What you need to know:

• Cross-functional buy-in to ‘lifelong learning’ as the next growth opportunity for Uni of NSW has become the key to unlocking fresh technology spend and innovation at the tertiary institution.
• This next phase of martech and digital innovation includes rolling out a master data management platform in the next three months, a whole-of-organisation data strategy that takes its cues from the financial services space in order to help UNSW leapfrog the education category, says marketing and digital leader, Sofia Lloyd-Jones.
• With the first use cases firmly grounded in students, the data play has been concepted it so it’s applicable to all constituents, meaning UNSW can expand out to industry partners, research collaborators and so on over time, she says.
• Having such a clear, strategic outcome in lifelong learning has also paved the way to a better relationship between marketing and IT teams. Per LloydJones: “Getting that operating model working [with IT] was probably the big challenge we had out of that first phase of the Adobe investment. We have had new leaders come in and been rolling up our sleeves going right, how do we make this work? How do we embed this and look at our IT? In fact, yesterday we were planning with the CIO and all her direct reports around what our next phase is. That’s exciting.”
• To help, capability building of UNSW’s agile squads has been not just been about building technical skills, but also leadership strengths that skew towards continuous learning.
• In addition, UNSW marketing and digital has built a planning function to look for the bottlenecks and opportunities for technology improvement, including AI use cases.
• Lloyd-Jones is now scoping out 2.0 of the project, plus looking at how to tackle AI in content governance.
• Better prioritisation is equally important for LloydJones in managing the psychological safety of staff who have seen years of change management at UNSW and can expect transformation to continue – something Australia’s workplace laws are increasingly focused on.

UNSW’s marketing and digital experience director, Sofia Lloyd-Jones labels it “a parting of the waves”. Coalescence around lifelong learning internally has become fundamental in the tertiary provider’s strategy to combat constrained domestic and international growth. And it’s seen investment released for the next phase of martech and digital innovation, including a master data management platform rolling out this year.

Seven years after UNSW first brought on the Adobe martech stack – and six years since she joined as CMO – Lloyd-Jones was at the recent Adobe Summit in Sydney talking up where UNSW goes next thanks to how it’s recalibrating technology prioritisation cross-functionally, as well as improving the relationship between marketing and technology teams, using ‘lifelong learning’ as the north star.

“We’ve obviously reaped the benefits from the Adobe stack, but now we have this incredible focus on where we prioritise our next phase of investment, aligned to that strategic outcome,” Lloyd-Jones told Mi3 in an interview after speaking on the main stage. “That has been the parting of the waves in terms of hurdles, as we’ve been really crystallising IT to that outcome. And we’ve gained great buy-in across the organisation because we have focused on lifelong learning.”

Education and migration market forces

Last year was both the most successful and most challenging year for UNSW Lloyd-Jones has seen. Australian university reliance on international student fees and placement is frequently in the media spotlight, often in concert with the effect large immigration waves are having on housing availability. UNSW has been one of the big winners on the international student recruitment front, recording a 61 per cent increase in annual revenue from foreign students from $877 million in 2023 to $1.4 billion in 2024. However, a UNSW spokesperson told the AFR last year the record returns would be short-lived and said UNSW would reduce international students by 25 per cent this year, with further reductions anticipated in 2026.

Although the Government’s proposed plans to cap total international student numbers to 270,000 were quashed last year, it’s subsequently turned to several other steps, including a slow-down of visa processing through Direction 111, to reduce foreign student numbers – a mechanism education minister, Jason Clare, said has reduced numbers by about 30 per cent in 2025.

“We were always on the lifelong learning journey, but that has created the burning platform. Now we have constrained growth in our domestic and international cohorts,” Lloyd-Jones told Mi3. “So really, lifelong learning is the key cohort for us to be able to grow. Just take the changing pace of technology and AI: People are now asking, well, what do I need to keep up? How do I need to top up [skills]? It’s converging on all levels. We’ve also had our big stage gate signed off with big dollars there. So I think everyone is starting to go right, this is really happening. And they’re quite excited about it.”

Supporting these efforts is one of the big technological shifts for UNSW over the last three years: Data management. While UNSW has both the Adobe stack as well as Microsoft CRM, Lloyd-Jones’ team had been lacking a customer data platform. Groundwork on building the consistency and quality of data nevertheless has been in the works, and structuring quantitative, qualitative and behavioural customer insights into one data centre of excellence among the achievements reached internally.

But rather than pursue a CDP, Lloyd-Jones said UNSW is now taking its cues from the financial services sector and has opted for a master data management platform instead. In the hot seat for deployment is UNSW’s recently installed chief data officer, Surabhi Jain, the former data chief at Westpac Institutional Bank. She’s been building out the delivery program, operating model and data governance cross-functionally at UNSW, with funding partly sourced through the program Lloyd-Jones is leading.

“We’ve looked outside the sector and gone ok, we’re a bit late to this whole digital marketing stack in terms of sophistication of use. So we looked outside the sector and really, we looked at the banks,” Lloyd-Jones explained. “This is really about leapfrogging. It has been a long time coming – now, we have the investment. My project was first in line, as our vice-chancellor said to me, ‘I recognise you can’t succeed without it, and I know you will do a good job making sure we have it implemented in the right way’. That’s added complexity to my project, but it means we’ve then got the foundations for scaling in future.”

The vendor has been chosen, the implementation partner is being onboarded and UNSW expects to have the first foundations out of the box in the next three months. And the queue of use cases across the organisation is lengthening.

“That was the discussion we had with our council and board: It’s a significant investment, how can we justify it? It’s only as valuable as the constituents you put in there,” Lloyd-Jones said. “Although the first use cases are around students, we have also concepted it so it’s all constituents, which means we can then expand out to industry partners, research collaborators and so on over time.”

Improved marketing-IT relations

Through all of this, Lloyd-Jones has concertedly worked to achieve an improved operating model with IT. UNSW has three digital delivery squads covering day-to-day and strategic tech work.

“Getting that operating model working [with IT] was probably the big challenge we had out of that first phase of the Adobe investment,” Lloyd-Jones said. “We have had new leaders come in and been rolling up our sleeves going right, how do we make this work? How do we embed this and look at our IT? In fact, yesterday we were planning with the CIO and all her direct reports around what our next phase is. That’s exciting.”

To help, the capability focus has been not just on building technical skills, but also leadership strengths. “That’s been really powerful for our agile squads, because it empowers them to lead from wherever they are,” she commented. “We do have an ongoing technical skills capability, but then it’s very much around how we create that culture of continuous learning.

In addition, UNSW marketing and digital has built a planning function to look for the bottlenecks and opportunities for technology improvement, including AI use cases. One of UNSW’s first marketing-oriented AI efforts was a content supply chain pilot aimed at connecting creative agencies with media and digital channels in one end-to-end loop. Lloyd-Jones is now scoping out 2.0 of the project, plus looking at how to tackle AI in content governance.

“We have a distributed content model, and every faculty has their content person. We’re also thinking about how we take them on the journey,” Lloyd-Jones said. “People want to experiment, which is great. But I also think when it comes particularly to our research stories, we want to be able to distinguish sources of truth from generative adaptations. That’s what we’re thinking about now.”

Psychosocial safety at work

What the planning function has also given UNSW is a way to better prioritise what can feel like a never-ending change management program of work. It’s something that’s became even more critical for Lloyd-Jones with the recent introduction of codes of practice for managing psychosocial hazards at work in Australia under the Work Health and Safety Act and subsequent state-based workers compensation legislation.

“That has really given us the reason to look at workload resourcing, so we are reducing our psychosocial risks. Especially with knowledge workers, that’s been a big focus for us,” said Lloyd-Jones. “It’s partly why within the team, I now have the planning function looking at that. The other piece is prioritisation and being really ruthless – we don’t need to do something just because we’ve always done it. We’ve got so much demand. We don’t need to be doing those events, or that campaign necessarily.

“I’ve got a brilliant team who always want to do more, and I’m always going, that’s great, but do you really need to do it? That’s part of our role as leaders: To try and bring it back to purpose, the why, and how it is shifting the needle. Putting the measures in before you agree to the activity is one of those we’re trying to practice. But also in terms of making space for things like innovation and AI.”

Progress for all

Meanwhile, Lloyd-Jones has also been landing UNSW’s new brand platform released to market last year, ‘Progress for All’. The work was done in partnership with agency, Howatson&Co, in conjunction with UNSW senior leaders from social to HR, Alumni, marketing and digital, and aims to balance UNSW’s strong graduate career outcomes (‘individual progress’) with the broader societal impact of UNSW’s world-leading education and research. It’s targeted at 18 through to 60-year-olds.

Beyond the boundaries of the brand project and campaign launch, ‘Progress for All’ has become the name of UNSW’s ambitious 10-year strategic plan launched in February 2025.

“This is the longest I’ve ever been in a role, and I’m really enjoying the perspective I’ve gained over the six years,” Lloyd-Jones said. “I see it in three phases. Initially, I was really thinking mostly around that student piece. When we did the brand project, that's where we came up with ‘Progress for All’. It started as our brand positioning, and it has really been adopted across the university, and is now the name of our 10-year strategy. That gives a beautiful alignment, and that platform to think beyond student and really think about societal impact. That's probably the piece I'm most excited about. We will have our societal impact measures, but how do we link our brand and reputation measures to those outcomes as well?

“We might have to create new measures, but our Head of School of Marketing has a massive marketing analytics team and said let’s workshop it, do papers on it,” Lloyd-Jones added.