University of Portsmouth Graduate Outcomes case study

A multi-channel marketing approach

Situation

Our approach aimed to raise awareness of Graduate Outcomes throughout the student life cycle, but with a particular emphasis on engaging third years and recent graduates. To achieve this, we followed much of the advice offered by HESA in terms of raising the profile of the survey and the brand by following their guidelines on promotion and utilising their suggested contact plan.

We implemented a multi-channel marketing strategy designed to interact with students and graduates at various touchpoints. We used a mix of digital and traditional communication channels which included telephone calling, social media messages, email marketing, roller banners and lecture announcements.

Key challenges
A key challenge in building brand awareness and encouraging survey participation was ensuring that information about the survey reached students and graduates through trusted sources to help legitimise the survey and boost engagement. To help address this, we felt that academic shout-outs during the third year, and an internal caller campaign led by students in the first year after graduation were both powerful initiatives.

Timing was another challenging aspect of our approach, requiring careful planning of our communication efforts to ensure that key information was delivered at opportune moments when students and graduates were more likely to be receptive. This included tailored messages to the various graduate cohorts throughout the year ensuring relevance to their particular stage, yet also being mindful of executing promotional activities at acceptable times. For example, recognising that graduation ceremonies are times of celebration we adopted a subtle approach when promoting Graduate Outcomes, which included incorporating a slide into the pre-ceremony slide deck. Additionally, we invested in a rollout banner that is situated in our careers service centre to act as a reminder to both staff and students about the Graduate Outcomes survey, but will also be positioned at the graduation venue to provide a light-touch visual representation of the survey.

Audience considerations
We wanted to avoid overwhelming students too early on with detailed information about Graduate Outcomes as we know from previous experience that this can be off-putting and increase risk of disconnection. Therefore, our strategy focused on concentrating efforts amongst final year students to build brand awareness, and continuing at key points between graduation and the survey start date. After which, we utilised in-cohort social media messaging during the survey and leading up to those last minute ‘call to action’ survey deadline messages to encourage final completions.

Our approach

Each year we plan our Graduate Outcomes promotional campaign by scheduling the survey periods for the different cohorts into our calendars, ensuring timely 12-month and 2-week reminder emails, lecture shout-outs and social media messaging. This schedule is communicated to various university teams including Careers and Employability Communications, Marketing, Alumni and Graduation, who all support our efforts.

We employ a multi-channel approach through a mix of person-to-person interactions, social media and email campaigns comprising a variety of modes such as telephone calls, physical marketing tools such as advertisements and branded email footers, targeted emails and social media posts to help effectively reach our target audience and increase coverage and engagement.

Third year focus - lecture shout outs
We collaborated with trusted academics to mention Graduate Outcomes during lectures. They were provided with resources such as key points and slides (from the HESA website) to ensure consistent messaging whilst highlighting the importance of the Graduate Outcomes survey.

Graduation ceremonies 
We display information on screens (the 'one-pager') and strategically place roller banners at the venue to raise brand awareness and visibility.

Internal caller campaign (6-12 months post graduation)
Our campaign is designed to support graduates by providing access to our careers service. However, it also provides the opportunity to collect accurate, up-to-date contact details and verbally signpost the upcoming Graduate Outcomes survey, highlighting its importance and benefits of active participation.

Email campaign
We send out a 12-month post-course completion email notifying graduates that the survey is on its way. Additionally, we send another email as a 2-week pre-survey warm up reminder, prompting graduates to keep an eye out for their survey invitation and encouraging them to complete it.

View University of Portsmouth's email

Social media campaign 
In addition to targeted Graduate Outcomes information, we run a rolling campaign of indirect promotion through our university and alumni social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, accompanied by ‘call to actions’ once the survey for a particular cohort is live or if the deadline is approaching.

The images used above are the suite of 'hero' social assets which are supplied in four sizes and 10 colourways / messages.

Updated webpage
We ensured our webpage reflected the new branding and repositioned it to a more prominent place on the website to make it easier for our students and graduates to see.

View University of Portsmouth's Graduate Outcomes webpage

Were there any resource/cost implications?
Cost is always a consideration, especially given these financially challenging times faced by many universities. However, many of our approaches utilised existing resources to minimise expenses. For example, we used our social media platforms, updated our website and incorporated information into slide decks displayed on screen at graduation ceremonies to maximise visibility at no additional cost. Additionally, we repurposed an existing roller banner by reskinning it, allowing us to avoid the full cost of purchasing a new one.

Our calling campaign is the most costly part of the campaign, but it serves multiple objectives beyond solely promoting the Graduate Outcomes survey, making it a valuable investment and a very useful method to verbally signpost the survey to Cohort D graduates.

The marketing resources provided by HESA were invaluable in supporting our campaign. We found the suggested graduate contact timeline crucial as it helped us to plan our communications effectively. This was supported by the collection of short videos, social media graphics, suggested email templates and presentation materials. These resources made it exponentially easier to navigate and simplified the process for ourselves and the teams across the university we collaborate with when promoting the survey.

If you have not already explored these resources, we highly recommend taking the time to do so as the suite of professional-quality materials can greatly enhance your campaign.

The message

During our promotional activities we identified that emphasising the impact that survey participation could have on future students’ careers and how it could potentially make a meaningful difference to people, were important messages to convey. This purposefully tied in with the findings reported in the AGCAS webinar ‘Promoting the Graduate Outcomes Brand’ which cited that ‘helping future students is the most compelling driver’ for past graduates when completing the survey. Therefore, we ensured these messages were front and centre in our communications.

We also recognised that students and graduates lead busy lives, so we adapted our messaging to be concise and direct. By keeping our emails and telephone calls short and to the point, we acknowledged their time constraints and increased the effectiveness of our communications. Throughout the promotional campaign we also always provided opportunities for final year students or graduates to update their contact details, acknowledging that accurate contact information is essential for the survey’s success.

What were the results?

We used a variety of metrics to evaluate our different communication channels.

Our caller campaign, linked to the Graduate Outcomes survey, showed that graduates who engaged with the campaign had a 13.5% higher response rate compared to non-responders in 2020/2021, and a 25.7% higher response rate in 2019/20. This highlights the effectiveness of the caller campaign and shows that promoting the Graduate Outcomes survey and explaining the benefits, increases the likelihood of survey completion.

So far this year, our caller campaign has reached 68% of our full-time, first-degree, UK domiciled graduates from 2023, which means that nearly 2,500 graduates have been informed about Graduate Outcomes.

To evaluate our social media campaigns we used impressions and engagement rate statistics. For example, Facebook had over 1,000 impressions and Linkedin had over 500 impressions in some of our latest Graduate Outcomes promotional messages. Further statistics include:

• Facebook: 1,126 impressions / 7 engagements - 0.62% engagement rate
• Class of 2023 Facebook post:  71 people reached / 0 engagements - 0% engagement rate
• Twitter: 137 impressions / 2 engagements - 1.45% engagement rate
• LinkedIn: 563 impressions / 8 engagements - 1.42% engagement rate  (sector average 1.49%)
• Instagram stories: 37 accounts reached / 1 engagement on stories (love heart) - 2.70% engagement rate  (sector average 2.55%)

While our engagement metrics could be higher, an engagement rate between 1% and 3% is generally considered average, and some channels had engagement rates above sector average. We believe that maintaining active social media channels is beneficial because of their potential to reach a wide audience quickly and effectively, making them one of the most immediate ways to share news and content. Running the social media campaign alongside our other communication channels is essential for maximising our outreach and effectiveness. 

Our recent email campaign reached over 6,000 graduates achieving a 99.4% delivery rate and a 50.6% open rate, which is well above the sector average at 35.4%. This means that over 3,000 graduates saw the Graduate Outcomes logo, helping to build familiarity and brand awareness ahead of the survey period. Only 25 people unsubscribed, representing a low 0.43% unsubscribe rate. The email also generated a 0.64% click rate, with 39 graduates clicking on the links within the email, and 22 of those clicks having directed them to the Graduate Outcomes website. We saw similar results with our cohort C two week email which gave a 59.7% open rate and a 1.1% click rate.

Graduates have been incredibly receptive over the telephone when talking about the survey, so we hope that the conversations resonate and they recall the signposting later on in the year once that particular cohort is surveyed.

Lessons learned

We would recommend following a multi-channel marketing approach if possible. This strategy helps reach a wider audience and caters to the diverse preferences amongst graduates in terms of communication channels. It also helps boost familiarity and legitimacy of the survey due to the logo appearing across several channels. 

This is the first year we have significantly invested time into executing an effective promotional strategy to address the decline in response rates which the sector has been facing. Whilst It’s difficult to fully evaluate the effectiveness of our approaches so far we do know that we are comparable to the sector average response rate. 

Moving forward, we will continue to evaluate and refine our approach accordingly, paying particular attention to promoting the survey to staff, as well as students and graduates. Increasing staff awareness and engagement in promotional efforts could help boost responses due to their trusted contact with the audience. 

We are always looking to learn and adapt our approach, and therefore are considering reaching out to students to gather their thoughts on the survey and identify which marketing methods could be most effective in engaging them.

Contact details

Dr Alexander Bradley, Graduate Outcomes Manager, University of Portsmouth
Becca Stanford, Graduate Outcomes Assistant, University of Portsmouth