Interactive newsletter design and production
CT Brief with Campbell Tickell
Digital and Design
“As our key digital publication, the CT Brief in its new format, has radically improved the user experience and enables us to build brand trust and awareness through our expertly written articles. We are no longer experiencing the difficulties we faced with PDFs. See Media have been invaluable in enabling this to happen through their dedicated support and expertise.”
Marketing & Communications Manager, Campbell TickellSee Media has supported Campbell Tickell (CT) by producing its bi-monthly external newsletter, CT Brief, for the past seven years. The newsletter had always been produced in PDF form, but the limitations of this medium were beginning to hold CT back in developing its relationship with existing and potential customers.
The project brief was to present a more modern face to CT clients and stakeholders in the UK. These are: senior professionals across housing, regeneration, social care, local government, public bodies, charities, and sports sectors. As part of this, CT wanted the CT Brief to:
- Provide much better functionality and interactivity to readers
- Work seamlessly across a range of devices
- Make full use of the video and other content that CT is now creating
- Better track and monitor impact – something the PDF approach did not support. CT wanted to see which articles generated the most interest and tailor its content and support accordingly
- Be delivered for the same budget
See Media began by discussing CT’s needs in detail and then explored the market for options. A key decision was whether to continue to do an interactive PDF, but on a page-turner? Or to go for a digital publication platform? See Media evaluated the options and presented these to CT. Our recommendation was to go with a digital publication platform, Foleon as:
- We could see that this would best meet CT’s needs and support them into the future
- Each completed publication could be seamlessly added to CT’s website and directly hosted there, thus eliminating any potential third-party service disruption
- Foleon is fully reactive and so works across all devices
- It would be possible to use this for other CT publications in addition to the CT Brief
- See Media would commit to invest in the Foleon platform and ensure per page costs remained the same for CT
CT reviewed See Media’s research and agreed that Foleon was the best option.
In addition to undertaking extensive team training, See Media produced a test version of the CT Brief to add to the CT website to ensure there would be no problems when the first new CT Brief was uploaded.
The following steps were then taken:
- Full training for See Media project managers, production editors and designers in use of the Foleon platform
- SEO training undertaken to ensure best use made of SEO tags on each individual Foleon page
- Created a set of templates that allowed for the use of video, audio and other interactive elements, while also remaining in line with the CT brand
- Each CT Brief planned by CT and content reviewed by See Media to ensure maximum impact with the target audience
- All articles edited and expertly designed by the See Media team
- Video content used wherever possible to augment written content
- At least 3-4 rounds of feedback for each publication
Nine CT Briefs have so far been published in the new format since April 2020. CT analysis shows:
- On average 3,330 unique page views per issue – a six-fold increase on the previous PDF version
- CT Brief Mailchimp email campaign clicks increased 63% from 905 in 2019/20 to 1,479 in 2020/21
- Total unique page views across the first six Foleon CT Brief issues was more than 21,000, contributing to about 10% of all CT website traffic in those 12 months
- On average, more than half those reading the CT Brief, are ‘new users’ (55%) and the other are ‘returning users’ (45%)
