Developing my skills

With any career it’s important to develop and learn new things. So over the last few months I’ve been looking at projects I can get involved in to help my own development.

The first project I’ve been working on is managing the print tender for the 2018 prospectuses. Don’t worry – you haven’t nodded off and missed Christmas! As you’ll know by now, we’re always working way ahead in marketing. I sourced potential suppliers (it was also open to any other suppliers who wanted to put themselves forward for the job), updated the tender documents, worked on a questionnaire for the suppliers, and evaluated the pricing and questionnaire in order to select the company who will print our 2018 publications. I’ve now selected the company we’ll be working with and they even suggested an alternative paper stock which will make us a little cost saving! The next step is to meet with the company to discuss ways of working, new paper stock, timings etc.

I’m also looking to appoint people as part of the University’s graduate development scheme and student internship scheme. These schemes allow us to take on a recent graduate or intern to work in the team for a short period of time (usually 4-6 weeks) to gain valuable work experience. So I’ll be helping to choose the applicants for the department and managing them once they are here. I’m keen to lead on this project and gain more experience in managing people. So far I’m collating a list of appropriate projects they could work on and drafting up job specs.

Some current jobs...

The team have recently started work on the undergraduate 2018 prospectus – working with the design agency on the design concepts and progressing the look and feel from the current prospectus, agreeing production schedules and sourcing photography opportunities for photoshoots next month. I’m now looking to agree the definitive course list – our course offering – for the 2018 cycle and updating course copy from the current prospectus in line with any course modifications.

And as we’re well into the winter Open Day season now, as well as working on implementing the campaign plans, I’ve started my rolling evaluation report, in the hope that if I keep on top of this after each event, when it comes to the end of the season I can wrap it up quite quickly ready for the Spring season starting in the new year.

And less work related…

I’m off to Australia on 19th October for three weeks, to visit family. I’m really looking forward to some winter sun and seeing my sister, brother-in-law and niece and nephew for the first time in almost three years!! And obviously having almost four weeks away from the office isn’t bad either. So I’ve been planning ahead over the last week or so and trying to get a head start on my projects so the team just need to send things out on my behalf while I’m not around.

Be gentle with Sarah and Sara while I’m away…enjoying the sun…and the beach…and the coral reef.

Speak soon,
K

A joint effort

Come and see us between 10am and 6pm
on Friday or Saturday

In any given application cycle we always have lots of events. So, I'm going to be out and about a little over the next week. I'm helping out the recruitment team at the MK Job show tomorrow – 10-6 in the mall. It’s important that we put in a joint effort in ensuring a positive message is given about Bedfordshire, but also to ensure we offer support and guidance to people who are considering higher education.

A sneaky peak at our new Open Day webpage

We also have our first 2017 cycle Open Day on Wednesday, and I’ll be supporting the recruitment team then too. There is such a big emphasis put on our Open Day to ensure we give a great experience to everyone who sets foot on campus, and not just the prospective students, but the family, friends, or school teachers who come along too – as they are often key influencers in the decision making process. I’ve also been working with the digital team over the last three weeks to create a new Open Day webpage, to help aid conversation and sign ups to our Open Days. This will be live from 5pm on 21 September, ready for the October Open Day. It will be good to see what impact this has on our conversion, as well as dwell time and bounce rates on our webpage. I think it’s looking really nice – it’s a lot more visual, with more dynamic content and more marketing messages to reflect what Bedfordshire can offer students.

We also have the CIPR Awards on 22nd September, so we’re mulling over what outfit to wear and contemplating winning another two awards – keep your fingers crossed. We’ll be sure to let you know if we win!! Watch this space…

Thanks,
Kylie

On your marks, set, go…

It’s seemed rather quiet around the office for the last two weeks, not on the work front, but in actual bodies around the office. I think everyone had the same idea – take holiday before the beast that is Clearing begins!

It’s been a little hectic for those of us who haven’t had any holiday (I’m not bitter, I promise. But if it wasn’t for a three week holiday in Australia in October, I may be – 11 weeks and counting!!)

Gearing up for Clearing like...

I often find that around Clearing the vibe in the office is a little different, not in a bad way, just different. As the Clearing start date approaches you can almost feel everyone gearing up like at the start line of a race; ‘brace yourself’, ‘stay focused’, ‘keep calm’, ‘you’ve planned and prepared well for this’…*BANG*…and we’re off…Taking calls, offering guidance and advice, checking off qualifications and making offers. And whilst our dedicated Admissions team and other trained volunteers are doing that, the marketing team are monitoring and amending campaign activity daily, to ensure we have the most impact. It’s a busy ole time!

And by the time we’re done with Clearing, we’re all usually ready for another holiday…oh…Australia in October you say…

In other news, I think I’ve completed the quickest evaluation report ever (43 pages of lovely stats and useful insight), which is a personal achievement in itself. And I’ve made a good start on the Winter season (September-December) Open Day plans. I’m just finishing the budget allocation and then I will be looking at the Open Day collateral. We’re going to be working on bringing it together a little more, as we’ve added things into the plans over the last year or so, it’s meant that some of the collateral doesn’t quite flow, so I’m going to work on ensuring it has a more consistent and well thought-out approach as we approach the 2017 cycle; which let’s face it, is marketing 101!


All of the welcome packs that I was working on last time are now ready too, with the last of the deliveries coming in today. Another thing ticked off the list.Although I have just taken on some new jobs, so I best get off!
Speak soon,
K

Almost on to 2017...

So the final Open Day for this cycle has now taken place (yesterday) so I’m looking forward to planning the 2017 cycle of Open Days. Although we’ve been communicating with our 2017 enquirers since April, the official 2017 cycle starts from September. So I’ll be looking to finish my spring season open day report over the coming weeks so I can reflect on the good and the bad from this year, and see how we can further progress the plans for the 2017 cycle of Open Days.

And of course, while that’s happening, we’ve just kicked off with Clearing, which is the final part of the 2016 cycle. So it’s definitely still full steam ahead as Clearing is a really important time for us as a University.

I’ve also recently picked up some new projects:

Last years Best of Beds leaflet

1. Updating our Complete University Guide profile – updating the text with new messages, sourcing new images and updating links
2. Updating our Beds of Beds leaflet – updating messages and graphics with more recent stats and figures about Bedfordshire
3. Updating our Guide to your offer brochure – working with the admissions team to look at what updates are needed for this year, so we can send this guide out with offer letters

So I’m currently looking at timelines, print quantities, updates to information and so on, so I can work up production schedules and get started on the above job.
So all in all, it’s planning and evaluating for me over the coming weeks.

It's good to re-group as a team and reflect
and plan ahead!

We’ve also got our team away day tomorrow – we’re spending some time at our Putteridge Bury campus to re-group, discuss this year’s successes and looking at the next year moving forward.

Speak soon,
K

Will we be beaming with PRide again soon?

So you know I always mention my open day campaigns – like a broken record! – well, I’m finally writing my first award entry for our September 2015 open day event.

I’m hoping to enter it into the ‘Best Low Budget Campaign’ category at this year’s CIPR PRide awards. We entered this category last year for the previous September open day and we won silver, so hopefully we can pull off a similar, if not better, performance this year – my evaluation report showed a good YOY increase and we substantially beat target, so fingers crossed!

I’ve also been helping out with the Clearing campaign. I’ve been editing some short student videos and also taken some computing related pictures, both are part of our Clearing social media campaign. I can’t believe Clearing is almost here again – it comes round so quickly – like Christmas?! (Yeah, I said the word Christmas in June – shame on me).

Welcome guides
We’re now also at the final stages of the 2016 Welcome guide which goes to print this week and I’ve recently briefed in the Nursing welcome guide – one publication ends another begins.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be working on some collateral for our new foundation years, creating some advice emails for our 2017 enquirers, and working my way through the last open day campaigns for this cycle.

On that note, I best get on…
Speak soon,
K

Another week in the Marketing Department

I can't believe it's Friday already (not that I'm complaining of course!). With the bank holiday on Monday this week has flown by!

On Tuesday and Wednesday the University hosted the US festival - a dance festival involving several universities within the UK. The two day event featured workshops from various practitioners within the dance industry as well as performances from the university students involved. On Wednesday I got to visit our Bedford campus to film some of the workshops and performances. It was a great afternoon and I was lucky enough to sit in on some amazing performances. I'll be editing the content next week so look out for when it goes live on the more than a degree site.

Today I'm also going to visit the Art & Design graduate show, Frame. Frame is an exhibition showcasing some of the work by our final year students and I'm quite excited to see what they've produced! The show will be running in the Alexon building until the 15 June so, if you haven't already, why not check it out?

Over the last couple of weeks I've also spent some time focusing on our Postgraduate offering. At the end of this month, we'll be hosting a Postgraduate Open Day so I've been working on some information emails for our second and final year students to let them know about the event. I've also been working with our CRM team and the library team to get some digital signage put up on the plasma screens and LRC screens to further promote the event to our current students. 

And continuing with the PG theme, I've also been working on the PG prospectus for 2017. I've been liaising with various faculties and departments around the University to ensure that all of my sections are correct and up-to-date as well as proof reading copy and selecting images for the prospectus. I'm pretty sure I've said this before but it's coming along very nicely and I can't wait for you all to see it!

A small but mighty team

I think this week’s post will be a quick one from me. You might think it’s the pressure getting to me this week, as we’ve just been nominated for an award for our blog in the UK Blog Awards 2016 (sorry for the not so subtle plug there). But in reality, it's maybe because things are ticking along - there's lot's going on as always; reports, plans, campaigns, conversion activity, meetings, print collateral, emails - OK I'll stop there! But there's not a lot of new things to report as quite often a lot of the work we do is ongoing. We're a small but mighty team!

So, what have I been up to since last time...

I’ve started to update our in-house style guide that I mentioned in my previous blog post. I’ve amended the format a little and added in some things that I think were missing from the previous version, using inconsistencies that I have come across when working on previous printed collateral. I’ll be sense checking it and then liaising with other teams in the department for their feedback – digital, comms, CRM, and the rest of the marketing team – anyone who writes or creates anything external facing for our audiences.

The UCAS convention season is fast approaching, so I’ve been liaising with the recruitment team to ensure we’re armed with collateral for all of the events that we attend around the UK, as well as planning the collateral we’ll need for the UCAS convention that we’re hosting at our Bedford campus on 20-22 June. This will be the third UCAS convention we’ve held on campus and each year the recruitment team are building on the success of the previous year’s event, with each year getting bigger and better. We welcome thousands of students and schools through our doors so it’s a key time for us!

I also helped out at yesterday’s open day – the first time I’ve been able to support the recruitment team during an event. I was working on the CATS registration desk at our Luton campus – scanning people in and giving them a rundown of the day’s events.

Some positive open day feedback

As well as the above, I've been working on different conversion activity – emails, print collateral and so on – this time of year is crucial for us, so we're working on pulling out all the stops. 

And finally, I’ve almost finished two more evaluation reports – the first time I’ve been a head on reports in a wee while.

Speak soon,

K

We’re still beaming with PRide

So, I mentioned in my blog a few weeks ago that we were shortlisted for two CIPRide awards. Well I’m super excited to say we won both – Gold for best integrated campaign for our 2014 Clearing campaign, and Silver for best low budget campaign for our 2014 September open day campaign . The team were really pleased, but the dilemma now is where to put them in the office; our cabinet is getting pretty full, which is a nice problem to have.

We're winners!

The awards were held at Homerton College in Cambridge this year and it was a lovely venue; the buildings were great, and the room that held the awards ceremony was really grand. The food was also really nice, so all in all a good night. I attended the awards for the first time last year, and Sarah has attended previous CIPRide awards, but it was the first time for Sara and Charlotte.

Accepting our Gold Award

The event started with some welcome drinks, before we sat down for a hearty three course dinner; Goats cheese and golden beetroot salad to start, Honey roasted duck breast and veg for main, and finished off with chocolate fondant and caramel ice cream, which was delicious- I could eat it all again now!

After the dinner (and a couple of glasses of wine) it was time for a quiz and then the awards ceremony. As our categories and the finalists shortlisted were read out I could feel the tension from the team, it’s great to be shortlisted but after all of our hard work, and because we’re quite competitive, we really wanted to come away with something. And we did, which was fantastic!

Accepting our Silver Award

The event had great use of social media too – there was a photo booth which allowed you to upload images straight onto Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and they were also shown around the room on various screens throughout the night, which was great. I’ve shared some pictures of the team throughout this blog, but you can see all of the pictures here.

Hopefully, we can enter and win more awards as the year goes on. The 2015 September open day campaign generated some good numbers again this year, so watch this space…

As Sarah mentioned last week, we are now down to a team of three, so winning the awards was great for the team morale. And as we continue through this cycle, we will continue to be targeted in our approach to campaigns and hopefully continue to yield some great results for the University. Throughout the year, the marketing team try to enter numerous awards, by numerous awarding bodies, as it’s not only great for the team to have our hard work recognised, but it’s also good to showcase the work that we’re doing.

Speak soon,
K

Celebrating our wins in the photo booth!

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!

We’re beaming with PRide

We're shortlisted for two PRide awards

So I’m excited to tell you we’ve been shortlisted for two PRide awards this year; one for best integrated campaign and one for best low budget campaign. The low budget campaign award entry is for our September open day campaign which I created and implemented so it’s really nice that my efforts have resulted in an award entry for the team. And of course my marketing colleagues, as well as other MARC teams, did help me implement the plans so I can’t take all of the credit. The team are really pleased and we have our fingers crossed that we can walk away with another award to add to the two PRide awards we won last year. The ‘do is on 1^st October, so we’ll be sure to let you know the outcome. I attended the awards ceremony last year, which was my first since working at the University, and it was a really fun night. Last year there was a welcome drink and canapés before the awards ceremony, but this year it’s a sit down 3 course meal followed by the awards ceremony, so I’m looking forward to attending again. It’s great to be shortlisted and it’s a nice night for the team to relax and revel in some of our successes, even if we don’t come away with an award.

Open day season is back

I can’t believe I’m saying this (or typing it!) but open days are back. Doesn’t time just fly when you’re…busy!

Our next open day is on 23 September; I have my plan at the ready and its full steam ahead. I’ve actually planned the full winter season of open days, so all activity up until December, which is a little scary!

So far I’ve created a web banner and I’m currently working with one of our freelance designers to create two external banners. The activity will start next week, so you’ll start to see our open day messaging appear on our homepage, social media and other platforms as we work our way through the plans.

Helping with recruitment collateral

I’ve also been helping out with recruitment support; I’ve created clearing posters, with more to follow in the next week, and I’m updating our school and college liaison guide. The guide has had a few big changes this year, so I’ve spent quite a lot of time on this, but it’s looking really nice and I’m ahead of schedule which I always like!

Evaluations

An old favourite and something I always mention- evaluations. I finished my first open day report for the 2015 cycle ‘enquirer’ events (which was used as a basis for the PRide awards entry, as it identified the success of the September open day in particular). I’m now working on a similar report for the 2015 cycle ‘applicant’ events. Let’s see if I can identify another award opportunity. 

Decisions....decisions...

And finally, outside of work its wedding season…

It’s just dawned on me that I have three weddings to attend in the next seven weeks- crikey!! The first is up North and I’m bridesmaid for an old friend so I’m super excited. The other two are local, and again I’m looking forward to celebrating those as well. I’ll try not to make my next blog about weddings.

Speak soon,

K

More speed, less haste!

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Plate spinning - a busy time for
the HE Marketer

Well where did that week just go? It's been an incredibly busy week over here at Marketing HQ.

Not only have we been busying ourselves with the post 15 January communications to our applicants, but we've been implementing our open day campaign; readying ourselves for open day season which kicks off next week for both UG and PG, and helping the recruitment team with marketing collateral to support their events and upcoming UCAS fairs, which seem to be briefed in en masse at the moment.

One man band - the multi-
tasking Marketers

But the biggy for this week, most definitely has to be the fact that we're in the final stages of both our main UG 2016 prospectus, and the mini guide. 'So what?' I hear you say. All in a days work you may think. Well, that may be the case if I wasn't trying to do all of the above, and then some, by myself, on top of my day job. As mentioned in previous posts, our Marketing Assistant Clare left just before Christmas to embark on an adventure as she travels along the west coast of America. And Kylie, our Marketing Officer, is also away at the moment, holidaying in the tropical destination of Cuba, which means that we're a little depleted at the moment and for a few more weeks still to come. It certainly makes the days go by very quickly considering the volume of work I've been ploughing through lately, and a big nod has to go to Krystle who has been great in holding down all of the campaigns which we're running at the moment.

New recruits joining the team
shortly

In between all of the madness and mayhem, we've been able to get our new Marketing Assistant vacancy advertised (hurrah!), and so we'll keep you posted on how the interviews go towards the end of February, and we should hopefully be welcoming a new member to the team very shortly. I've also taken part in a number of interesting discussions, as the Marketing team is set to expand once more - we're also currently advertising for two Faculty Marketing Assistants who will hopefully be joining us within a matter of weeks. I couldn't be happier. These new roles will present a much needed resource and link to the Faculties, and will really cement our focus on collaborative working across the organisation. I'm particularly excited, as the two new post holders will be heavily focused on content generation - and so if you've been reading this blog recently, you'll see that one of my main priorities and favourite buzz words at the moment is content marketing, and it will be great for us to further enhance the work of the team by demonstrating value through producing and sharing engaging and dynamic content. So I can't wait for all of these exciting team developments to start taking shape.

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

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.

Postgraduate Forum: June

Postgraduate Taught Courses in a falling market

Yesterday I was in London for the latest PG Forum, 'UK PGT in a falling market - how to reverse the trend'. The event saw delegates from over 25 universities across the country gather to discuss the downward trend in PGT applications and the ways in which we, as marketers and recruiters, might be able to change things.

It was a very interesting day of discussion, and the willingness of delegates to share experiences and ideas was really heartening. Though I'm not sure we got anywhere near figuring out how to reverse the downward trend in PGT applications, some really great ideas were discussed.

Useful considerations to come from the day:
1. Widening Participation
This was a big topic of conversation throughout the day; lots of Universities, like us, seemed to be doing fairly well at converting their undergraduates into postgraduates but the general consensus was that this won't be enough in the future. There was lots of discussions about the accessibility of PG and how we can encourage applications from students based on experience rather than a UG qualification, in order to attract those who might not consider themselves capable of PG study.
2. 'The Postgraduate cliff '
This phrase rather ominously came up on multiple occasions throughout the day. Almost everyone in attendance is worried about what happens when the first £9,000 fees UG cohort reaches their final year; how will they react to PG, and will their already substantial debt put them off? If it does, how do we react?
3. University Systems vs. The Student Experience
During a fascinating student panel, we heard that one current PG student dismissed lots of possible universities based on not being able to pay fees in installments and also the request for her UG transcript before she had received it from her current university. Although it was widely accepted that university processes are in place for good reason, it was interesting that students are dismissing universities because their processes make it too difficult to apply.
   
Other updates

• While we're nearing the print phase of the UCMK 2015 prospectus, the proofing of the PG 2015 is still in full swing. Everything seems to be on track and we're seeing lots of progress being made with each set of proofs that comes in. 
• We're working hard on promoting the upcoming June undergraduate open days, and numbers are growing steadily. 
• You might have noticed the new, large Postgraduate Information Point stand that is now in Park
  Square campus. We hope you'll agree it's looking really good, and we'll be making sure the screen is live and the stand fully stocked by the time our undergraduates are back on campus after summer. 
• I've been spending lots of time filming staff and students, creating content in the form of one minute long mini-lectures ('PGTips'), continuing to film Q&A interviews, and videoing our very own Recruitment Team for the newly launched CRM system, Belong at Beds. 

As ever there's loads of smaller jobs going on alongside those big ones so we're all being kept on our toes.

I'm sure we'll catch up soon!

Clare

Offline To Online; The Big Debate

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

It's good to talk:
Postgraduate Marketing Forums

As usual, it's been another busy few weeks in the central Marketing team. I've been getting out and about; this time attending one of my favourite training sessions: the Postgraduate Marketing Forum. Run by Postgraduate Studentships, these forums are great for two reasons. 1: It's like group therapy, where we get to share problems in the sector and get some great reassurance that we're actually ahead of the game when it comes to many marketing initiatives. 2: It's great to talk to other Postgraduate Marketers from universities across the UK, and hear what they are up to and what they are planning.

One of the many slides: discussing the many
media platforms

This particular forum was entitled "From offline to online... and keeping them there". It was a great nod to the shift towards digital marketing, but had a strong emphasis on not leaving traditional media (print) behind - sounds like a recipe for integrated marketing if you ask me! The slides provided an overview of the national picture, which showed a decline in Postgraduate recruitment nationally. However we're pleased to share that for our September intake of PGT students we had a 30% increase compared with the previous year - so it's great to see that we're bucking the national trend ;-). Overall it was an engaging and informative session. The forum highlighted what we're already doing really well, and threw up some ideas which we may dabble with, and test, over the coming months to see what impact this has, if any, on our marketing and recruitment strategies.

Back in the office, and it's been all go on the publications front. Not only have we signed off the Mini Undergraduate guide for print, but as of today the main Undergraduate 2015 Prospectus has been approved for print (hurrah!). It'll be making its way over to our printers for tomorrow morning, and then we move swiftly into the print production stage of our schedule. That means there's one more round of proofing standing in the way of the finished product. It'll be ready for the 7 March (ready to be included in the Heist mailing to schools and careers advisers nationally) so we'll keep you posted as to when it's ready for your perusal.

Moving online: Postgraduate Virtual Event

This week has also seen us take part in our third Postgraduate Virtual Open Event - a culmination of 6 weeks of hard campaign work from our Marketing Assistant Clare, as she actioned a lot of marketing activity to drive up enquiries for this event. This year a lot of work was done from our digital counterparts (thank you!) to refresh video content and the way in which we capture data for the event so that we can continue with our conversion efforts post event. Now that the event is over we'll be pulling together all of our stats for an event wash up report, and will be able to make some further recommendations as to how we can improve these events in the future.

There's still no progress in writing awards entries, and we're coming up to the CIPR deadline. And Heist are not far behind; they're already touting their deadline dates. So, now that the main UG publications have been completed, here's hoping we can turn some attention to report writing and demonstrating our success!

Work hard and...work harder

By Michelle Ramsumair

Recently I attended the CIM Writing an integrated marketing communications plan training day in Euston, London. The title is pretty self explanatory and it’s something we should all be doing in some way but we don't always take the time to step back from the daily grind to really consider exactly why we are doing what we are doing. It was reassuring so see we are on the right track but learnt a lot from the workshop leader and hearing feedback from other organisations in different industries.

We are currently looking to work with a media agency to assist with the logistics of the campaigns. We have never done this before but with the number of campaigns we roll out now it has become more apparent this is needed. The challenge will be making sure everything from the bookings to the artwork is as transparent and integrated as possible. However, here we do enjoy a challenge and for me it’s a new project to sink my teeth into.

We had our first Applicant Open Day this Saturday gone at our Bedford campus which was very successful. I always enjoy working these and helping nervous applicants and parents as much as possible. Everyone enjoyed the day and improvements for this type of event definitely paid off. Our next one is at our Luton campus this Saturday 08 February where more registrants are expected. I think flat shoes are in order again! For further information about our open days feel free to visit www.beds.ac.uk and click '2014 Applicant Open Days' for more details. 

I am currently working on a campaign for Aylesbury to promote the March intake for Adult Nursing. As we haven’t done much promoting for this in the past, it is very interesting to work on as we will be able to better measure and review throughout as it is very specific. If you know anyone who maybe interested why not recommend they come along to our healthcare open day on Saturday 15 February at our Aylesbury campus.

With all the above going on it's important to just break away, maybe to some scenic views and fresh air. I was either rather brave or silly but I decided to take a trip to The Downs on what was possibly the windiest day of the week. Enjoy the view!

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!