The Marketing Memo

The Marketing Memo... keeping colleagues informed and connected to the work driving student recruitment forward. September edition.

MRA colleages looking at the website homepage on a large screen

The Marketing Memo is your quick, monthly snapshot of what the Marketing team’s been up to, from key campaign updates and best practice tips to what matters most this application cycle. All the essentials, one page, no fluff.

Top Highlights

With 17.8M+ impressions & 130K clicks to date, our ‘Don’t Settle, Strive’ Clearing campaign is achieving exceptional impact and looks set to surpass last year's total and go beyond KPI.

Clearing Visit Days have welcomed 117 offer holders so far and the final events are taking place w/c 1st Sept – thanks to all involved in giving our visitors a personalised and welcoming experience!

Our Clearing Video has received great feedback and has reached 2.1K people via YouTube, 63% of which were new visitors to our channel.

social media app icons on a smartphone screen

What's New?

  • AI investment: The Creative team are developing new ways of working to support the rapid changes in AI. This includes a recent investment in AI monitoring tools, developing a new AI and LLM Optimisation strategy and improving content structure to increase our visibility in AI results on platforms such as ChatGPT, Perlexity, and Gemini.
  • Targeting strategy: We’re excited to be working closely with the Planning Team, who are producing some excellent data and dashboards to help inform how we target our advertising spend and collateral.
  • CourseLoop guidance: Significant work has taken place over the last few months to develop CourseLoop guidance for 2026 recruitment onwards, with a focus on how CourseLoop info will be used for marketing courses. Information will be shared soon, along with ways that MRA are available to support course teams, so watch this space. 
  • New advertising tactics in our undergraduate pre-application campaign include TikTok Search ads and Reddit image and video link ads. 
Students sitting in rows of a lecture theatre. Focus on one female, smiling and looking ahead

Campaign in Focus

Keeping the Momentum Going for 2025

Results Day may be behind us, but we’re still full steam ahead with Clearing! We're working hard to attract those late leads and help offer holders take that final step. At the same time, we’re gearing up for a targeted advertising campaign to reach students at other universities who might be thinking about making a change and transferring in this autumn or winter. And of course, we’re keeping our 2025 starters warm and engaged, making sure they stay excited about joining us this autumn. Lots still happening — and plenty more to come!

What's Coming Up

Open Day season is here, and so are our 2026 prospects! With the 2026 application cycle now officially open, it’s time to bring your A-game to our next cycle of Open Days. Get prepped, get creative and let’s make this next cohort fall in love with what we do best. Here are the key dates for your diary.

  • Wednesday 3rd September - Graduate Entry Medicine Open Day
  • Wednesday 15th October - Graduate Entry Medicine deadline
  • Saturday 18th October - Open Day
  • Saturday 15th November - Open Day
  • Saturday 6th December - Open Day
copilot

Tips, Tools and Trends

You may have seen or already started using Microsoft Copilot in your day-to-day work. If not, here are some ways it could help you work smarter and faster. 

  • Writing and Editing: Draft emails, reports, presentations, and social media posts with ease. Copilot can also proofread and improve tone or clarity.
  • Research and Insights: Quickly gather information, summarise articles, and analyse trends to support decision-making.
  • Data Support: Automate data analysis, generate charts, and interpret spreadsheets to save time and reduce errors (remember to avoid uploading any personally identifiable information into any AI tools).
  • Task Management: Create to-do lists, meeting agendas, and follow-up notes to stay organised and efficient.
  • Creative Help: Brainstorm ideas for campaigns, content, or design projects with fresh perspectives.
  • Technical Assistance: Get help with coding, troubleshooting, and understanding complex tools or platforms.

If you are repeating the same task, you can save prompts to ensure you get quality results each time. Once you have a prompt that really works for you, you can hover over it and click the bookmark icon. This way, you can revisit your saved prompt gallery and take it from there! 

Man holding a phone using a gimbal filming content

Team Shout-Out

There’s loads of brilliant work happening across the Marketing team, so we're keen to celebrate some standout contributions and help you get to know who’s who and who’s doing what. It’s all very much a team effort, and while we’ll be spotlighting different people each month, we also want to acknowledge the many valuable contributions happening behind the scenes.

This month, we'd like to say a huge thank you and well done to our Video Production team. Their tireless work over the Clearing period has been brilliant, producing high-quality videos that really sell the University. Take a look at the 'Don't Settle, Strive' campaign video they created for Clearing 2025 as a great example of their brilliant work. Thank you, Jack, Alex, Lee and Chris!

Let's Talk Marketing

Seen our work but not sure who we are? Let’s fix that. If you’ve got questions, ideas, or just fancy a quick chat, we’re all ears.

Adam Bodger

Deputy Director with responsibility for marketing and student recruitment.
Adam Bodger

Anna McLachlan

Marketing Manager with responsibility for campaign and events planning.
Anna McLachlan

Hannah Lea

Creative Manager with responsibility for all our creative outputs, including the website, content and design.
Hannah Lea

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The Marketing Memo is a student recruitment-focused update produced by the Marketing section within the wider Marketing, Recruitment and Admissions department.