Rachael Bell of the New Jersey Society of CPAs presents how she's using HighRoad Solution's Newsletter Xpress + tool to automate her society's newsletters.
• What data don’t we have now that we really need?
Move from Segment to Persona
Process: Take each segment and: 1) Name it 2) Describe it 3) Write the “day in the life” and benefit statement to clarify the business purpose of this segment to the organization
Persona: “Content Colleen”
User’s Journey Map
4
5
6
1
2
3
4
5
7
6
8
Shift to CIA Method • Consolidate • Integrate • Automate -Newsletter Comms -Inbound Marketing -Event Marketing & Management
Sending Members What They Want The NJSCPA’s quest for a customized e-newsletter
Rachael Bell | Digital Communications Manager New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants
The Problem • 15,000 individual members • 1,800,000 emails per year • 6 e-newsletters; dozens of stand-alone emails • Emails were not responsive • No brand continuity • TOO MANY EMAILS!
Presenter
Presentation Notes
The New Jersey Society of CPAs is an individual member association with 15,000 members – consisting of CPAs, CPA candidates and college accounting students. We send approximately 1,800,000 email messages per year – which averages 120 messages per member per year = 10 messages per month = approx. one email every other work day. Way too much!! We also have too many email vehicles: Six email newsletters – two for all members and four for specific segments of members. In addition, we sent dozens of stand-alone emails per month to promote our events and services. With one exception, the emails were not responsively designed, leaving our mobile users with a less-than-desirable experience. Plus, we went through a rebranding last year, and the emails have not been updated to reflect that branding.
The Solution • Rebrand • Consolidate several e-newsletters • Deliver customized content in a single
e-newsletter based on each member’s demographics and interests
Presenter
Presentation Notes
The desired solution was to consolidate several of the e-newsletters into a new, responsively designed, customizable publication. We didn’t know how we were going to pull it off until we saw a presentation by HighRoad last fall where they discussed a customized e-newsletter they were working on for ASAE. We knew we needed to be the next customer in line!
On the Chopping Block • E-NEWS – bi-weekly e-newsletter for all
members • E-YoungCPA – monthly e-newsletter for
members and subscribers age 35 and under • Tomorrow’s CPA – monthly e-newsletter for
student members and nonmember accounting students
Presenter
Presentation Notes
We identified three e-newsletters that could be eliminated, and instead that content could be included in a new, customized publication. E-NEWS was our all-member, bi-weekly e-newsletter that contained professional news, Society news and job postings. E-YoungCPA was a monthly e-newsletter for those age 35 and under containing career guidance, work/life balance tips and networking events. Tomorrow’s CPA was a monthly e-newsletter for student members and nonmember accounting students containing CPA Exam guidance, scholarship information and helpful articles. Every young CPA member received E-NEWS and E-YoungCPA. Every student member received E-NEWS and Tomorrow’s CPA. We knew we could do a better job of delivering all of this content to them in one package.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Here’s a quick visual of these three publications.
The Process • Design • Taxonomy • Content repository
– Sitefinity, Aptify • Data sharing • Naming the publication – Oy!
Presenter
Presentation Notes
We kicked off the process with HighRoad in December. We concurrently worked on: The design. Our brand team had developed a design template which HighRoad converted to responsive HTML. The taxonomy. We had to develop a tagging system to identify which recipients should receive each content item. Categories of our taxonomy include: Member type Member segment Role Areas of Interest We then had to develop a content repository: For news items, we used our CMS, Sitefinity. We are able to enter each piece of content and tag it for the location in the newsletter as well as the audiences who should receive it. Our events are already in our AMS, Aptify, so we developed a process to deliver those events to HighRoad for inclusion in the newsletter. We developed a simple section in Aptify to house our job postings (via a third-party site) for inclusion in the newsletter. And we used Sitefinity to enter the banner ads that are to appear in each issue – along with their location within the issue. The next step in the process was to work out all the kinks with sharing the Sitefinity and Aptify data with HighRoad. Lastly, we had to come up with a name for this new publication. Those of you who have gone through a naming process with a publication or program can probably sympathize with the arduous process we went through. But we ultimately landed on a name we love: NJCPA Pulse.
Readiness for Integration & Automation
The Result • Launched May 8th • Sent to 15,200 people
– 25% open rate. No complaints!
• Flexible platform • Dual purpose
– Recruitment tool
Presenter
Presentation Notes
We launched Pulse on May 8. It was sent to 15,200 people. The open rate of 23% is a little below what E-NEWS used to get. However, because it is a new publication, we did run into some blocking issues with members’ spam filters. Now that we’ve worked those issues out, we expect the next issue on May 22 to have a higher deliverability and open rate. We all know that members don’t rush out to compliment you on a program or service, so I was not expecting that. I consider the launch a success because we didn’t receive any complaints! We are super happy with the flexible platform we worked with HighRoad to develop. We are able to deliver customized content to each member, and we can even tailor how we present something based on member criteria. For instance, we can promote our annual convention to members in public practice one way and to young professionals another way. We also look forward to Pulse being a recruitment tool. E-NEWS was a members-only publication. But Pulse is open for anyone to subscribe to. We will be adjusting our member recruitment efforts to be a softer sell. Instead of immediately asking them to join the association, we’re going to invite them to subscribe to Pulse. We can then include recruitment messaging in Pulse, targeted specifically at nonmember CPAs. So, want to see what it looks like?
Presenter
Presentation Notes
(Jump out to the full samples of the publication) The first section, Featured News, is for the most important professional news and information. The second section, Society News, is for NJSCPA programs and services. Next we have a banner ad spot. Then there’s More News. These for additional items that didn’t make the cut for the Featured News or Society News sections. After that is the Events section, followed by Talk – a section that we use to highlight social media content, conversations from our online community, live chat Q&As, etc. And last is the Jobs section. This is the only section that is not customized, since we have no way of knowing which members are looking for a job and what type of job they are seeking. So everyone gets the 8 most recently posted jobs.
Looking Ahead • Phase 2
– Test chapter content
• Phase 3 – Eliminate CPE Connection and
chapter e-newsletters – Increase frequency to weekly
Presenter
Presentation Notes
We have future plans for Pulse. In Phase 2, which will likely happen 6-12 months down the road, we want to include a member’s chapter-specific information within Pulse. Our chapter e-newsletters currently have very high open and click rates. So we don’t want to jeopardize that success. We want to run concurrently with chapter info in Pulse while keeping the chapter e-newsletters to compare results. If the results warrant it, then we’ll move to Phase 3. We ultimately would like to roll the chapter content as well as more event-related content into Pulse, and the eliminate the chapter e-newsletters and CPE Connection, a monthly e-newsletter for members and nonmembers that promotes our upcoming events. Because this will result in a lot more information being included in Pulse, we anticipate distribution would be increased to weekly.
Keys to Success: Designing Digital Ecosystems
• Platform Openness • Cross-Functional Team with Unified Goal (Marketing, Tech, Graphic Design, Programs) • Knowledge of Member Data & Target Groups • Purpose of Data Capture & Reporting
Keys to Success: Repurpose What U Have
Keys to Success: Hyper-Personalization
Questions & Contact Info Rachael Bell Digital Communications Manager New Jersey Society of CPAs [email protected] 973-226-4494 x220 @rachaelbell
