About
Welcome to Marketing Partnership
Hello
We specialise in helping universities achieve student recruitment growth.
We're best known for creating an engaged team of academic and professional services colleagues who are empowered to support student recruitment, increase enrolments, and delivering more of the right students for your institution.
Penny has over 25 years of experience working in Higher Education roles, so we understand the unique complexity of the HE environment.
Our Approach
Marketing is about more than communications and colour palettes: it is a powerful strategic enabler.
View any Vice Chancellor’s objectives and we can guarantee that a well-defined marketing and communications strategy that works toward achieving an overall Culture of Enrolment will support or deliver most of those goals.
And we're on a mission to demonstrate this; the true value of strategic marketing to advance Higher Education.
We go beyond just diagnosing problems and producing hefty reports or one-off workshops (we call it the 'diagnose, drop and dash' – we saw too much of this when we worked in HE and commissioned external consultants to deliver projects).
Our lightbulb moment came when we realised that the most impactful results are achieved through a true partnership with our clients, helping them to create a whole-institution culture of enrolment.
And it really works.
How we started
Marketing Partnership started life in 2019 as ‘Penny Eccles Ltd’, before adopting a new name in 2023 — in honour of the growing team of experts we now have on board. The name Marketing Partnership perfectly encapsulates how we work best with our clients – in collaboration.
About Penny
As a ‘first in family’ student from a widening participation background in the North East of England, Penny Eccles experienced first-hand the transformative power of Higher Education.
Despite having no ‘little book’ of networks, no knowledge about routes to career success, and low self-confidence, a chance decision to go to university changed her life.
Now, founder and CEO of Marketing Partnership, Penny’s team specialises in helping universities achieve student recruitment growth.
They support universities to achieve greater market share by widening their pool of applicants — because (as Penny’s own experience proves) that has the power to improve access for everyone for whom a university education could be life changing.
After 25 years in Higher Education marketing, communications, widening participation admissions and student recruitment at several universities, Penny has honed the skill of pinpointing the core problem and making the complex simple. She has led large, dynamic teams and developed brand strategies that integrate the full spectrum of channels and stakeholders.
A Chartered Marketer and Fellow of the CIM, she was honoured to lead the University of Gloucestershire to win the Times Higher (THE) Outstanding Marketing Team of the Year 2017 and was key to Nottingham Trent University enrolling the largest number of new undergraduate students in the UK (2018 and 2019).
Penny is also a Non-Executive Director of The Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Ready to get started?
Our mission is to advance Higher Education and advance access for all.
Do you need executive-level support to identify your direction and bring others on the journey? Or are you ready for expert guidance on how to reposition your institution?
Enquire now.
We’d be delighted to discuss how we can help.