Keeping in touch with our applicants and offer holders

12 May 2020

How we’re sending clear, supportive and timely messages to students facing the most uncertain start to the academic year in recent times

Like other teams across the University, it’s been key that since the lockdown began, the Student Communications and Marketing Team have communicated with our applicants and offer holders in a clear, supportive and timely way. We’ve done this through a variety of channels:

My Manchester e-newsletters

Over this time we have created extra editions of the usual My Manchester e-newsletter, to provide up-to-date information about the University’s response to COVID-19. We have created two extra editions to cover this, and our usual city edition in April was tailored so that it’s appropriate for the current situation. You can view all these editions on our intranet. We have worked carefully on our copy and content to strike the balance between being informative and clear, but also reassuring and approachable. We have teamed up with the Campus Life division to include wellbeing messages we hope will be useful for our audience.

Video

As mentioned above, it’s been really important to support offer holders, as well as tell them need-to-know information. To do this we have worked closely with Campus Life to create video content that provides useful wellbeing advice and a reassuring voice. You can find the first video here, and the second is due out in the coming days.

Social media

Together with the Social Media Team, we have pushed out messages to our applicants and offer holders with reassuring messages.

Enhanced web content

One of our bigger projects to cater for the digital needs of our audience is the Development of Recruitment and Conversion Content group (DORCC), who are working collaboratively to enhance our web presence for both applicants and offer holders. Offer holders are the first priority to secure 2020 figures, and applicants are being catered for via a virtual open week along with other content.

If you have any questions around this project, please either contact your Faculty Marketing Team or the Student Communications and Marketing Team. Updates will be provided via internal communications channels. 

Next steps

Along with colleagues in teams including the Division of Communications and Marketing and the Faculties, we are now in the stages of planning further communications, building upon our usual schedule of conversion communications to reassure our offer holders and ensure that Manchester is at the forefront of their minds.

Over the coming weeks all this work will be subsumed into a wider conversion strategy and campaign that we will share when we have more information. If you have any questions, please contact the team.