Member Associations

The Client
The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is an independent engineering institution established in 1818, and today represents almost 80,000 professionally qualified civil engineers worldwide. ICE is the leading source of information and comment on all civil engineering issues. With the world's most prominent engineering professionals amongst their membership, they provide an authoritative view on news subjects such as transport policy, sustainable development, energy and water supply.

The Pain
ICE traditionally communicated with its large member base through printed direct mail, at a very high cost to the organisation. This channel failed to offer any immediate response or comment from members and without this invaluable feedback, failed to provide any real understanding of how successful each campaign was. ICE complimented this approach with HTML email to communicate to its many audience segments, but head office was unable to control the branded email communications being delivered from multiple divisions and offices regionally. The HTML emails again failed to offer comprehensive reporting in order to gauge the success of the campaigns being sent. A global email platform was required to allow users across the UK to reproduce brand consistency in all email communications.

The Solution
After consultation between ICE and Concep a number of key requirements were identified and incorporated into a roll-out plan. One of the initial steps was to develop a regular communications strategy with various members as well as design and set-up a number of templates giving flexibility to regional office users, enabling them to select a template dependant on campaign objectives. For example templates were designed for campaigns promoting events, projects and other initiatives including research. A selection of templates was also designed offering less flexibility ensuring full brand control on specific communications. As well as delivering communications that reflect the ICE brand, the membership organisation was able to quickly create and deliver email campaigns on an ad hoc basis when required. Gathering feedback has been another vital element and requirement for ICE as email surveys can be created and delivered to specific audiences within a matter of minutes, with 80% of feedback collected within 48 hours. Results can then be utilised within published articles that feature in newsletters. The system implemented also allowed users at all levels to build their own campaigns whilst monitoring the success of each campaign by utilising the interactive reporting capabilities of the Concep campaigner system. This allowed the users to further tailor campaigns by monitoring all real time interactions. Concep worked closely with ICE to devise an integrated e-newsletter called MyICE, which is delivered on a fortnightly basis to 30,000 plus members. The branded email is delivered via Concep campaigner directly to the recipient with various article summaries linking to further information using Concep's latest multi-page template technology.

The Results
The solution enables ICE to include a large variety of news and specific content in one single email, enabling each recipient to select articles of interest. The Concep campaigner reporting system reports on the click through rates (interaction rates) for each article and if needed will break these figures down on a per recipient basis. ICE can then tailor future content to suit the levels of interest shown in previous campaigns. ICE is now utilising the latest email template technology with the Concep multi-page system allowing newsletters to be defined by areas of expertise, allowing recipients to interact with relevant and timely articles specifically of interest to them. Campaigns to members are now conducted on a more regular and targeted basis improving overall interaction rates. ICE now has over 13 regional email accounts over and above the administration accounts, allowing the organisation to streamline processes and allow regional areas to manage their data more effectively.