Best of CASE Europe Region Award
 

Institution: University of East London

Title of entry: Things Change - postgraduate student recruitment campaign

About this entry: In 2021/22 we made significant progress on increasing applications to our courses that had traditionally struggled to recruit within the UK market, without placing a lot of emphasis on our PG campaign. We therefore saw an opportunity in 2022/23 to create a strategy that would capitalise on that growth and increase applications for the January intake, while giving niche courses a boost.

Like many universities, our postgraduate campaign had traditionally been overlooked, with much of our marketing resource focused on the core
undergraduate home market. To meet our recruitment goals, we decided to spend time developing an innovative campaign concept for postgraduate that would stand out and resonate with our brand. Our successful UG campaign - #BeTheChange - was a great foundation for us to build upon for PG so we wanted a campaign that would:
- Connect courses to bigger issues in the sector and the wider world.
- Draw on the theme of ‘change’ to inspire students.

While our undergraduate campaign invites students to ‘Be The Change’ as they pursue their future career, this campaign shifts the focus to changes in technology, business and society at large, in a way that will speak to the passion that prospective Postgraduate students have for their subject.

The campaign was hugely successful, building on a 20 per cent increase in 2021, to add a further increase in applications for 2022, with a huge rise in those from outside London.