Spreading festive cheer; Xmas parties and planning

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

We've got our list, we're checking it twice, and we're going to find out who's.... leaving on time to make the Staff Christmas party next week.

Full speed ahead as
the Jan UCAS deadline
approaches

For many offices and departments, as the festive season approaches it's a time to start winding down; a real chance to kick back, relax and enjoy the masses of mince pies and festive cheer as the holiday season approaches. But that's not quite the case for the Marketing team over in the Atrium, as December is often one of our busiest months, second only to August when it's Clearing. It's a real crunch time as we make the most of the last few weeks available to communicate with our enquirers and promote the many benefits of joining the University of Bedfordshire before the UCAS deadline in January. So, whilst term may have officially ended and the cold winter weather sets in, things are truly heating up over in Marketing HQ as we go full speed ahead to action our core enquirer activity.

Today is the day of our open evening! There is still time to book: http://t.co/yXOmx1LvST pic.twitter.com/UbeWXTxF5M
— uniofbeds (@uniofbeds) December 10, 2014

The last week has seen the Marketing and Digital Marketing teams working hard to promote a festive open evening. This event wasn't originally planned into the recruitment schedule, but was a quick response to some unforeseen events taking place in the town which resulted in our November event having to be postponed at the last minute. Not to be deterred, the team set out to rework all of the campaign visuals, and devise new marketing plans to push out the new event details, with the help of our CRM team as they communicated the new event details out and encouraged sign ups. The event was a real success overall, and we're pleased that we were able to successfully retain some of the enquirers who had originally signed up to attend the event in November.

New 'Apply Now' artwork

All change, all change!
Now that all open days are officially over for the year, it's time for a quick change of all the campaign artwork again, as we move from plugging our on campus visits, to driving applications directly to UCAS for 2015 entry. We're also busily working away on our conversion newsletters, 13 applicant newsletters to be precise. These are the very first communications that our applicants will receive from us, and so we're aiming to get them off to print just before Christmas, so they're ready to be mailed out almost as soon as we get back.

For those who know me well, you'll know I love a good report and a bit of Marketing data. And so in the last few weeks we've been exploring how we can better track the impact of our work. After a number of meetings and after bouncing a few emails back and forth between the marketing and digital teams, we've finally got a new tracking url system agreed and in place, thanks to Paul in the digital team. It's much easier to recall and recognise than the previous tracking we used, and should provide us with much more insight into engagement with our materials. So watch out for this url popping up in the new year across our marketing materials.

Although it's an incredibly busy time, we always somehow manage to find some time to have some fun along the way. And what better way to get into the festive spirit than by donning our best festive favourites for Christmas Jumper Day.

Rockin' around the Christmas tree (left to right):
Krystle, Clare, Sarah, Beverley and Kylie.

As the year comes to a close, we wish you a very Merry Christmas from everyone here within the Marketing team. Stayed tuned to read more about our key initiatives in the new year.

Post-Easter catch up

On my first day back after a relaxing Easter break, I attended some photography training, kindly organised by Heidi for the Comms team. During the course we went into a lot of depth about how to make the most of our cameras. The course leader reminded us on several occasions that humans are far more intelligent that cameras, but I’m not convinced I supported that theory for a lot of the day! 

The day was fairly confusing at times but I left feeling far more confident in my understanding of which setting to use when. I learned about how RAW files allow you to better edit a photograph and how to manually focus too. I suppose that time will tell as to whether it all sunk in but I’m hoping that with a bit of practice my photos will improve a lot.

Now the Easter break is over the marketing team is working really hard on the 2015 postgraduate prospectus, and the UCMK prospectus too. After lots of hard work by Sarah and Kylie on flatplans, we’re ready to bring these publications to life. Watch this space!  

I’ve been doing lots of work on promoting the postgraduate Jubilee Scholarship and spreading the Open Event coming up on 22 May. Other tasks have included sending out recommendation emails to all our third year students by department, to suggest PG courses that might suit them. As ever, I’ve been filming and editing lots of videos to brighten up our PG Life ezine.

word about the postgraduate

As you can probably tell, it’s very busy here but it’s really exciting to see more big projects get underway as we continue our efforts to show prospective students why Beds should be their first choice!

Clare

Keeping busy!

Alongside hectically proofing the UG prospectus, lots of the work I’ve been doing over the past week or so has revolved around the Postgraduate Virtual Open Event coming up on Wednesday 5th February. Advertising, emails, flyers and notices have all been arranged and it sounds like sign-ups are going well. I’m looking forward to it as it’ll be my first experience of a virtual open event and it’ll be good to see how it all works from behind the scenes. I think a virtual event would’ve been really helpful when I was applying to my universities myself, so I hope those who have signed up will get a lot out of it.

I've been doing lots of filming and
editing over the last couple of weeks.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve spent quite a bit of time out and about filming students and staff members for various projects. I’ve done lots of this since I started working at the University and it’s something I really enjoy. It’s great to meet the students - after all, they are what all of our hard work is for. It’s really interesting to listen to their opinions and hear about their University experience. Despite my computer struggling at times to cope with the editing process, I really like putting together the clips I’ve filmed – it’s good to see a process through from start to finish.

Nobody says goodbye like the
Von Trapps...

It’s been a whole week since we said goodbye to Rehanna. She made me feel very welcome when I was brand new and finding my feet in the department and I will certainly miss her! What’s more, Friday marked the end of Sophie(our intern)’s time with us. She spent the last three weeks working on various projects with the team, and was a huge help to us. With all the goodbyes have come lots of delicious lunches with the team – every cloud has a silver lining I suppose! I’m really looking forward to welcoming new members of the team over the next weeks and months; it’ll be good to have somebody sitting in the (currently very empty) seat next to me again – it’s lonely over this side of the pod!

Well deserved fun needed I think!

By Michelle Ramsumair, Marketing Administrator

Firstly, a huge congratulations to Sarah Hampton for her promotion to Marketing Manager! Truly well deserved and she is going to do a superb job I’m sure.  If you can’t tell already it’s all happening in our team.

If you haven't noticed us about with our Clearing advertising and appearances at various locations in Luton and Bedford, a summer holiday is not an excuse! It's pretty hard not to see us, and we have a number of events coming up.  

Wednesday 11 September 10.30am-3pm we have our first Open Event during the week for anyone interested in 2014 entry. It will be at both our Luton and Bedford campuses so a huge department effort is being made. If you or you know anyone who may be interested come along.

On Wednesday 18 September from 1-7.30pm the public will be able to drop-in to our new campus UCMK! With brand new facilities and academics there to talk to, it will be the perfect opportunity to find out what it would be like to study with us. There are full-time and part-time courses available, so if you are interested why not come see us. It’s a good excuse to have a snoop around too. For more information, visit www.ucmk.ac.uk.

At the moment you can tell it's rather manic, working on current campaigns and the beginning of our Part-time and Winter Campaign also. Now we are out and about we won't be going anywhere, so watch this space to see what's coming next. Obviously after a non-stop few weeks we deserve to let our hair down, so a group of us gorgeous ladies will be going out tonight. It could get a little messy but it's much needed indeed. Although summer is at an end why should the fun stop right? Have a great relaxed or lively weekend!