thanks to the Digital Team) which consists of current undergraduate students posting about their experience and what they get up to as a student.

Work is well underway on the 2015 Undergraduate Prospectus. We're now at 2nd proof stage and so the team is busy working away; proofing, sourcing outstanding information, chasing new course copy and selecting relevant new photography to keep us on track for our print deadline. It's all starting to take shape; so check back here in early February and when it's approved for print, and you can get an exclusive first look at the cover.

In other news, award season will soon be upon us, with the deadline for the CIPR Excellence awards only a mere 7 weeks away. So, hopefully we can get some of the above tied up fairly soon, so we can turn our attention to writing some award entries. After all, a good dinner and dress up will be a great way to celebrate all of our hard work after getting the prospectus off to print. Which is no easy task!

Here's hoping we can get some entries in!

Musings of a marketing muse...

by Rehanna Khan - Marketing Assistant

Hi Everyone

It’s Wednesday 24 July which officially marks two weeks since the big move into The Atrium and though it’s not been without its little dramatic moments, the process has been auspiciously smooth! From overcharged air conditioning (which is appreciated in sweltering temperatures but not-so-much when causing sore throats, headaches and the shivers), to out-of-use ladies WCs (we were kindly given use of the gents – and they were redirected downstairs), is about as bumpy as the ride got. I’m glad to report we’re all settled in now and enjoying the new open surroundings. Drop by sometime and we’ll be happy to give you a tour.

Welcome publication cover

This is always a busy time of year for Marketing – as is most of the year bar when we’re on leave. We’re always on the go with something to do so there’s never a dull moment. From conversion activities in full swing, our clearing campaign on the ready, to the Postgraduate Prospectus 2014 on the verge of being sent to print, updating thirteen subject guides and preparing the welcome (Hi) publication for new students, there’s really no time for a summer siesta! 

Prayer congregation in mosque

In other news… It’s day 15 of the holy month of Ramadan - meaning we’ve hit the midway mark already, leaving just 14 days. I admit it’s difficult to be in a state of nil-by-mouth for 18 hours on average per day, but then it wasn’t designed to be easy. Ramadan is the opportunity for Muslims to foster a sense of self-awareness and reflect on our lives. It offers the time to grow for the better and focus on the spiritual aspects of everyday life through practicing patience, discipline, compassion for the less fortunate and gratitude for what we have. The global unity is what always strikes me.

Have a blessed day!