Who knew I could juggle?!

It’s been quite a while since I blogged! As the team is expanding, we are sharing the blogging, so I don’t get to bore you quite so much! Hurray! The team have all been really busy over the last couple of weeks, this is our busiest time of the year as we gear up for Clearing, start to evaluate the academic cycle and start to look ahead to next year’s cycle too. We're juggling a lot of work between such a small team, but we always manage to do what we gotta do!

How I think I look juggling all of
my work

Next stop…my desk!

Well, I’ve been out and about a lot since I last blogged. I’ve been assisting the Recruitment team with UCAS events. I attended one day of the event in London last month and I also attended one day at the Leicester event last week. It’s really nice going out and talking to prospective students and not only showcasing what Bedfordshire has to offer but also offering advice and guidance to people who have some big decisions to make about their future and careers. I’m not sure I would want to go back to that age! We had a lot of people come over for a chat, and got some really nice comments that we had provided them with some useful information, which is lovely.

I also attended a CASE conference in London on Tuesday. For those not familiar with CASE, they offer support to people working in the Education sector through the likes of forums and conferences, where people who work in Education can network and share best practice. This particular event looked at student communication. There were a couple of really interesting presentations on the use of social media, and using students in communication, through blogs (which we already do might I add).  It was great to see how other institutions run similar activities, but managed in a completing different way. Food for thought!

Take a look at our blogger page here.

Open days

Not again, I hear you cry! I feel like I always mention open days in every blog, so I won’t bore you too much with the details, but we had our latest (and last) undergraduate open day on 25 April for this academic cycle. And we’re currently working on our last PG open day campaign for this cycle on 21 May. So lots of emails, media, and social media activity taking place.

Reports

Which leads me nicely on to another thing I always mention…REPORTS and EVALUATIONS! I’m still working on my annual evaluation reports for our UG and PG open day campaigns, which are progressing slowly but surely. We’re at the end of this year’s open day cycle now, so I can now get on with analysing the full cycle of open day campaigns. They’re providing some good insight and showing some great successes in terms of the activity we have put together which is really nice to see. I look forward to sharing them with the wider MARC team.

Conversion communications

We’ve also now started sending two monthly e-zines to undergraduates, so I’ve been out filming videos and creating some new content for these. They went out yesterday, so it’s now on to this month’s editions - we’re in May! Woah! But fear not, I have my content planned for each edition up until the end of August, so all is under control.

Publications

Work is well underway on our 2016 UCMK prospectus now; we’re due to get the second proof from the designer on Tuesday and it’s looking nice. The PG prospectus is moving a little more slowly, but we’re starting to get there, so in the next few weeks we’ll be fully consumed by all things PG! I'm also working on the new student guide for this September. There’s lots of work going on behind the scenes around our ‘Welcome’ for new students, so I can slowly start to work on this publication and feed in new information once decisions are finalised. Working to a tight deadline of 6 weeks! Crikey!

You guessed it- how I look right now
in reality

I’ve also been working on some adhoc bits such as a flyer for our UCMK campus and a pull up banner for an event that’s being held in the Computing department next month. Oh, and a fair few meetings.

Hmm, I think that’s enough for now. Roll on the bank holiday...I’m going to Newmarket races so let’s hope the sun comes back out.
   

Speak soon,

K

Off to a flying start

Well, it’s my first blog of 2015 and we’re mega busy in the office. I feel like we’ve had a flying start to the year so far- I’m feeling really productive! We’re at the second proof stage of the undergraduate 2016 prospectus- it’s looking really nice, but there are still a few things to sort before the print deadline in early February! And we’re also at the first proof stage of the undergraduate 2016 mini guide, which will be signed off around the same time as the main prospectus.

PG open day artwork

On top of that, I’m half way through implementing the PG open day plans for February- two weeks to go. And I’ve also developed an open day plan for our UG open day in February, in line with the pre-clearing campaign that Krystle is busy working on. 

UG open day artwork

As part of the UG open day campaign I will be reworking the open day brochures, so I’ve been working with recruitment to try and finalise how these will look and the correct information to include. We’ll send these out by email to all registrants prior to the events taking place.

I’ve also started work on the January e-zine edition, which will be the first applicant edition following the 15 January UCAS deadline, so the messages will have a slightly different focus; informing applicants about life on campus, our student bloggers, accommodation and lot’s more! We’ve recently had two new email templates designed too, so I’m getting used to the new layout as I build the email.

I was also busy at the beginning of the month sending out email communications to enquirers during the build-up to the 15 January UCAS deadline, offering advice on lifestyle and what’s next after submitting an application. We like to provide applicants with as much information as possible to help them through their journey.

I’ve also finished my first open day evaluation report of this cycle; only another four to go to play catch up. Lots of number crunching coming my way I think!

Get me there now...!

Well, that’s all from me for this month. But I’ve got to finish my blog on a totally none-work-related subject by letting you all know that I’m jetting off to Cuba for two weeks on Wednesday (‘Off to a flying start’- get it now?!).

Speak soon, K

Starting to wind down for Christmas (I think!)

So, as you can imagine, this week is mostly getting things finished ahead of the Christmas break.

The UG16 prospectus is now at first proof stage, we've had the first draft of the artwork and we’re feeding back to the designers this week. It’s looking really great- really clean and professional with a clear progression from last year. I’m getting excited seeing it all come together, as I've worked on this from the initial design stage.

The February start new student guide is almost signed off now, ready to go out in the New Year. I’m just waiting on some final tweaks and this will be good to go by the end of the week.

Artwork for our PG Open Events
in February

We've also started to implement the PG Open Day plans for February 2015. Google activity and the website homepage banner will be up and running this week, most agencies have been briefed ready for the activity that is imminent after the Christmas break, and I’ll be pushing the event via social media this week, to drum up some awareness and interest before the holidays.

Clare, don’t leave us!

As Clare mentioned in her previous blog, she leaves us on Christmas eve to go travelling in the New Year. We’re not jealous at all! She will be a big miss within the team, but we all wish her the best of luck! We’re all meeting up after work on Thursday to wish her a final farewell.

Merry Christmas!

Festivities

So, over to Christmas! We’ve got two Christmas lunches in the calendar this week; one today and one on Wednesday. We’ve then got a University wide staff party on Friday afternoon.And as Friday is my last day in office before Christmas, it’s a nice way to start my holidays early! I’ll be travelling up to Sunderland straight after to spend Christmas up North. I’ve got my woollies packed and I’m super excited! The best thing about Christmas is spending time with friends and family. Or is it all the yummy food?! Hmmm….

Speak in the New Year,

K

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

Open day success

Open Days

Signage at our open day

I mentioned in my last blog that I was working on the UG open day. Well, the open day took place on Wednesday (24 September) and it was a huge success for sign ups. We had 315 students sign up for Bedford, with 191 people attending and 512 students sign up for Luton, with 204 people attending. We were all monitoring the sign up numbers on a daily basis and getting excited about the amount of signups we had generated. Although there is still work to do around the dropout rates (which we are working on), it was great to see that the activity in the open day plan generated some really good numbers. Recruitment also did a lot of work getting busloads of schools onto our campuses, so as you can image, we were busy, busy, busy!  I’m looking forward to doing the evaluation for this campaign and seeing where the signups correlated with the marketing activity.

Our next UG open days are in October and November, so next week I will be putting plans together for these events. However, due to the close proximity of the events, these will have a shorter lead time.

Our PG open day plans are also underway now, with Google adwords, emails to students and social media activity already taken place. And we have lots of activity happening around our campuses in the coming weeks, as the students return. It would be great to see the same success for the PG open day, as we seen for the UG open day.

UG16 prospectus

Work has also started on the UG16 prospectus. I have booked photography for the end of October, and put the production schedule together. In the coming weeks I will produce a flatplan and work with quality on the courses lists. We also have two days of agency pitches next week, where design agencies come in to pitch to us and show us their ideas for our prospectuses and campaigns. There are 10 of us sitting on the panel, and following these pitches we will collectively decide who we feel is the best agency.

Training

Myself and my colleague, Clare, also attended a print workshop this week with Belmont Press, in Northampton. It was a really informative day; we learnt about different forms of printing, paper stock and took a look around the facilities to see the machines in action.

Lot’s going on as usual.

Speak soon,

K

Is it 2014, 2015, or 2016??

Clearing

As Clare mentioned in her previous blog, everyone in MARC has been heavily focused on Clearing, trying to recruit last minute students for the 2014 cycle. Every day we’re monitoring numbers and working on additional activity to further support the original campaign plan. There’s definitely a busy buzz around the office!

Workshop banner

As part of the Clearing campaign I recently manned the Clearing stand in Luton Mall and supported the flash mob during their performance at the Mall a few weeks ago. I’m sure you’ve all seen it, but if not, take a look here. As well as that small contribution to Clearing (its minor compared to some of my colleagues), I’ve created pull-up banners for the recruitment team to use for the workshops they are running in Luton Mall as part of some additional Clearing activity. And I’m sure there will be more jobs to come as we continue through the process. It’ll all be worth it in the end!

Open days

The next round of UG and PG open days are approaching, trying to recruit for 2015 entry.  After evaluating the previous events, and taking in to consideration our new target of increasing footfall to open events by 25%, I’ve been working on the open day plans for our 24 September UG open day. So far we have implemented mostly digital activity; Google adwords and display ads, emails to enquirers and website banners. We’ve also printed postcard invites for enquirers and pushed promoted tweets, which is a new feature on Twitter, which we are experimenting with. We have more activity to do over the coming weeks with external agency activity, CRM snippets, further emails and ring rounds. This is the first time we have run a UG open day in September, and due to the Clearing campaign running alongside the open day campaign, it’s been quite difficult to get the balance of activity right. We’ve already utilised most of the activity for Clearing, ie homepage banners on the website and Google activity, so we’ve had to be even more strategic when implementing these open day plans.

Our Luton Open Day brochure

On top of implementing the plan, I’ve also been working on the open day brochures, which we send out to all registrants ahead of the event to let them know what to expect on the day. They went to print last week, and will be arriving in office on 4 September, ready for our first mail out on 8 September. Following these going to print, I will now be working on our UCMK and Aylesbury open day brochures.

Our next PG open day event is also approaching on 16 October, so I will be putting plans together for this campaign this week.

Planning ahead

As well as the above, I will be starting work on the 2016 publications from early/mid-September, so I’m already thinking about photography requirements and how we can progress the prospectus for the next academic cycle in light of the verbal branding work that we have been doing.

I’m also working on an e-zine recommendation report, so we can progress the e-zines for the next academic year. As we have now completed a full cycle (12 editions) of the e-zine, we are looking at how we can improve these, as they are an important part of our conversion activity. I have been analysing the stats on all of our e-zines to see what worked well and what didn’t work well, so we can look at improving the content to get more traction and clicks. I’ve also been looking into what other universities do in terms of newsletters/ e-zines, to see if they can inspire us to do anything differently. So far it would seem we are ahead of the sector in terms of our e-zine activity, which is a nice feeling!

And a few other bits…

I mentioned previously that I was working on updating five of the subject guides. I am still working on these; I have had two back from the designer to proofread and I'm still working on amending the other three.

I’ve also been working on August’s edition of B4Beds, which was sent on Friday 29 August, and this was the last applicant edition. This month’s addition will be aimed towards enquirers, so a big shift in content.

I also mentioned last time that I had put together a content schedule for out PG social media platforms to ensure we are posting regularly and engaging with our audience. It’s been great to see that we have seen an increase in the amount of people our posts are reaching, which is a real positive. We’ve also seen a steady increase in likes/followers. Keep a look out for our #wisewednesdays posts every week.

Well, that’s the biggies from me for now; I won’t bore you with the rest!

Speak soon,

K

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

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!