It’s great to see so many students on our campuses

What a fantastic start to the new academic year. Our campuses have sprung back to life and it’s great to see so many students making the most of their Essex experience. Across all three campuses, we’ve registered 16,662 new and returning students and completed over 6000 right to study checks.

Our front-line services, including the Student Services Hubs, have also been crucial in making sure our students have settled in smoothly, as have key events from our Students’ Union. Over 3000 students attended their annual Freshers Fair to explore various sports, societies and volunteering opportunities, whilst their two week WelcomeFest featured over 40 events. You can see all the SUs photos from WelcomeFest on Facebook.

Before our students even arrived on campus, however, our summer communications campaigns really helped prepare them for life at Essex. These included our usual countdown emails for new starters and this year that was mirrored with a similar campaign for our returning students, many of whom had never have been to campus before.

These emails smashed benchmarked goals for the Education sector:

• The average open rate across the email campaign was 69.24% (vs an industry average of 33.20%).
• Our click rate was also strong with a 26.32% average (vs an industry benchmark of just 4.90%).
• Our best performing email was sent to expected new Southend students on 13 September with 92.62% of recipients opening the email.
• Our best performing email for returning students was also for Southend and was sent on 10 September with 62.85% of recipients opening the email

On our social media channels, our Welcome and Arrivals campaign increased engagement levels with over 307, 000 impressions across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Students really engaged with the informational content we were sharing them, especially on Facebook, with links to our own events pages, the SUs What’s on calendar, and information for international students proving particularly popular.

However, we’re not done yet and we’re still reaching out to people to encourage them to register as soon as possible and join our campus community. This email campaign is once again being backed up with regular social media content, including content on Instagram and Tik Tok like our popular video summarising life at Essex in just three words.

Why not follow us on social media to see what we’re sharing with our students:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Tik Tok

Keeping our community safe

Alongside this Welcome content, we’ve also been updating staff and students with all the latest information about keeping safe on campus, from promoting regular COVID testing to encouraging members of our community to get vaccinated. As term continues, we’ll continue to share the latest safety information and we’ll be emphasising the importance of facemasks with a new campaign on campus.