Easter treats!

I hope you all enjoyed the Easter break and ate far too much chocolate! I was resisting but my willpower failed me on Sunday night when a friend and I had a go at baking some Creme Egg brownies! (They were delicious even if I do say so myself!)

But now we're back in the office and raring to go! This morning I've been prepping some open day invite emails, in preparation for our Luton and Bedford,  and Milton Keynes events. Attending an open day is a great way to get a feel for the campus you'll be studying at and gives you the opportunity to speak to both academic and support staff.

We've also been busy working on the PG prospectus for 2018. Draft copy has been sent to our design agency, and we're looking forward to seeing the first proof next week. The prospectuses are one of the bigger projects that I'm involved in, from assisting on photo-shoots, to writing copy and liaising with academics, to proof reading, so I enjoy seeing it all come together.

I've also been working on a report, pulling together stats from e-zines that both myself and Kylie have worked on over the last year, and analysing the results. It's great to see that most of our communications are performing above the sector average, and helps us to identify what content is the most relevant to our audiences.

I've also been filming around the campus lately, working on some videos showcasing the facilities available at Beds. It's been a great opportunity for me to nose around campus and see what our students are getting up to! Take a look at some of our sports facilities, and watch this space for more videos soon!

The other side of the table

So, if anyone reading this studied Advertising and Marketing Communications (or a similar subject), like me, at university you’ll know the feeling of pretending to work in an agency, creating a solution to a brief and then preparing and presenting your solution to your “client” (/university lecturers). Well, a few weeks ago I got to sit on the other side of the table and listen to various agencies pitch their ideas to us as part of our tender process for the 2017 prospectuses. It was a really interesting and great experience for me to be part of this and to see the different dynamics of the agencies and the various approaches to our brief. Over the course of the day we definitely saw some really great ideas and by the end of the day my creativity levels were on over-drive! And, as scary as it is to think that we’re already thinking about the 2017 prospectuses, I’m really excited to start the process. Although I have worked on the 2016 PG prospectus, this will be the first time I have worked on a project like this from tender to print!

As part of my role I produce the monthly PG e-zine, PG Life. This month I met with Prof. Karen Randell, head of Media Arts and Production, to film a video about the PG courses available and the facilities that we have. I hadn’t been to the TV studio here at Beds so I was really excited to go over and see what it was all about! I was really impressed with the facilities available and it was great to hear from Karen about the various opportunities available to our students. 

I’ve also been working on the Students’ Guide to University and the Parents’ Guide to University applicants as well as producing some bookmarks and postcards for our open day events coming up (don’t forget to book your place). I really enjoy working with our designers; sending them a brief and seeing it come together! As well as producing promotional materials for the open days I've also been writing content for our CRM site, Facebook and Twitter accounts and creating e-newsletters. 

I almost forgot to mention Clearing! The office has been a bit quieter the last couple of weeks as the admissions team have gone over to the PG centre with a specialised Clearing team to help students with any Clearing queries they may have. The Recruitment team are also out and about at various events promoting Beds. I keep seeing our stand when I go into town on my lunch break (must.stop.spending...) and it looks like there's so much going on, so if you see it make sure you get involved!

Same difference - achieving stand out in a crowded market place

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Standing out from the crowd has never been more important. Gone are the days of simply shouting about the big 5: high quality teaching, state-of-the-art facilities, student support, great location, and employment. Times are changing, and these are now simply a basic expectation towards any student experience. Universities are having to up their game, and showcase what makes them truly special and distinct, after all, any and every university fundamentally offers the same product: a degree, and so the need to focus on brand building and highlighting what makes us different, is becoming increasingly important.

And it's for this very reason the University of Bedfordshire launched its Verbal Brand Project - a re- positioning exercise to establish our basic truths and aspirations, and promote our extra added value in order to boost our brand reputation and present a distinct and attractive proposition against our competitors.

Shift in messaging, sector wide

Spotted!
When in London I often think to myself; have I seen this ad because they are quite simply everywhere, and quite frankly there isn't much else to look at when waiting for the tube, or would I have still noticed this ad if I didn't work in marketing? IE are adverts so ingrained into my brain that you know you're never far from a lurking competitor ad. Perhaps it's a bit of both. Nevertheless, on my recent travels to London St Pancras I bumped into an advert from our neighbouring competitor, Anglia Ruskin and in true tourist style, papped away to snap their latest messaging to feed back to our Market Research team in the hope of making it into Andy's special editions of Competitor Watch. Anglia Ruskin's latest campaign messaging is quite similar to one branch of our new verbal brand messaging: focusing on entrepreneurship and not just employability, and so they are firmly on our radar as one's to watch. However, the good old saying "it's not what you say, it's how you say it" springs to mind :-) and we're more than confident that our new marketing materials and planned activity will keep us distinct and showcase the very best of what Bedfordshire has to offer - more on this soon!

Phone company or University?

We're better, connected
As social media remains a force to be reckoned with, so does the need for younger, new generations to build their own profiles and provide their own platforms to be heard. Suddenly a person's worth is dictated by how many 'likes' or 'follows' they have from many different networks. But more importantly, it's about extending reach and opening doors of opportunity on a wider scale. And that's where this idea of being connected really becomes important. Luckily I haven't spotted any of our competitors on this thread yet, so here's hoping! I have however, included an example from Southampton, who are definitely worth a watch if you haven't yet seen some of their videos, and their video on research in particular is very nicely done, if you ask me! At the risk of all sounding like phone companies, the focus on staying connected is growing in importance, but not just from a social media, and a 'it's good to talk' point of view. From a University perspective, the ability to offer opportunities to travel, network and operate on a global scale adds a whole new dimension to offering a well rounded, all encompassing 'international' experience. This is really quite an exciting concept for the UoB Marketeer, and really gives us something meaty to work with. So you may see us out and about around campus on the quest for case studies, content and concrete examples to back up these exciting messages, so we can feed them into our communications.

For current staff members, if you haven't yet got involved in the verbal brand project, take a look at the MARC staff intranet pages where you'll be able to look at/download a tool kit for your own department.

In other news, the Marketing team, and colleagues from the Digital Marketing team spent a day over at the Bedford campus this week as part of our PG Media Day. We had a day full of interesting insights, talks and discussions from PG Media providers, and discovered more about external factors affecting the sector, barriers and obstacles to PG study, as well as getting an overview into some new digital platforms which we're considering trialing over the coming weeks to grow our PG brand and our digital presence. As we progress this, we'll continue to share updates with you via this blog.

We also welcomed our two new Faculty Marketing Assistants, who will be part of the Marketing team until July - and will provide a central 'go-to' contact for the Faculties, to ensure that central and Faculty initiatives are not only collaborative, but well aligned to our overall objectives. It's great to have both on board, and I'm sure we'll be able to share some updates on the exciting content that they will be producing to support our recruitment efforts in the coming weeks. If you haven't yet met your FMA, let us know, and do get in touch!

All change, all change on the marketing front

By Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

Lots of new friendly faces!

A lot has been happening on the staffing front since my last blog post a few weeks ago. I think I've spent most of my time sat on interview panels lately, but it's great that we'll be welcoming lots of new friendly faces to the Marketing team in the coming weeks.

First up; we've been joined by James Blackburn, a final year BSc (Hons) Advertising and Marketing Communications student from the University. He's joined us for 10 weeks as Temporary Marketing Assistant to help us during a busy time in the recruitment cycle. It's great to have James on board as he's able to provide some valuable student insight to enhance our marketing initiatives.

As I mentioned above, I've been on countless interview panels, with the most recent one being for the recruitment of two brand new and shiny Faculty Marketing Assistants. We've only just appointed and so it's still very early days, but we're really looking forward to being joined by two new recruits. I'm now looking to get out and about into the Faculties in the next few weeks to discuss key priorities and to cement our focus on collaborative working before our new colleagues join us. More on this in early March.

New recruits - coming soon!

And what better way to round of my week, than by sitting on an interview panel once more; this time for our vacant Marketing Assistant position. We'll be meeting a group of fantastic candidates over the next two days, and we're really excited, as the quality of applications has been really high, and so I'm sure we're going to be in for some tough decisions. Hopefully by early April our team will be fully replenished, and so we'll be back up to full speed as we approach what we can only describe as our busiest time of the year, also known as Clearing!

As we come to the end of February, the team is rejoicing as our 2016 publications have now finally made their way to print. We're working with a new printer this year, so we're really keen to see the finished product in early March. But if you can't wait to take a look, then why not have a sneak peak at our Undergraduate 2016 Prospectus and Undergraduate 2016 Mini Guide online - go on, we know you want to!

Checking out the new Gateway building, Bedford

In other news, of the none staffing variety, I was able to spend an afternoon over at the Bedford campus yesterday, and so I took the opportunity to check out the new Gateway building whilst meeting up with colleagues from the Department of Education Studies to discuss short-term and longer-term marketing and recruitment strategies for our PG courses. It was a really productive meeting and it's always a real treat when we're able to step away from our desks for a while and mingle with the wider university. Dave, our Head of Recruitment was there also, and so I was able to get a quick tour around the building, which I have to say looks fantastic. It's always really useful for us to be able to get out and about once in a while to see the new facilities and developments around campus, as it helps us to keep an ear to the ground and get a good feel for what our students experience, which in turn helps the way in which we market and get our messages out.

As I come to the end of this weeks blog post, I can't help but feel sad that my partner in crime and digital counter part, Paul Fryer, Digital Marketing Manager, is leaving the University for pastures new. I've worked with Paul for a number of years now, and we're all really going to miss him. And the office will certainly be a quieter place without him! We are however, looking forward to giving Paul a great send off in the usual Brewery Tap after work drinks style,  and we'll look forward to hearing all about his new adventures with Kier Construction.

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.

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.

Full of PRide after awards win

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

After a week off in the sunshine, I'm finally back in the office and what a first few days back it's been.

Two Gold Awards for Team UoB!

On Friday the Marketing team got glammed up and headed on over to the CIPRide Awards, as we had been short-listed for not one, but two coveted awards. As I was still over in Gran Canaria, I sat with cocktail in hand, in the hotel bar (the only place with wifi!) sporadically refreshing my twitter feed to see how we had done. Much to my delight, we scooped a Gold award for Best Publication - for our 2014 Undergraduate Prospectus. After whooping in the bar and celebrating with a few more cocktails, I was surprised to see that we had won another Gold award - this was a special judges prize (and the second consecutive year that we had won this award) for the Best Use of Research, Planning, Measurement and Evaluation.

Celebrating on stage with an
award win

This really was a great achievement for the Marketing team, and really is testament to the hard work that is undertaken throughout the year. A lot of time and effort is placed into producing our university publications, but in also evaluating the performance of all work, and assessing the ROI and value in all that we do. The team I'm told, had a great evening out, although were left a little on the hungry side after letting the canapes pass them by.

Gold for Best Publication: @uniofbeds for their Undergraduate 2015 Prospectus #PRideATC
— CIPR East Anglia (@CIPR_EastAnglia) November 7, 2014

Midland Hotel - Manchester

And just when you think it can't get any better! Paul and Lauren from the Digital team, alongside Beverley and I headed off to the Midland Hotel in Manchester only yesterday, as we were up for another award. This time the Marketing team was up for Best Faculty Campaign at the Prospects Postgraduate Awards for our work done last year to increase applications to PGT Sport courses.

Celebrating our award win

After a hearty three course dinner, and a good catch up with our contacts at Prospects, the awards were upon us. We were up in the penultimate category, against three other universities and so left to sweat it out until the end. As the speaker started to talk about the winner, I could see that Paul was already celebrating - I of course had missed the subtle references of a 'photo finish' - which of course was relating to our sport campaign. Once it was announced we cheered as we made our way up to the stage to collect our very first award for a marketing campaign.

Award for Best Faculty Campaign

This brings us to a close for this years' award season. So, until next year it's back to work on our 2016 Undergraduate Prospectus, as well as our main corporate campaigns: Winter, Jan Start and Pre-Clearing - and who knows, maybe next year, it could be one of these initiatives that we'll be celebrating... :-)

Clearing: a path to your future

Clearing 2014

With colleagues from all over the MARC team working so hard on the Clearing campaign, we’ve witnessed it gaining a lot of momentum over the last couple of weeks. 

Campaign visuals are looking fantastic in situ – they're absolutely everywhere and so very hard to miss! Bus backs, billboards, bus stops, posters, big screens, lamp posts, banners… You name it, we’re there! Even as I prepared to leave the country on holiday at the start of August, the clearing message flashed up on the check-in screen at Luton airport; rest assured, all bases have been covered!

As well as the more traditional marketing activity, Krystle’s organisation of a Clearing flash mob created a real buzz in Luton Mall this week. On Wednesday 40 dancers entertained the public with flash mobs dancing throughout the afternoon. The atmosphere was brilliant and Lutonians young and old had lots of fun, all in the name of Clearing!

Here's just a couple of the mentions we got on Twitter after the event:

RT @chelsgomes: the flash mob done by @uniofbeds was so good haha! so excited to be there in September :-) -> Good work yday! C U in Sept :)
— uniofbeds (@uniofbeds) August 14, 2014

Great fun at @TheMallLuton with @uniofbeds! pic.twitter.com/72NSq7ErEY
— Holly Patel (@holly_patel) August 13, 2014

Student Ambassadors outside the show van

I’ve enjoyed getting involved in the Clearing efforts not least because it’s given me a reason to get out of the office. On Thursday I manned the Clearing show van with two of our wonderful Student Ambassadors. It’s great to step away from the computer screen, get out into the local community, and talk to the public face-to-face; who knows, someone I’ve talked to this week may end up studying at Bedfordshire later this year. 

As the Admissions and Recruitment teams continue to work hard over the weekend and beyond, I’m glad I’m able to play a small part in the University of Bedfordshire Clearing operation this year. I have a great feeling that all the positive momentum created so far will carry us through!

PG 2015: Hot off the press!

PG prospectus 2015

While most of our minds are focussed fully on Clearing 2014, it’s hard to believe that the Marketing team has now completed the full suite of 2015 publications! Copies of the brand new postgraduate prospectus for 2015 entry arrived on our desks this week, and we’re delighted with the finished item. If you haven’t already seen a copy, feel free to pop over to the Marketing pod to take a look. 

Clare

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

It's all in the Heist...

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

On the first day back after my week away in sunny Greece I came back to the most exciting news: The Marketing team have only gone and got themselves short-listed for a coveted Heist Award!

#heist2014 nominations released. See the full list. http://t.co/QEjCNqRSnx #goodluck #lovehe @havaspeople
— Heist Awards (@heistawards) May 12, 2014

The who's who of Marketing:
The Annual Heist Awards 

I must admit it was a rather last minute entry, and so a big thanks go to Andy Kingston our Market Research Manager, and Michelle Ramsumair our Marketing Administrator for helping me put the entry together in record timing. Usually it would take approximately one month to have an entry worthy of entering, and that's only if your stats stack up! For this particular deadline, we had the almost impossible task of putting together an entry in less than a week. So, to say that we were excited at the news was a complete and utter understatement. For us, and for many other Marketing professionals, the Heist awards is our version of the Oscars - the pinnacle of a HE Marketers career, and benchmark of best practice amongst the sector. A little over the top you may think, but to even make it to the short-list is an achievement in itself, so we're going to enjoy every moment in the run up to the big awards dinner. It may even warrant a new dress for the occasion :-)

Pretty pleased to hear that the @uniofbeds Marketing Team has been short-listed for Best UG Prospectus at this years' @heistawards #Excited
— Sarah Hampton (@Sarah_Hampton) May 12, 2014

Our short-listed entry for:
Best Undergraduate Prospectus

Up until this point I've only ever written award submissions for our Postgraduate work, and so this is the first (and hopefully not the last!) piece of Undergraduate work to be short-listed since I've been in the post of Marketing Manager. I was joking with other colleagues in the department to say that I find quite a lot of my time is spent compiling and writing awards these days as opposed to getting on with our actual Marketing work, but laughs aside, we are always looking to benchmark our work against industry and demonstrate best practice, as not only is it a great pat on the back, but helps raise the profile of our work, and always helps our cause when liaising with academics and the wider university in being able to prove that we really do know what we're talking about! We're up for the title of Best Undergraduate Prospectus (for our 2014 publication), against 12 other universities, including the likes of Manchester Metropolitan, Edge Hill, Loughborough and the University of Leicester. You can read the full list here.

On my travels to the
University of Birmingham

In other news, I took a trip over to the University of Birmingham last week to attend the '2015 Postgraduate Market Changes Conference', run in conjunction with FindAMasters, Heera and UKCGE. I must admit I didn't have high expectations at first, purely based on previous one day training sessions I've attended over the last few months, but as soon as the sessions started I was very impressed with the quality of the sessions and speakers, and how willing people were to share their PG initiatives. I was frantically scribbling throughout the whole day and came back feeling very inspired.

Feeling like a student after
spending a day in the
Learning Centre

Sessions which stood out to me in particular included the talk from Future Index on 'Making Postgraduate Education Marketing Brilliant' - which focused on current and future trends, and some exemplary case studies of Universities not just in the UK, who have some interesting initiatives set up for PG Marketing. The networking sessions with other Universities were great also. I was able to pick the brain of a key competitor, unknown to them, which proved very insightful. I'm hoping to find a quiet hour or two this week to revisit my notes, and to see whether I can progress a few ideas in time to make it into our 2015 Postgraduate Annual Plan.

Stay tuned and I'll keep you informed once I've organised my thoughts.

Shaping the future of HE Marketing

Sarah Hampton, Marketing Manager

The Future of HE Marketing Conference 2014

This week saw the culmination of a months hard work and preparation as Paul Fryer (Digital Marketing Manager) and I made our way to London for this year's Inside Government 'The Future of HE Marketing" Conference 2014. Paul and I were invited to speak at the event, focusing on "Enhancing Postgraduate Recruitment Through Developing A Digital Presence." Well, we were more than happy to oblige, after all, PG is one of my favourite subjects!

Paul and I taking centre
stage

Before we knew it, the day had arrived, and there we were armed with our nifty USB stick (always carry a back up!), ready to share our PG knowledge with approximately 100 delegates, most of whom were either Directors or Heads from other universities from across the UK. After overcoming some initial nerves and stage fright (bar Paul who was raring to go!), we successfully delivered our presentation to what we thought was a really engaged audience. There's nothing like a room of frantic pen scribblers to make you second guess whether you've over shared or not. Nonetheless, we were pleased to be sharing best practice and have our work recognised by our peers, after our recent success in generating a 30% increase to PGT applications for our September 2013 intake, especially given that the national picture suggests that universities are experiencing a 12% decrease year on year.

And the feedback from some of the delegates was great...

@Sarah_Hampton @deep_phat @InsideGovt fantastic presentation.. Thanks for sharing some of your secrets ;-) #ighemarket
— Joe Etchells (@JEtchells88) April 29, 2014

Back in the office, things have been equally exciting, as we push forward with our conversion activity and publications; both the PG 2015 and UCMK 2015 prospectuses. We're fast approaching the proofing stages, so it's always great to see how your work slowly comes together. Stay tuned over the coming weeks for some sneak peaks into how some of the visuals are progressing.

Heading on out to Koz
in search of sunshine

For the next week I leave you in the very capable hands of the Marketing team, as I take some very long awaited annual leave in search of a spot of sunshine. I'll be back soon with more updates on our new CRM system, and may even share some of our PG secrets from our presentation earlier this week.

It’s all go, go, go!

Happy belated Easter wishes to everyone. After a relaxing six day break, we’re back into the swing of things in the MARC department.

I’ve been here eight weeks now, and it’s really flown over! So, what’s going on…what’s keeping me busy…

Prospectuses are coming

We’re now in the middle of not one, but two prospectuses- UCMK and PG. So lots of proofreading, liaising with departments, coordinating content and updating information. We’re expecting the first proof of the UCMK prospectus from the design agency on Monday 28 April, which will be very exciting- I love seeing a piece of work come together!

Open day

Our Bedford Campus

We’re hosting our next PG open day on 22 May at Luton and Bedford. As conversion is really important to us, I put a six week plan together for the event and I’ve been pushing those plans through with the help of my colleague, Clare. From setting up Google ads with the Digital Team and pushing messages on social media, to placing ads in external newsletters and around our campuses. We’ve had a lot of people sign up so far, which is great news with almost four weeks left to go before the event.

In between my larger projects I have been working on our next edition of B4 Beds- our undergraduate e-zine, briefing course specific leaflets for our UCAS event on 23 June at UoB, filming graduations, and attempting to edit videos (I’m still getting to grips with the software).

My development

I’m really excited that I have been signed up to attend our next PG forum in London at the beginning of May- an introduction to PG. This is an opportunity for people from different universities to get together and discuss their thoughts on postgraduate study and share ideas and best practice for increasing student numbers. I’m looking forward to attending and I’ll have an update on this in my next blog. I am also going to be attending a print workshop later in the year and spending some time shadowing the Digital Team. I’ve learned a lot already in my eight weeks and I'm looking forward to that continuing.

So, as expected, lot’s going on and I’m loving it!

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!