eNewsletter: Your CITMA News
Success achieved
Increasing digital engagement by delivering a redesigned newsletter and improving content delivery.- Website
- https://www.citma.org.uk
- Project dates
- Launched January 2017
Project team
- Richard Hayward, Head of PR & Communications
- Luke O’Neill, Membership & Engagement Officer
Tools & Systems
We use an email marketing platform called Constant Contact to help design and produce the newsletter and send the communication to our members. Using its in-built template-builder we designed a stylish template to reflect our new brand and present information clearly.
The software also allows us to monitor the success of each email and use that data to refine and improve subsequent issues of the newsletter. It also gives us intelligence to refine the content, providing more of the items our members are interested in.
Introduction
Following the launch of our new brand and visual identity there was a gap in our communications mix for a monthly newsletter to bring our content directly to the inboxes of our members.
This has formed a cornerstone of our content-led communications strategy and positions CITMA as the go-to body for the latest updates relevant to the profession. It was also a chance to reinforce our new brand identity, bringing appropriate content to educate and interest members – and therefore drive traffic to our website.
Our target audience is the 1,500 members of CITMA – Chartered Trade Mark Attorneys and those who work in the wider intellectual property field, including students and those in support roles.
They are specialists in their field, and require high quality specialist content, relevant to them and their daily practice.
We provide practice updates, news from around the intellectual property industry, updates about CITMA, member written content on recent cases, and information about upcoming events, and current vacancies.
We provide content by members, for members, and have an ethos of sharing information across the profession.
Discovery
A communications survey of members carried out in 2016 found that “the most valuable aspect of CITMA membership is content”. This has spurred us on to find new and innovative ways to deliver important content to members.
It was important to engage members throughout the process of setting the newsletter up to ensure we were providing content members valued.
We engaged members through our committees, primarily through our Publications & Communications Committee. That group was able to feed back ideas of what content would appeal to members, and where to find it.
The communications team attended a number of the other committee meetings to ensure a broad range of content and a cross-section of topics would be covered. This also led to the committees being more engaged with content creation, and therefore updating members on their area of focus and the work they do for members.
A particular success has been the Law and Practice Committee, which leads on an area of particular interest to members. Engaging that committee has provided rich insight into vital updates members are keen to know more about.
We also used existing statistics and knowledge from other communication channels (particularly social media and our website) to judge the most popular content, and therefore the kind of information we should include.
We also used click-through data from the first two newsletters to reposition the most popular kinds of stories near the top of the newsletter, to further enhance engagement. Data from our website informed us that our jobs board was popular with members, so we provided the most recently posted jobs near the bottom of the email to entice members to look over the whole email.
Objectives
The newsletter aims to inform members of the latest updates, vital to their practice and engage them with our work.
It also provides CITMA content to help position CITMA as the go-to place for updates on the profession by driving traffic to the website and create a positive element of our membership proposition.
We wanted our newsletter to increase member traffic to the CITMA website, receive an open rate of over 45% in the first year, and a click rate of over 30%, rising to consistently above 50% open rate and 40% click rate thereafter.
We also wanted members to positively answer the question 'does CITMA provide timely updates that are vital to my practice' positively in the next members' survey.
The format of the newsletter allows the recipient to choose the content they would like to read. It also enabled us to cut down the number of emails sent to members, streamlining our email engagement but still providing targeted, relevant content.
Activities
The organisation had been on a path of improving digital engagement with members via email and there was a drive to send fewer, more informative emails.
Innovation
The newsletter presents content in a simple and clean format that is easy to follow. It provides short teaser information to encourage members to click to find out more – driving traffic to our content.
Following our major events of the year, we have produced special editions of the newsletter to bring content generated by the speakers to our members, even if they couldn't be there. This goes back to the notion of using the newsletter as a vehicle for the profession to share expertise.
This has helped to bring our events to life and creates a greater buzz, which will hopefully lead to an increased booking rate in 2018.
Challenges
The biggest challenge is content creation and sourcing suitable content, particularly with limited resource. However, CITMA runs 60 events a year, so we have found ways to re-purpose content for the newsletter stemming from our events. In 2017 we ran with two special editions of the newsletter, with content from our two major events – our spring and autumn conferences.
We also have a very active community of contributors to our magazine, CITMA Review, so again we have been able to tap into other ways to produce content beyond the office walls.
Achievements
The newsletter met our ambitious click rate target of 45%. More importantly there is clear evidence that our members are using it as a way to find interesting updates and content from us. This is all part of the wider strategy to position CITMA as the pre-eminent body for trade marks and designs in the UK – and therefore the go-to place for content and updates on trade mark law and practice.
Targets & Statistics
The monthly newsletter, which was launched in January, has received positive interaction with each edition receiving between 43%-46% open rate. And often exceeding 35% click through rate.
Previous email communications, in 2016, received an average open rate of 35% and click rate of 10%, so the newsletter provides a 10% increase in open rate and 25% in click-throughs.
We also conducted a newsletter communication survey in September 2017.
What would we do differently?
The newsletter has been successful, but the content has not always been exclusive to the newsletter. Now and going forward we are commissioning more exclusive content. With an established platform for content delivery, members, suppliers and recruiters are more willing to provide content that is just for our newsletter.
We could also have looked into putting some budget aside for the creation of bespoke content for the newsletter.
Feedback & Testimonials
Our members have indicated its value to their day-to-day practice. 88% of members rated the newsletter good or excellent. 94% of members rating it as a positive addition to the communications they receive.
Wider impact
Our communications strategy focuses on delivering content to engage our membership audience. The newsletter has been a key part of the communications mix in achieving better engagement with members. It is hard to measure the impact of the newsletter in isolation – but the statistics indicate that it has been a vital cog in the engagement piece.
