AOSpine e-Newsletter
Success achieved
Promoting the newsletter as a member benefit in order to attract more members.
- Website
- https://aospine.aofoundation.org/Structure/community/newsletter/Pages/Newsletter.aspx
- Project dates
August 2017 - February 2018
Project team
The newsletter is mostly written and edited by the managing editor, Regula Bleuler, in collaboration with research, education and events teams. Also, the regional offices are able to hand in content.
Tools & Systems
The newsletter is hosted on our server. We put it on the website, and send it out via e-mail to all members. Additionally, we cross-promote the stories on social media and on the website.
For the publication itself, we use text, images, as well as videos (whenever possible and available).
Introduction
AOSpine is the leading global academic society for education and research in spine care. The overall aim is to research, develop and implement best practices and excellence in spine surgery around the globe.
Target audience: AOSpine is the only global organization for spine surgeons with currently about 6600 paying members, and a total network of over 30,000 spine surgeons worldwide. The membership of AOSpine is limited to surgeons (orthopedics and neurosurgeons) and researchers in the spinal field.
The newsletter is published 5 times/year. Usually we have maximum of 10 topics/newsletter
The content of each newsletter consists of the following:
- Feature Interview with a key opinion leader on various topics of their special field (e.g robotics, cervical spine, minimally invasive surgery) as well as some more personal questions
- AOSpine news (elections, governance, regional news)
- Research update (e.g. clinical studies, publications, latest research findings on trauma, tumor, spinal cord injury, and deformity)
- Education news (events, fellowship opportunities, faculty news, mentorship programs and applications)
- Global Spine congress (updates, stories)
- Member news (stories about members from all over the world that have interesting angles, e.g. what's it like to be the only spine surgeon in Namibia)
Additionally, we provide content that should help surgeons to develop their soft skills outside the OR e.g. teaching a cross-cultural audience, how to engage in social media, how to write a scientific paper, leadership. This is very much appreciated as surgeons are by default working a lot of hours, thus, don't have time to browse through the internet. Also, soft skills are becoming increasingly important for surgeons, which is why we have started adding these kind of topics, specifically tailored to suit the needs of surgeons/medical doctors.
Discovery
The content is determined by the AOSpine Newsletter editorial board, which consists of:
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Community development Commission including Chairperson (6 spine surgeons, all of them key opinion leaders in the spinal field from all regions worldwide) who are asked to propose topics of interest
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Community Development: Managing editor & Team, who constantly research for interesting topics
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The heatmap of the articles shows very clearly what content is appreciated and we always take this into consideration.
- Often, it's also one of the Editorial Board members that suggests a key opinion leader and a topic for the feature story.
The newsletter has a continuous opening rate of around 36-39%. Over the past years it has been developed to become the source of information for spine relevant content.
What makes it unique is the constant search for state of the art content in terms of technology, research but also with regards to the people we interview, e.g. a special feature interview with key opinion leaders on robotics in spinal surgery, the future of cervical spine surgery, or how a spine fracture classification is done.
Objectives
The primary aim of the newsletter is:
- Provide added value to the AOSpine members – content they cannot get anywhere else
- Up to date information on topics that are relevant to daily practice of spine surgeons
- From surgeons to surgeons – excellence, innovation, key findings and best practices
- Information that is highly relevant for education and professional development, including soft skills
- Most recent and up to date research information
We have worked very hard on making the newsletter more customer-centric with a new layout and to increase the quality of the content.
In our newsletter, key opinion leaders get a voice to speak to the worldwide spine surgeon community – this is unique amongst the spine society-newsletters.
Targets: the main objective was to keep the opening rate of the newsletter steady at approx. 36-38%, and to increase the click through to open rate from around 15% average to over 20%.Additionally, we want to continue to provide the surgeons with the best newsletter they have ever received from a spine society.
Activities
When AOSpine started producing the newsletter, it was called "spotlight" and not "newsletter". It was a rather impersonal e-mail. Since then, it has evolved massively. We have introduced the welcome message from the chairperson, feature stories and highlights and made it as much member-centric as possible. Last year, we gave it a face lift, introducing membership quotes from our key opinion leaders and members from around the world on the front page. We also introduced a downloadable pdf version of the newsletter. We made it look more appealing and personal.
We are collecting the content for every newsletter about 2.5 months before publication date.
The newsletter is coordinated by the Managing Editor. She is also in charge of writing/editing the feature stories and most of the other content.
Various AOSpine newsletter editions
Innovation
- Our design approach is innovative and mobile friendly/optimized for mobile devices and very member-centric.
- As per specific requirement from the surgeons (who are travelling a lot by default), we also offer a downloadable pdf version of each newsletter (embedded into the newsletter front page), so that they are able to read while on the go.
- We include videos wherever available to offer value, e.g. free access to a plenary session of one of our flagship events in Latin America
- We include survey e.g. from the member representative
The approach is very much from member to member/surgeon to surgeon with a focus on the community feeling and the membership. Over the course of 2017, we have given the newsletter a facelift, making it even more member-centric with a more user-friendly design. We have membership quotes embedded into the front page (always from different key opinion leaders worldwide) and work with a lot of pictures of people.
Marketing
We have sent the newsletter to non-members with a note that the newsletter is a membership privilege, and if they are interested to receive it, we encourage them to sign up for membership. As a result, we have received a couple of e-mails of surgeons who signed up for membership because of this newsletter mailing.
Challenges
In our case the challenge was to find what the members are looking for, given the fact that this is not a scientific journal. The most-read topics are always the stories that have a personal but very scientific angle, with key opinion leaders that are great testimonials for the organization. The feature interviews and the research topics are the all time favorites.
Targets & Statistics
- We have an average opening rate of 36-40%.
- The CTOR rate has increased from average around 15% to over 20% from 2016 to 2017.
- Distribution: 6600 members worldwide (it's an exclusive membership privilege)
AOSpine Newsletter Statistics 2017
Financials
We have a set budget for the newsletter, which is part of the membership privileges of AOSpine.
Feedback & Testimonials
Our key opinion leaders have repeatedly re-used our stories/interviews at their practice for their patients and for external stories, which shows that the AOSpine newsletter is highly esteemed by our audience.
Wider impact
We consider the newsletter an important tool to communicate to our community and to promote our initiatives. This is the feedback that we got on numerous occasions, including people signing up for membership because of the newsletter stories. Additionally, the heatmaps that we get from our reports very much give us indication about what the trending topics are.
