Overview

The Portfolio Marketing team leads on the University's subject-specific marketing activity, promoting the benefits of Lancaster’s courses and programmes to prospective students and their influencers. We work closely with academic departments, the Campaigns and Brand teams, and professional services colleagues more widely across the University.

We work across all study levels, including undergraduate, postgraduate taught, postgraduate research, and short/professional courses, although the size and shape of the University portfolio mean much of our work tends to be focused on taught programmes. Our projects align with all stages of the student recruitment journey, from first enquiry and application attraction to offer holder conversion and communication with accepted students.

Our work typically encompasses:

• producing core subject- and course-level marketing collateral, including entries in prospectuses, course webpages, subject brochures and flyers, videography and photography;
• delivering subject-level campaigns which seek to attract students to Lancaster (for example, digital advertising) and to promote offer holder acceptance (for example, email and direct mail campaigns);
• go-to-market planning, including collaborating with academic colleagues to identify and define what makes our courses and programmes unique and special, and to plan campaigns to help them meet their intake target;
• harnessing the advocacy of students and academic staff through the collection of testimonials, blogs and vlogs, and the training of student ambassadors to create impactful digital content for departmental social media;
• advising colleagues on marketing and communications compliance issues, particularly consumer protection, advertising standards and data protection.

Faculty Marketing Managers

Each faculty has a dedicated Faculty Marketing Team who have in-depth knowledge of the subjects within their portfolio. Working within the faculty and the central Marketing Office ensures that campaigns and messaging align across the University's marketing activity.

We seek to share best practices, common frameworks and standard procedures across the whole Portfolio Marketing team and draw on both primary and secondary data sources to develop a data-informed approach to our planning.

Product development team

Embedded within the Portfolio Marketing team and working across all faculties is a product development team led by the Product Development Manager. Their role supports tactical planning to ensure the University’s portfolio is optimised to recruit future students. This work typically includes:

• ensuring portfolio development is market informed through the review of market insight and by undertaking competitor analysis;
• considering how fees and scholarships best attract and convert prospective students;
• leading for External Relations on inputting to new product development, for example reviewing market positioning and how the University best articulates its portfolio.

The Product Development Manager works closely with colleagues from across the University, with data analysis and evaluation responsibilities, including those from the Campaigns team, Admissions Office, and Planning and Analytics.

Associate Deans for Education

The Portfolio Marketing team is led by the Head of Portfolio Marketing, who meets regularly with each Faculty’s Associate Dean for Education (ADE). ADEs advise on their faculty’s recruitment priorities and share responsibility with the Marketing Office for approval of the annual faculty marketing plan and the regular review of associated key performance indicators.