Creating Content to Drive Engagement
Using new marketing and design platforms to drive engagement by sharing stories of success, project updates and upcoming events via Westerns ‘new look’ Newsletters; Western Landcare Life and What’s On
Capacity building - LEP23-021-11
The issue
The method of newsletter delivery that existed at Western Landcare, which included reports from individual staff members, needed an overhaul. The newsletter was delivered in a basic word document, via an email distribution service to 800 plus subscribers. Newsletters lacked creativity, design, appeal to read and didn’t drive broader community engagement. Email analytics indicated quite low open rates and click rates. Feedback from staff also indicated that a monthly report for the purposes of a newsletter was too frequent and in addition to other reporting requirements, it was proving quite time-consuming.
The solution
I acknowledged the need for a design overhaul and social media strategy to be developed. Supported by Melanie Gates – RLC I called on my experience and skills in media and freelance writing, as well as a passion for creative design to overhaul the newsletter project. I firstly, engaged my colleagues and took on board their feedback in regard to frequency of reporting. With the support of my team, I designed a format for newsletter submissions, which included the publication of monthly What’s On event newsletters, and a Quarterly edition of Western Landcare Life to include coordinator reports. I researched and established, with the help of Syntacks (tech/comms support) the creation of accounts with ISSUU to generate E-flipbooks which could be embedded to our website and Brevo to facilitate the email campaign.
The impact
Use of Issuu platform to create and embed an E-Flipbook version of Western Landcare Life and What’s On has been instrumental in driving more traffic to our website Newsletters | Western Landcare NSW as well as creating more meaningful content and engagement with subscribers and wider audience. Feedback on the newsletters from colleagues in the industry, and other members of our community has been humbling. Since the newsletter underwent an overhaul including the switch to Brevo, email open rates have increased by almost 20% to an average of 46.34%, click rates by 2.05% to an average of 5.05%. Issuu has recorded an average of 141 readers per publication, with an average of 3 mins 50 secs read time per publication. Website traffic increases by over 500% on publication days with a steady flow in the days to follow.
Mail Chimp indicates a successful email open rate for Non-Profits at 40.04% with a click rate of 3.27%.
Learnings
There is an incredible amount of opportunity for promotion of events, sharing of success stories and updating of projects that can be done via various social media and media platforms available to us. Lots more progress to be made in this space and avenues to explore in terms of creative marketing for Western Landcare but use of ISSUU and Brevo as well as the adoption of Google Analytics has enabled myself/the organisation to become better informed about our impact and the engagement being generated by these new look publications.
Key facts
- There is true value in creating an effective social media strategy and using current marketing tools to drive meaningful engagement
- Understanding the analytics is a key factor in creating the most effective social media and marketing strategies