The university has successfully completed the first delivery wave one of the Digital Engagement programme.

Below is a summary what we’ve been working on, what our focus is for the next delivery wave and important changes that Digital Engagement will introduce.

A more detailed update is available on our SharePoint site.

What have we been working on?

Content Strategy and Content Production and Development Model
We’ve been reimagining how we engage and communicate with our prospective students. We want to make the University of Nottingham irresistible over our competitors, informative by providing the right information at the right time, and inclusive to make people feel that Nottingham is the right place for them.

Design System
We are working on a Design System which will provide reusable components to ensure attractive visual design and consistency through the website. In wave 1 we used Storybook to build components and in wave 2 we will be focusing on building Design File which will define the rules for how we use specific components, why we use them as well as the guidance on colours and layouts

DAM (Digital Asset Management)
DAM will provide an online tool and framework for storing, organising, protecting and distributing digital assets, such as photos, videos and content. This is a vast improvement from the current siloed ways of managing assets via Sharepoint, Image Bank and personal storage drives and will ensure our assets are consistent and compliant. DAM is the first product that Digital Engagement will release so we have been working hard to create a new and improved folder structure for assets and a ‘smart tagging’ function to make searching for assets much easier and faster.

Campaign Design, Delivery and Management
Our mission is to connect with prospects at all parts of their recruitment journey, and we hope to achieve this through well-timed, personalised and impactful campaigns. So far, we have set up the strategic foundations to be able to deliver a variety of campaigns and are working towards building our first campaign to launch in September. We’re also starting to move over some existing campaign activity into the new Adobe platform, making the process more efficient for staff and seamless for prospective students.

Find Your Nottingham
At the start of the student recruitment journey is ‘Find Your Nottingham’, a way to personalise the online prospectus to present prospects with content that is more relevant and valuable to them. We’ve tested this new service with students and received great feedback including that it ‘made them feel heard’ and ‘made them feel like Nottingham cared about who they were’. Our ambition is to release this service in September to attract and guide prospects as early as possible.

Data Capture and Management
To deliver an unparalleled customer experience, we are introducing a new CRM using Microsoft Dynamics 365. This will be the home of all prospect data, having pulled information from the website, Events and any other interactions the prospect has with the University. So far, we’ve built the foundations based on what data we can and should capture, and how to restrict this data to only those who need it. Capturing prospect data in one place allows us to understand the ‘holistic view’ of a prospect, including what courses and societies they are interested in, their previous contact with the University, events they may have attended and what communications they have received. By gathering this information, we can provide a far more personalised service.

How do I find out more?

To understand more about what the programme is working on now and in future, visit our SharePoint to view our latest end of wave wrap-up, or join our MS Teams channel to get regular updates. You can also email us on digitalengagement@nottingham.ac.uk.