Looking forward to 2019!

Whilst most people are busy making plans and resolutions for the New Year, the Beds Marketing team have been busy working on the 2019 Undergraduate prospectus. Although 2019 may seem like a long way off for most, the 2019 UG prospectus will be appearing at a recruitment event near you from March.

We’ve been co-ordinating the list of courses that we offer, placing bets on how many times I will have to re-do the flat plan this year (my guess is eight – I’ll keep you updated), and liaising with various departments across the University to ensure that all of the information we hold is correct and up-to-date.

One of my favourite aspects of working on the prospectuses is working with the photographers to capture new images. We work with two freelance photographers (Roy Meta and Scene) who capture a range of images for us, from profile shots, to shots of students in situ.

It’s great to be able to get into some of the sessions and see first-hand what our students are working on, as well as the facilities available. This year we were able to see the new nursing simulation labs at both Luton and Bedford, and had the opportunity to explore the Forest School at our Bedford campus. We also had the opportunity to see some of our media and dance students in action.

This year we have renewed the profiles for most of the subject areas within the prospectus too. This provides us with a great opportunity to meet with some of our students and talk to them about their experiences at Bedfordshire, which we can then use to influence future communications.

We’ve also been getting into the Christmas spirit here in the Marketing department with Christmas jumpers and inflatable Christmas characters galore! As this will be my last blog before the holidays I'd like to wish you all happy holidays and I will see you in the New Year! 

Sara

Marketing Officer

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!

No rest for the wicked

Some of you would think that now most of the students have finished for the summer our work might start to wind down...well let me assure you, you are very, very wrong! We seem to have entered a very busy (but very exciting) time in the Marketing Department!

This week I've been out of the office for a couple of days helping with the photo shoot for our annual campaign. It's something that I'd never done previously so it was great to meet the photographers, get an idea of how it all works and, most importantly, meet some of the students and graduates that were taking part in the campaign. As cliche as it may sound it was a really great experience for me to meet our students, past and current, and hear their thoughts and find out about some of the amazing things they've been getting up too! I also managed to get a sneak peek at some of the shots we'd taken and they looked great (even if I do say so myself!) so make sure you keep an eye out for them later on in the year!

Graduations have been taking place this week so there's been a lot of smartly dressed students and their families around campus the last few days! On Friday I'll be filming one of the graduations at St. Mary's so I'll have another chance to talk to some of our students and find out about their plans now they've graduated.

We're also sending the final proof of our PG prospectus to the designers this week. I couldn't tell you how many times I've read it but it's really great to see it all come together! I can't believe it's nearly over but there's already talk of the UG 2017 prospectus so I'm sure that'll keep me going!

You may have seen that our Clearing campaign has already started (if you haven't check out our micro-site) so I've been working on a few bits here and there to help Krystle. It's been really good for me as I'm getting to see all the different sections of the annual cycle!

I also helped out with the UCAS convention (I can't believe that was a whole month ago!) at the Bedford campus. This was a really fun day for me as I got to go over to Bedford and see the new Gateway building and speak to members of staff that I wouldn't normally come into contact with regularly. There was a really great atmosphere at the convention and it was nice to meet some potential students. It did however bring back a few memories of when I attended a UCAS convention which made me feel quite old!

I've also been keeping busy outside of work too (I told you there was no rest for the wicked), and a couple of weeks ago I took park in the 10k Race for Life in Stevenage. I only walked it but, as I'm not the fittest of people, it was a big achievement for me! I love doing the Race for Life as there's always a fantastic atmosphere in the air! One of the local radio stations was there to support the event and after crossing the finishing line we asked if they could play Taylor's shake it off so we could celebrate in style (no pun intended...it really did just happen)!

All this talk of 'winter' is getting me excited for Christmas!!

Some of our Recruitment Team
and student Ambassadors waiting to greet
PG students on campus  

From recent blog posts, you will certainly be aware that we have now launched our Winter campaign. Winter is definitely the most used word around the MARC office at the moment. The teams have done a great job pulling it all together and the artwork looks really good.

We’re also in the middle of the open day rush. Since my last blog we’ve held a PG open day on 16 October and another UG open day on 18 October at our Bedford campus. Our Bedford event saw 183 prospective students on our campus, not to manetion schools we had in attendence. There is also another UG open day this Saturday (25 October) at our Luton campus. And let’s not forget our November open days too (15 November, Bedford campus and 22 November, Luton campus). Once the November open days have taken place, we have a couple of months before the next events, so we can evaluate the pre-January events, which will influence our planning for the post-January open day events. So far we’ve seen some good sign up numbers , so hopefully this will continue. We currently have 656 student signed up to our event this Saturday.

Photography
As part of the prospectus project, we have our annual photography session this week and next. We have five days of photography booked in total, giving us the opportunity to get new student profiles and photographs of our new and upgraded facilities. As our prospectuses hold a lot of images, it’s really important that we get the images right, to really show off our campuses and reflect what we can offer our students. A picture speaks a thousand words, as they say! Clare spent two days with the photographer this week to get shots of students and video interviews and I will be working with photographers next week to get shots of our facilities and campuses. I’m excited to be art directing the shoots, as it’s the first time I’ve done photography at the University and it will give me the opportunity to meet some more of our academics and students, as well as experiencing some of the facilities that I have not yet seen.

My lovely CIM certificate

My CIM Training

I recently went to London for a one day CIM course on how to write an integrated marketing plan. I was really keen to attend the session as one of my main responsibilities in the team is putting together our open day plans, which this year need to produce a 25% increase in footfall. The day was quite useful, it was a good refresh to some of the things I learnt at university (which seems like forever ago) and also gave me a few things to think about. Now that I have been at Bedfordshire for eight months and I have been writing integrated open day plans for the past five months, it was really good to leave the course feeling reassured that what we do in terms of our planning is really robust, and we really use insight and evaluations from previous events to influence our future plans, which is key to improving. I also got a little certificate at the end of the day, to show I had taken part in the course.

Welcome to Maria

And finally, on behalf of the marketing team, I’d like to give a warm welcome to Maria, our new marketing administrator, who will be working with the team two days a week for the next six weeks. She is a recent University of Bedfordshire PG graduate and we look forward to working with her in the coming weeks!

Speak soon,

K

Week One Whirlwind!

Hello there. I am Clare, Marketing Assistant and newest member of the University of Bedfordshire MARC department.

I’m Lutonian through and through and have lived in the town all my life (excluding a three year adventure courtesy of the University of Warwick). I have previously worked in arts marketing for Luton Culture, the charity that runs the town's libraries, museums and theatres.

This blog post marks the middle of my second week at the University of Bedfordshire and I can’t quite believe how quickly the days have gone by! Among introductory meetings, cups of hot chocolate and even a pizza lunch thrown in for good measure, I’ve found a bit of time to settle in to my new surroundings and got to know campus a little better.

Highly recommended: every new starter
should have a Sarah Hampton induction
schedule.

I arrived to a lovely warm welcome and a meticulously planned – and really appreciated! – induction schedule which has allowed me to get to know teams and their roles via a series of mini meetings. Meeting people one-to-one has been absolutely priceless for somebody who is, admittedly, pretty useless at matching faces to names and names to job titles! A week and a half later and I finally feel like I’ve got a grasp of who’s who and what’s what, although I’m sure there'll be tons of questions to ask now I’ve started to do some real work!

It seems like I've joined the team at a really interesting time; last week I sat in on the meeting with Z3, the people who will be putting together the 2015 prospectus, heard about various campaign plans, and had some training for the new CRM system and Matrix – plenty of excitement for a first week and a half!

I'll be at the Luton Campus open day this weekend and I'm really looking forward to experiencing the university with all the buzz and excitement of an open day. Being as new as I am, I reckon it'll be a massive help for me as well as all the prospective students hoping to get an idea of what the University of Bedfordshire is all about.

Time has really flown by and I've had a great time so far. It'll be Christmas before we know it!