In an earlier blog post, Neil mentioned something called
the ‘University of You’ campaign. Conscious that much of our work isn’t seen
by the wider University community, I think that it’s important to explain some
of the concept and campaign planning that goes into recruiting new students. In
doing this, you’ll get a better feel for what we do, why we do it, and
how we plan and integrate our activities.
So, what on earth is the ‘University of You’ campaign?
Well, every year we face increasing competition to generate applications for our undergraduate courses and every year it becomes more important to work smartly while really trying to stand out from the crowd. Factor in the changing HE landscape for 2012 entry and we figured it was more important than ever to speak to our prospective students through the channels that they use while addressing their concerns.
Well, every year we face increasing competition to generate applications for our undergraduate courses and every year it becomes more important to work smartly while really trying to stand out from the crowd. Factor in the changing HE landscape for 2012 entry and we figured it was more important than ever to speak to our prospective students through the channels that they use while addressing their concerns.
So, the ‘University of You’ campaign is our 2012
undergraduate recruitment campaign. It’s the plan we put together to generate
the 20,000 applications that we are now working with to secure our 2012
intake. The campaign is based on the simple premise that by working directly with our prospective students to build meaningful relationships, we stand a far
better chance of generating a high number of applications from a well informed
and engaged group of individuals.
Planning
Planning campaigns is always fun. Over a number of
sessions we get the team together to thrash out ideas and concepts. We work and
rework ideas, change artwork and strategy and end up… sticking lots of brightly
coloured post-it notes to our walls:
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My
office wall – where the magic happens
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For 2012 entry, our core messages were created to speak
directly to our prospective students and to address the issues pertinent to
them while at the same time attempting to differentiate the University of
Chester from other universities.
There were numerous messages that we needed to get across
in this campaign:
- The benefits of a university experience
- Value for money
- Employability and careers
- Uniqueness – augment your studies with a range
of experiences to make yourself unique
- Specific combinations
- Risk reduction – why choosing Chester is not a
risky option
- Stories – the real-life of the University
However, there had to be a key overarching theme to hook our
prospects. And this is what we went for: Personalisation.
By placing the
student at the heart of everything we do and offering an amazing mix of
additional opportunities, our graduates can really stand out in the fierce
graduate job market of the future. And that, in a nutshell, is the core message
of the campaign: Choosing the University of Chester gives you so much freedom and support to develop as an individual that it really is the University of You.
Execution
So, satisfied with our concept and our core messages, we set
out to create an engaging and fresh multimedia campaign that would generate
interest in the University and encourage prospective students to interact with
us.
As I’ve said, we love a bit of direct marketing here in
MRA and what better way to get the ball rolling than with a piece of targeted
direct mail? Armed with a database of hot leads (segmented by the course
individuals were interested in applying for) we hit the doormats of around
55,000 prospects in the first weeks of September 2011 at exactly the time they
would be thinking about getting their UCAS forms for 2012 entry completed. Why
direct mail? Well, firstly it’s harder to ignore than an email, a text message
or a printed advert and, secondly, because of who else would see it. We wanted
parents to engage with the campaign too and learn about the benefits of their
offspring applying to Chester.
As Neil has mentioned before on the blog, we don’t
communicate with prospects without a call to action.
And the call to action here was clear. We had created a beautiful stand-alone
website filled with the core messages of the campaign and we wanted to drive
traffic to it.
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Phase
one. Getting the message out there
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The University of You phase one campaign website was a
genuinely engaging and user friendly experience. Quirkily designed to help
differentiate us from the competition, the site navigated left to right across
the user’s screen rather than up and down like a traditional website. It was filled
with snappy content and bespoke video and generated excellent feedback from
users. Most importantly, it really started to hammer home our key messages and its
own call to action – to order a prospectus or to book for an Open Day.
The site was ably supported online by bespoke University of You Facebook and twitter
content and its success was shown by massive October Open Days and an unprecedented level of interaction with prospective students.
But where are we up to now? Well, the campaign isn’t over
and now we have moved into a second, ‘conversion’ phase. We all know that
generating a high number of applications is important but converting these
expressions of interest into students is the key and phase two, the applicant zone, launched
in February of this year to coincide with the end of the on-time application
cycle and keep our applicants engaged with the 'University of You' message.
Results
Has it worked? Yes, the evidence would suggest that the
campaign has been successful. Of course, we won’t know the final outcome of
2012 recruitment until later on in the year but what we do know is that the
level of engagement we have had with our applicants this year has been better
than ever (more on this to follow from Adam) and that the messages we worked so
hard to create and communicate are really getting across.
What’s perhaps most important is where the campaign has
taken our thinking as a department. The look and feel of the campaign now
informs much of what we do and this adds great strength to how we are perceived and understood in the marketplace.
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The message goes on…
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The campaign has really refreshed our thinking and
brought renewed clarity to the way we communicate with prospective students.
And what’s most important is that the messages are rooted in truth. We really
do have a unique offering here at the University. There really is enough to
offer our students to augment their course so that they can stand out as unique
graduates in a crowded marketplace. It’s something we should all be very proud
of.
Until next time…
Cheers,
Ric.
