Re-thinking the BESA e-newsletter
Success achieved
Creating a modern, innovative and engaging e- newsletter that BESA members and the building engineering services sector never want to miss.- Website
- https://www.thebesa.com
- Project dates
- Autumn 2016 – Autumn 2017
Project team
- Vicky Johnston, Marketing Executive
Tools & Systems
- We use online marketing platform Mailchimp for our campaign design (via template), dissemination, list hosting and data management, campaign performance reporting
- The BESA website hosts our e-newsletter signup form. Here, people opt-in to receive the communication by entering their email address which automatically updates on Mailchimp
- Microsoft Excel is used to create an e-news report and graphs representing results to be shared with internal and external stakeholders
- Google Analytics is used to track website hits and behaviour of recipients who have clicked through to the site.
- Microsoft Outlook/Hotmail/Gmail/Outlook for IOS are used to ensure our email is optimised for different platforms and test drafts
We are currently undergoing a project to integrate our CRM system with Mailchimp reducing the number of systems used and the ability to host the recipient list on our CRM, with bounces and unsubscribes automatically updating the member profile rather than manually managing two platforms.
Introduction
The BESA have been sending an e-newsletter since 2004, historically the communication was exclusively for members, keeping them informed with the latest member news from the association. In 2016, the BESA undertook a group-wide rebrand from the B&ES to the BESA. The rebranding process included an audit of all existing marketing materials and communication channels, to ensure they were in line with the new look, taking advantage of the latest techniques and technologies and performing e.g. improving engagement. The e-newsletter was identified as a key communication tool that was outdated and underperforming, despite the popularity and growth of email marketing. This discovery led to the development of our e-newsletter project from autumn 2016, and a continuous testing and monitoring environment to improve further.
We have three target audiences. Our primary target audience is BESA members. We want all BESA members (1200 companies) and their employees to subscribe to our e-newsletter. BESA employees (134) are another key target audience for the e-newsletter, keeping them informed of what’s happening within our industry and the potential impact on the association and its members. They should be well informed to provide valuable insight when speaking with members. We no longer restrict readership of our e-newsletter to members only, but actively encourage anyone in the sector to sign up. Our wider target audience is to reach those working/interested in the building engineering services environment in the UK. The overall UK market size is undefined but includes potential new members, affiliate members and our wider stakeholder contacts.
Due to the weekly frequency of the BESA e-newsletter, our content is up-to-date and related directly to issues/topics within the building services industry. Each edition is balanced with a mix of topics including industry headlines, technical guidance/updates, a showcase of upcoming events, opportunities for readers to take part in surveys and questionnaires, available specialist training courses and member exclusives. We deliver this content through various media formats – as detailed under innovation.
Discovery
As part of BESA membership, members are allocated their own personal Association Manager with whom they develop close relationships at the coalface. The Association Managers are expertly positioned to provide feedback to our marketing team identifying what issues our members and the industry are facing, enabling us to tailor our communications in order to meet their needs. Our specialist teams including Legal, Employment Affairs and Technical are also a valuable source of intel. For example, if our technical helpline receives multiple questions on a particular topic our industry experts will create guidance (like a whitepaper) on the topic, then share this with members via e-news.
We also:
- Regularly send out surveys to find out what issues are of high importance to our members – results are analysed and communications are delivered in order to help solve these problems
- Monitor our website stats in order to understand what our audience are engaging with – we then aim to bring the content to them rather than relying on them to actively look for it
- Receive guidance from the wider industry, press and internal experts and stakeholders
- Categorise content in newsletter editions (in-line with the website sections) in order to track successful stories and repeat similar types of content
- Preform A/B testing in order to understand when our readership want to receive the information and how often they want to receive it
Because of our research we have developed a jobs board, created an online shop to purchase knowledge and reworked the navigation on the main BESA website.
Objectives
The purpose of our e-newsletter is to communicate important information and raise topics of interest with our membership and the wider industry. The newsletter also promotes awareness, educates and encourages engagement by delivering valuable content based on members need to win paid work.
As we did not have previous e-newsletter performance data to benchmark against it was difficult for us to set SMART objectives and targets, therefore our focus from autumn 2016 to autumn 2017 is to measure and monitor to establish a baseline of data against the following objectives to drive improvements:
- Increase number of clicks
- Reduce number of bounces
- Increase subscription levels of member companies and wider industry
- Improve open rate
- Achieve revenue from advertising slots
- Keep unsubscribes low
Longer term SMART objectives are being set for 2017/18 for the above objectives and also include increasing subscriptions and engagement levels from the wider industry.
Activities
As the e-newsletter was a revamp and relaunch of a communication which had been running for over a decade, we had many stakeholders, including a strong member readership, to please. To ensure we managed expectations the first activity we undertook was a full review of how we were using the e-newsletter, its purpose, the content communicated and how it looked. We then created a list of improvements and ways to bring it in line with the rest of the association wide rebrand.
In our review we found the following areas would be the focus for the revamp:
- Hosting
- Distribution
- Visual appeal
- Content
- Measurement
We researched different ways in which we could send our e-newsletter and whether continuing to send via our CRM system was the most efficient method. After reviews of numerous platforms, we chose Mailchimp for a number of reasons including: its capacity to host our distribution list, automatically unsubscribe members, identify bounces, opens and clicks and offers reporting so we understand how our members engage with the newsletter. Reporting allows us to know what content works and what time and day of sending achieves the best open and click rates. We also use Mailchimp for other marketing communications so the Marketing team were already versed in how to use the software and minimal training was required.
We tasked an external graphic design company with creating a template for the new e-newsletter. We chose a design agency that had also worked on re-branding our Association website in order to keep symmetry between the design of our other digital marketing communications.
The brief we gave them included:
- Keeping the style in line with our rebrand and website including use of the BESA colour pallet and graphic elements such as imagery and illustrations.
- To create a full responsive template for desktop, tablet and mobile users so we could be confident that it would be clear, easy to read and interact with while remaining visually engaging on any device.
- We asked the designers to include in the template multiple ways to communicate our message using different graphic elements (for example the capacity to represent a message via imagery, video, gifs etc.)
- We specified ease of use and asked for the template to be editable and easy to use and amend meaning our team could simply drag and drop the design making it easy to manage moving forward.
The design agency sent us mock ups of the template, from which we selected the elements of the designs we liked best merging them together into one. From this, the design team built the template and transferred it into our Mailchimp account. In the meantime, we added a signup function to our website (on each page) and merged our CRM distribution list over to the new Mailchimp list.
With the template and distribution list ready, our team knew how to create the newsletter so all that was left was dropping in the content and pressing send. We set up a procedure with internal stakeholders to ensure that the right news and messages were being communicated in e-news. Previously it was the sole responsibility of a member of the communications team to collate and send the e-newsletter using only content that they had sourced. In the new e-news we collaborated and communicated across not just the association, but other BESA Group organisations to generate relevant and engaging content for our readers.
We measured our newsletter as a complete success. Since launch, we have reduced our bounce rate from 26.55% to 0.78%, achieved a consistent open rate of 22% (nearly 10% higher than our industry’s average) and reduced our unsubscribe rate from an average of five an edition to one. We know that unsubscribes are inevitable and we are proud that we can see a significant increase in list size. People are regularly subscribing and opting to receive the newsletter. For every person that unsubscribes from our e-newsletter list we have at least five people subscribing. Over 550 people having subscribed to the communication since its relaunch.
Each week, the BESA e-newsletter deliver an average of ten original building engineering services related news stories and updates.
We continue to test and monitor the performance of our e-newsletter to ensure that improve the performance and remain innovative. This is now much easier given the data we can mine and share across the association.
Innovation
Our relaunched e-newsletter has improved the way we communicate updates to our members. Previously, editions of the e-newsletter were created in a basic Microsoft Word template and sent via a mail merge which could take up to 12 hours to send via our CRM system. This method was inefficient, lacking in flexibility, non-responsive and not trackable. We did not know what happened to the email once we pressed send. We can now see that 40% of our recipients open the email on a mobile device. Prior to the re-launch, the email would not have displayed properly on the smaller screen making it inaccessible to a large percentage of our audience.
The old e-newsletter was limited in design, with only text and hyperlinks allowed. Our new template, created in Mailchimp, can include graphics and photographs, infographics and advertising, videos, gifs and other interactive elements allowing us to display content in a more engaging way. Our marketing team can be more creative, as we are no longer limited to displaying our key messages through text only.
The ability to track the performance of the e-newsletter and run A/B testing has allowed us to be more innovative in our approach to services offered to our members. Responses to legislation stories relating to Brexit and apprenticeship levies have led us to create special edition newsletters as well as further content including exclusive events and dedicated web areas.
We also created a commercial revenue stream directly by offering advertising packages in our e-newsletter for our affiliate members and wider contracts. The advertising has also been a hugely successful element in contra deals with our sector’s trade press and a number of leading trade events.
Marketing
We promote our e-newsletter to our membership regularly through a number of different channels.
Our dedicated association managers, who are in close contact with our members, often remind members they can subscribe to the e-newsletter when engaging with them both online and offline, in meetings, emails and at member only events.
A sign-up button is located on every page on the BESA website – all people have to do is enter their email address and click ‘go’ to subscribe.
We ran a number of social media campaigns promoting the e-newsletter linking through to our online signup form (which is hosted and available year-round on the BESA website).
Challenges
One of the main challenges we’ve faced has been keeping our distribution list up-to-date and ensuring that our members actually receive the communication. On occasion, we receive reports from members that they have not received communications sent via Mailchimp.
In order to overcome this:
- We always use a BESA email address to send the email from (on Mailchimp). For the e-newsletter we use [email protected]
- We monitor the opens and bounces of our e- newsletters. This allows us to identify anomalies and contact the relevant recipients if necessary. For example, at one point our own internal email spam filter and email management software blocked our e-newsletter. After liaising with our internal IT team we were able to identify the factor that had caused this problem and stop it from affecting any of our members in future
- We ask our members to ensure that [email protected] (and all BESA email addresses) are added to their spam filters’ safe list
- We actively monitor the language used in the subject line and body of the email to ensure we are not using any language likely to trigger spam filters blocking it from our members’ inboxes
- We allow members, and the wider built environment, to opt-in and sign up for the e-newsletter using any email addresses (including personal and company accounts)
Data from our old e-news was held in our CRM system. This meant it was not responsive and members were not able to automatically unsubscribe or subscribe. The first time we sent the new version of e-news, we saw a huge bounce rate and a warning from Mailchimp. We resolved this challenge by actively cleansing our list when people leave a company or change their email address, we check though any ‘out of office’ replies and update our list regularly.
Achievements
We are proud to have achieved:
- A reduced number of bounces: since launch we have reduced our number of bounces by a staggering 25%.
- Improved open rate: on average just under a quarter of those on our distribution list open our e- newsletter. Our readership has reached levels as high as 10% above the average open rate in our sector.
- Increase subscription levels: Our distribution is list slowly but steadily growing with new people actively opting in to receive the BESA e-newsletter almost every day. We are proud to know that for every one person that unsubscribes, at least five people subscribes.
- Keep unsubscribes low: we have seen a drop in unsubscribes since launch seeing a 0.2% unsubscribe rate drop to 0.06%.
- Increase clicks: as calls to actions we offer a ‘read more’ function for each story featured in e-news. We then link these to the BESA website in order to increase traffic to the website. According to analytics we can see that over 2% all of the traffic visiting the BESA website was referred from the e-newsletter.
Targets & Statistics
Reduce number of bounces
When we relaunched our e-newsletter in autumn 2016 we started with 3115 recipients, on the first edition we saw 466 unique opens, an open rate of 20.37% with a staggering 827 bounces meaning over a quarter of the email addresses bounced. Since the launch we have cleaned our mailing list and reduced our bounce rate from 26.55% to 0.78% with over 1200 email addresses now deleted from our list, at the same time as our list has grown.
Improve open rate
Our industry’s average open rate is 15.7% - our newsletter boasts an average open rate of 22% - with certain editions reaching over 25% - 10% above average in our sector.
Increase subscription levels: our list is continually growing with an additional 546 people subscribing to the communication since its relaunch. Unsubscribes are inevitable with newsletter communications but we are proud to have had only 103 unsubscribes since relaunching – meaning for every 1 person that unsubscribes, we have at least 5 people subscribing.
Keep unsubscribes low
Average unsubscribes over the first five editions was 5.2, average unsubscribes over last 5 editions is 1.6.
Increase clicks
In the past year, the newsletter has referred nearly over 2,625 people to the BESA website 31% of which were people who had never visited the BESA website before (830). This accounted for over 2% of all website traffic putting the newsletter as the sixth highest referral source (only falling behind those navigation directly to the website, paid searches, organic search engines and an application form sent to all school children in Scotland).
Financials
The financial investment in the project totalled £525 for the design and build of a Mailchimp template.
Our internal marketing team manages the process and content is generated internally, so we have no ongoing costs associated with the e-newsletter.
The introduction of the advertising element for our affiliate members, group companies and through contra deals has helped to create a return on investment income from the advertising sales. Due to contra deals, partnerships and bespoke packages our income varies and the benefit is not calculated solely on financial income.
What would we do differently?
If we were to do this project again, we would give ourselves more time. Our eight-week period limited the amount of research and feedback we were able to complete and receive before launching the first edition. We would arrange focus groups and speak more to our members to ensure that the communication meets their needs from the start. We would also complete a data cleanse before relaunch so that we wouldn’t trigger the Mailchimp warning for too many bounced emails.
Feedback & Testimonials
‘I just wanted to let you know how impressed I am with all of the terrific improvements you're making at BESA especially your e-newsletter, both the look and the content.’
John Gentille, CEO of The Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA)
‘BESA’s e-newsletter is engaging and full of content that BESA members really want to know and is essential to support their business needs. The style is modern and dynamic yet clear and to the point making it a worthwhile read for not just BESA members but for everyone involved in the industry.’
Tim Hopkinson, Managing Director, E Poppleton & Son Ltd, BESA member and BESA President 2017/18
‘The newsletter looks fantastic, very useful and modern.’
Charles Keel, Publishing Director, Modern Building Services Magazine (trade press)
‘I just wanted to compliment you and your team on the new format of the BESA Newsletter. I do always try to read any items of interest and this format is visually appealing, user friendly with clear navigation and a nice use of colour & images.’
Lesley McKaskie, SFG20 Sales & Client Relations Executive
‘Just seen the news BESA e-news – love the new style, very readable and interesting!’
Stephen Ironmonger, Head of IT, BESA
Wider impact
We have had a great response from our members following the rebrand of the e-newsletter. Our association managers regularly fed back positive comments. We see new companies signing up to receive their own copy almost every day and the communication channel has had a great impact on our members and wider readership.
2% of our website traffic is routed directly from the e-newsletter. Analytics show that this has brought nearly a thousand people to our website who had never visited before.
