Reflecting on the past and looking to the future

Next month I will be celebrating my third anniversary of working within the Marketing department at the University of Bedfordshire. Although at times it doesn’t feel like I’ve been here that long, upon reflection it’s been a busy three years! In that time there’s been a desk move, a few changes to the team, and a change in my job title, and that’s just me getting started! I’ve also worked on five prospectuses, written countless e-zines, and interviewed several of our students and staff for video content and case studies. The team have also won various awards from Heist and CIPR (shameless plug - sorry!).

Whenever people ask me what I love about my job I always answer with the diversity of the role. The great thing about working in a Marketing role is that no two days are ever the same – some days I’m writing copy for our marketing materials, other days I’m briefing our designers on our artwork. You may also find me roaming around campus taking photos and video footage, or even helping the Recruitment team at our Open Days and other recruitment events. There are of course tasks that are more regular, such as promoting our Open Days, or writing content for our monthly e-zines, but other tasks, such as organising photo-shoots, or having the opportunity to sit on tender briefings may only take place once a year. 

The other great thing about my role is that, due to the nature of the marketing industry and the higher education sector, my role is ever changing. Because of this I’m always learning , whether this be through

attending higher education forums, or through in-house training. When I started this role I had limited experience with Photoshop, and though I’m far from an expert, I’ve developed my knowledge throughout my time here. Over the next few months I will be furthering my knowledge of the Adobe package by learning how to properly use InDesign, which will help me when I’m creating various promotional materials within my role. I’m excited to develop my skills in this area and will hopefully be able to share some of my work with you soon!

Sara

A varied few weeks

Over the last week or so I’ve been away from my desk more than usual; helping with photoshoots and filming, and attending media presentations. The last few weeks and been super busy and really varied, from the more creative aspects (photoshoots) to the less creative (proofreading publications). But that’s what I enjoy about marketing, it can be so varied and it keeps you on your toes!

As Sara mentioned last week, we’ve had three days of photoshoots for our clearing and annual campaign. They were hectic but exciting, and we’ve just received the images from the photographer. We’ve been looking through all of the images and choosing the best ones to take forward for our campaign, taking into consideration the different platforms they will be used for. It’s now over to the photographer to work more of his magic and edit the selected pictures. We’re hoping to get these next week so our designers can start working on the visuals and we can start working on the microsite.  

I’ve also been filming student videos for a forthcoming e-zine edition – and as the weather has been so nice, I even took the opportunity to do the filming outside which was great! So I’ll be editing these over the coming weeks as a start to put my e-zines together.

There are also a few publications I’m currently working on:

1. The PG 2017 prospectus – this is at first proof stage, so I’ve been proofing my allocated sections; five sections down, one to go…  

2. The UCAS visitor guide – we’re hosting a UCAS Exhibition in June at our Bedford campus for the third year running and I’m working on the main guide. This is at final proof stage and I’m expecting to send it to print on Tuesday

3. Welcome 2017 guide – each year we produce a welcome guide that we send out to all of our applicants following results day. This gives an overview ahead of students starting with us – how to register as a Beds student online, social events taking place in the first week, finance, student support, campus maps and lots more! I briefed this in to the designer yesterday and first proofs are due wc 16 May

Our UCAS Exhibition guide

We’re also looking ahead to the 2017 cycle – I sent the first enquirer edition of our B4Beds e-zine last month, and we’ve got some email communications going out over the next month or so. This is the part of the year when it can often get confusing as we’re working on the 2016 cycle and the 2017 cycle at the same time. All in a day’s work! 

Speak soon,

K

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

If only I had Carol Vorderman’s maths skills

My head hurts...

You guessed it from the title; I’m still working on my backlog of open day evaluations. I’m over half way through the full enquirers open day report, which covers the June, October, November and December open days. If only I was born with the maths skills of Carol Vorderman, my head would probably be hurting less. We get some great insight from the evaluations though, so it’s of course worth it to enable us move our plans forward and improve with every open day campaign.

What’s scary is that we’re smack bang in the middle of our second round of open days; February, March and April. So whilst evaluating previous open day campaigns, I’m implementing others.

The start of our February open day

The UG February open day was successful with 327 students on campus at Luton and 133 at Bedford. And when you include the parents and friends who accompany the students, that’s a whole lotta people on campus!

I’m in to the second week of the March open day plans now; Google and digital media activity is up and running, emails and postcards are being worked on and social media posts up.
The numbers for the March open day are looking healthy too!

I’m also planning for the May postgraduate open day, with some initial activity taking place ahead of the campaign starting and research and brainstorming of some new initiatives and actions which will hopefully increase the success of our campaign once it’s up and running.

So besides open day activity, I'm forward planning the editorial lists for our advice communications and monthly e-zines to applicants so we can start to plan in videos and content we may need to source before each edition.

And lastly I’m gearing up to start work on the next round of publications; the UCAS convention brochure and other collateral that we feel we may need, the 2016 UCMK prospectus, the 2016 PG prospectus, and the new student guide for September 2015, which will all be starting imminently.

Hopefully next time I blog I’ve got another two evaluations complete (it good to set targets!)

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

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.

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