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

Team away day

This Wednesday the CRM, market research and marketing teams escaped the office for an afternoon of team bonding at our away day at Putteridge Bury campus.

It provided the perfect opportunity to step back and look at the great things we've achieved as a team over the past year, and gave us a chance to have some fun too. From quizzes to photograph missions to drawing challenges, the day had something for everyone.  I was almost entirely useless during the quiz, but a highlight was my team's creative efforts during the Christmas selfie task.

The team put some serious effort into our selfie...

It was great to get out of the office for an afternoon, and to have some festive fun with the whole team.

Amongst all the fun I've been working hard on lots of different jobs, from the 2016 undergraduate prospectus and departmental conversion newsletters, to verbal brand notes and video filming for the next virtual open event. As always, there's a lot going on and there are lots of deadlines on the horizon.

On a slightly different note, this may well be my last blog post! I'll be leaving the University and my last working day will be Christmas Eve. In the new year I'll be going to America for a couple of months to travel. I've really enjoyed working for the University and a huge bonus has been working with the really great people in the MARC department. I'll definitely keep in touch!

Have an excellent holiday and a very happy Christmas.

Clare

We’re on a roll

A sneak peek at the cover of the PG 2015 prospectus

Last time I blogged I mentioned that the UCMK prospectus had arrived hot off the press and onto the Marketing team’s desks. Well, the good news is, the PG prospectus is almost ready to go to print now too. We’re at the final stage of signing off the Epson proofs, and then it’s going to print next week, and will arrive in office mid-August. Another big project ticked off our to-do-lists. And I’ve got to admit, it’s a relief to have all that work complete. Pulling together such a big publication can be really hard work- it’s worth it when it comes to fruition though.

I also mentioned in my last blog that I was working on two new student guides; the college guide and the nursing guide. I’ve been a busy little bee over the last few weeks and these are also at the last proofing stage and will be ready early August.

My final publication task (for now) is auditing some of our subject guides, ready for September. As part of the auditing process I am looking at five of the guides, making updates and liaising with Heads of Departments to gather further updates. Once these are revised and amends are made, they will be uploaded online. Going forward we will be carrying out focus groups to look at how we can further improve these publications for the audience, and perhaps making some bigger changes for the 2015 subject guides.

What else I’ve been up to

I’ve been out of office quite a lot recently; over at our Bedford and Putteridge Bury campuses filming student graduations and helping to distribute Jubilee Scholarship fliers prior to ceremonies. Seeing graduations always takes me back to my graduation, it’s such a strange time; happy and proud to be finished, but sad to say goodbye to people you have known for three or more years. It’s great seeing all of the graduates and their families around campus looking so happy and proud! Keep an eye out for our graduation photos and videos on our Facebook and Twitter pages!

I’ve also been finishing the undergraduate open day evaluation report (PG one to start next week), putting a content schedule together for the marketing team for our PG Facebook and Twitter pages and working on the July edition of B4Beds; filming and editing videos.

My development

I have recently been looking into my development and have booked myself and my colleague, Clare, onto a print workshop in Northampton in September. A little way away yet, but I’m hoping having more of an understanding of print and paper, and how certain paper stock effects the final look of a printed product will help me going forward in making recommendations to future publications that will not only further enhance the look of our publications, but also be more cost effective to print. 

A new member of the team…

Welcome to Sophia

And finally, welcome to Sophia Meola, our Business student blogger who has recently joined the MARC team for a couple of months in the Marketing Administrator role. She graduated from Bedfordshire last week after studying Business Management (BIG congratulations!) and she has a keen interest in marketing. We’re all excited to have her on board!

Speak to you all soon

K

Team outings

Photo-booth fun

Last Friday we all spent the afternoon at the staff summer party, celebrating our hard work over the last six months, eating ice cream and generally having a good time (see embarrassing brilliant photo-booth picture for evidence). 

Putteridge Bury not only played host to the Brazil-themed summer party, but was the location for another team outing this week too; the marketing team got together to discuss the implementation of the verbal brand research that has been taking place over the last months.

Though the implementation of the verbal brand is quite a daunting task, there was a lot of good discussion about how best to use all the research that has been undertaken to our advantage. 

Our location: Putteridge Bury

During a creative session at the end of the day, we broke down the wording of the verbal brand and discussed how it could be used to communicate with some of our extensive audiences. We also discussed it on a subject by subject basis and, while we only really scratched the surface of what we can do, it quickly became clear that the verbal brand will be useful on every level of the organisation and in every task we undertake.

We plan to have further creative sessions where we will go into even more detail about how the verbal brand will be implemented in the marketing materials we are producing. I already feel positive about the impact it will have on our ability to communicate effectively with our audiences but I think, as time goes on and we understand it in ever more detail, the task ahead will feel a lot less enormous!

As well as being out of the office, I’ve been working hard on my sections of the 2015 PG prospectus; the deadline is getting ever closer and I still have some work to do, so I’d better stop blogging and get to it..!

Clare

It's all new

Hi all. I’m Kylie - another marketing ‘newbie’ having recently joined the University of Bedfordshire as Marketing Officer. As well as being new to the MARC department here and the University itself, I am also new to Luton and the South East in general.

I’m originally from the North East but have been living in the South East (Suffolk) for 19 months and very recently moved to Hertfordshire when I took up my position at the University. So, I've had lots of new things to get used to; new people, new surroundings and new ways of working.

My first three weeks...
I've been working in the MARC department for almost three weeks now, so I'm just starting to find my feet following lots of meetings and reading up on strategies and marketing plans- all really useful stuff! I've really enjoyed my three weeks here- I had a lovely introduction to the marketing team and related departments as well as a yummy welcome lunch on my first day (any excuse to eat pizza). The team are great and I’m really looking forward to working with them as I get stuck in to the workload.

As I approach my fourth week there is a lot going on with work starting on the UCMK prospectus (my first big project as part of the team) as well as open days, campaigns and the new CRM system launching. Lots to keep me busy! 

I’m also slowly working my way around the different campuses- I had my official University induction at Putteridge Bury on Tuesday (what an impressive building!) and I’m visiting our UCMK campus on Monday with my colleague Michelle, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the newest addition to UoB has to offer!

Look forward to updating you all again soon! K

Panels, planning and Postgraduate Awards - all in a weeks work

By Sarah Hampton - Marketing Manager

Well firstly I do apologise for the late blog posting - it's been very busy within the Marketing team lately and since our last posting there's been lots going on that we can share with you. So do bear with me whilst I rattle through and bring you up to speed...

After all of our efforts over the past few months, our Clearing campaign for this year has finally come to a close. Freshers' Week is now just a stones throw away and so we're excited to see our campus get filled up with this years' new cohort of students as we start to see them settle in to their new surroundings and breathe new life into our campuses, after the last few months of summer seeming like a ghost town. But, as one job finishes another begins, and so it will be no surprise to hear that we're already straight into our 2014 marketing campaigns.

Failing to plan is
planning to fail!

I've been busying myself with meeting colleagues from our Digital Marketing, Telemarketing, Market Research, and Recruitment teams to discuss our plans and activity for the next academic year, as well as changes we'd like to make, and looking at ways that we can, as a team, implement some new and exciting ideas (more on these in future posts). It's all in the early stages at the moment and still quite hush hush, so I'll be able to share more with you as ideas progress.

Getting ahead of the game
with our Sports webpage

Some information that I can share with you is the success of our recent Postgraduate Sport campaign which ran between June and September. Working with our Sport departments based at our Bedford campus, we devised a marketing plan which involved trialling some promoted tweets for the very first time, direct marketing, as well as course features on Prospects and Masters Compare.

I hope to have the report on this activity finalised shortly, but some interim highlights include a 42% uplift to our PGT Sport applicants (post campaign), and a 65% uplift in applications compared with the previous year. A job well done if we do say so ourselves!

Role reversal with many candidates
posing some interesting questions to
the panel 

I'm always quite amazed at how much we're able to plough through, considering the amount of time I've actually spent at my desk in the last week or two. For the last week in particular I feel as though I could give the X Factor a run for their money as I don my interview attire and sit on panel after panel to meet new candidates as we interview for some vacancies within the wider MARC team. First up was a two-day stint to support the Recruitment team in their search for a new Recruitment Assistant. Candidates delivered excellent and insightful presentations into our many Postgraduate audiences and how we can better target them. With Postgraduate marketing being quite close to my heart I really enjoyed hearing what everyone had to say and what challenges they felt we faced. Over the last two days I've been on another panel, this time we've been recruiting to a role within my own team - Marketing Assistant. I found it fascinating to hear what questions we were asked at the end of the interviews, which definitely kept us all on our toes. From: "Why do we work here and what do you enjoy about your job", to "How will you manage my performance and development" to some out there questions such as "Tell us about the strategy for the next year".

Roll on Monday! It's prospectus
pitches time

Coming up next week are the 2015 prospectus pitches which we've been waiting for, for a long time (don't believe me? Scroll back through the blog posts to recall our excitement!). Well the time has finally arrived, so we'll be heading on over to our Putteridge Bury campus next week to form yet another panel, and meet with a number of agencies. I always enjoy seeing how our 2015 publications begin to take shape. Read more about this in next weeks post! We'll give you all the exclusive details right here.

The Postgraduate Awards will be the first event in the UK to celebrate and showcase marketing excellence in postgraduate recruitment.
— postgradawards (@postgradawards) April 2, 2013

Although we've been incredibly busy I've still managed to squeeze in some time to submit another awards entry; this time for Prospects' very first Postgraduate Awards. We've entered for Best Postgraduate Prospectus, alongside some entries from the Digital team, so keep everything crossed for us, and we'll keep you posted on whether we're lucky enough to have another awards dinner on the cards. After the hectic week that we've had I definitely think we deserve a treat or two!

Playing by the rules and the pike syndrome

A guest blog post from the freelancer!

Well, they’re keeping me busy here, working on, among other things, forthcoming Open Days, UCMK and PG Life, our monthly newsletter for those interested in postgrad education.
I’ve even recorded and edited (with a lot of help from Lauren!) my first YouTube video – an interview about our PG tourism courses.
As someone with a background in B2B marketing and sales it’s great to be talking to a different public in the form of potential, current and former University of Bedfordshire students. Whilst the audience is different the principles of communicating useful information to make informed purchase decisions are the same. 
Or so I thought … until… the traditional view of Marketing was called into question in a very entertaining way at a Knowledge Network event that Sarah, Rehanna and I went to at Putteridge Bury.

Business guru Grant Leboff, of Sticky Marketing fame, started off telling us about the ‘pike syndrome’ (go on - look it up on YouTube!) and used this analogy to educate us in the 3 (new) rules of marketing in the wake of the communications revolution and how we are all hyperconnected these days. (Except those of us who don’t have a smartphone yet but apparently I’m in a very small minority!!)
In a nutshell (because he talked for well over an hour, punctuated with examples ranging from the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign to Tesco weekly money-off vouchers and how Ford gave away Fiesta cars to prominent social media barons):

Rule 1. Marketing is no longer a means to an end-it’s an end in itself-no-one has a USP any more so Marketing must give value to the customer

Rule 2.  Marketing is no longer about products and services but about people, with information disseminated through virtual conversations ie  ‘online word of mouth’ such as Likes on Facebook or recommendations on shopping sites like Amazon

Rule 3. Marketing is no longer about getting customers (at least not directly) but about building communities and engaging with your public at different levels.

Perhaps I’ve added a bit of value with this blog post-especially to any marketers out there- by spreading the word about this ‘Marketing revolution’.

What do you think about how we communicate with you –can we give you ‘added value’?

In fact, is anyone out there reading this?!!

Actually that makes me reflect on that old philosophical chestnut –if a tree falls in a forest but nobody hears it did it actually make a sound? If I write something online, but no-one reads it, did it exist or has it disappeared in the ether?

Whoa!!... this is getting way too serious-I should be blogging about the latest piece of vintage jewellery I bought off eBay to add to my stunning collection-or whether to up the weights I’ll press in the gym tonight.  Or whether my beloved St Helens will get through to the Super League Grand Final…now, in view of this season’s poor form (they're playing like that pike), that would take some new rules!

Celebrations, campaigns and clearing

By Sarah Hampton - Marketing Manager

Our blog posts are coming in thick and fast, and we’re very excited to be sharing an insight into all of our work and the many projects that we’re working on at the moment.

Postgraduate 2014 Prospectus

This week has seen the culmination of five months’ hard work come to an end, as we approve the 2014 Postgraduate Prospectus for print. Working on our prospectuses forms a key part of the work we do here in the Marketing team, and so we were very pleased to get another one under our belt this week. At the time of writing this blog post our latest prospectus has made its way over to Mansfield (where our external printer is based) and is currently on press. Here’s a sneak peek (left) at the cover. You can also flick through it online – we hope you will all like it as much as we do!

Just as one project comes to an end, another one begins. And the fact that we are already preparing for our next Undergraduate Prospectus, for 2015 entry, is an incredibly scary thought. More on this in future posts, as we approach the Prospectus tender stage and the creative pitches – my favourite time of the year!

For any of you who happened to be at our graduation ceremonies last week, I’m sure you will have seen a member of the Marketing team roaming around, armed with a video camera and microphone as we join in on the festivities of the day. Scott and Lauren ventured out to interview some of our graduates at both our Luton and Putteridge Bury campuses last week, and spoke to some of our graduates about their time at Bedfordshire. They were also on a mission to capture the fantastic buzzy atmosphere that comes with celebrating our students’ success. You’ll be able to see the video interviews in the next issue of our award-winning monthly e-zine, Postgraduate Life. If you’re not already subscribed to receive it then fear not, as you can sign up here.

Congratulations to all graduates from the University of Bedfordshire who are celebrating their success today! @uniofbeds
— Iliyan Nanchev (@IliyanNanchev) July 23, 2013

August is by far one of our busiest months for us as we prepare for Clearing. The team has been hard at work for the last few months; working with creative agencies to develop our campaign visuals; our key messages; arranging photo shoots; and devising and costing out the activities that will form our marketing campaign for this years’ Clearing period. Since some of our visuals have now gone live, we can exclusively share some highlights with you. We currently have some outdoor media up and running including bus advertising, both in the local area and in London. Keep looking out for other aspects of our campaign over the coming weeks, and be sure to let us know what you think.

Clearing Campaign 2013 (bus rear)

Watch this space for more Clearing updates as our campaign gets rolled out.