How the Intellectual Property Office builds customer relationships with govDelivery.
By using Granicus govDelivery, the Intellectual Property Office has a data-driven, email-based outreach programme to inform delegates. With it, they quickly increased subscribers while saving considerable sums in postal costs.
SITUATION
The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is responsible for intellectual property (IP) rights — including patents, designs, trademarks, and copyright — in the U.K. The IPO helps delegates understand Intellectual Property (IP) and its impact on business, culture, and the economy.
Before implementing govDelivery, IPO kept business and government stakeholders informed about IP updates, toolkits, and other resources by emailing individual contact lists held by internal team members. Though highly personalised, this approach was time-consuming, unreliable (in terms of managing responses), and offered no evaluation. Throughout the years, the IPO also organised numerous events with Companies House and other government agencies. All the invitations to these events were previously dispatched through Royal Mail, which was costly.
Neither method provided meaningful feedback about its impact on the audience. What messages were resonating with what audiences? When was the best time to send? Without this data, they were concerned about missed opportunities to reinforce valuable relationships and build a larger customer base.
Since the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the IPO has been determined to centralise the management of professional email outreach. Their goals? They wanted to improve efficiency and professionalism of stakeholder outreach, drive website traffic, and improve engagement by better understanding what their audience wanted to hear.
SOLUTION
With govDelivery, the communications team can get up and running quickly. They take advantage of govDelivery’s easy-to-use templates and are able to send targeted messages to specific audiences.
The organisation, which had already cleansed its contact lists per GDPR, has been able to further filter and organise stakeholder details into one centralised platform. They are also accessing the govDelivery Network, which rapidly grows their subscriber base through automatic referrals from other departments. In 11 months, the IPO has welcomed an average of 634 new subscribers per month, bringing its total subscriber audience to almost 27,000. The average subscriber is opting in to receive emails on at least three different topics.
RESULTS
Better Communication Builds Valuable Relationships
By managing all email outreach via the govDelivery platform, the IPO is now able to target messaging to specific data sets with pinpoint accuracy and consistent branding. Previously, the IPO could send messages about IP developments or issue invitations to events. But they struggled to evaluate the success of those messages. Now, the organisation utilises the govDelivery platform to analyse message engagement. Open rates have increased substantially — from around 15% to 30-50%. They also analyse click-throughs to the website. All this information helps the IPO better target their audience for future outreach.
Solution Pays for Itself in Savings
In the first 11 months, the IPO sent 552 email communications to 1,305,000 recipients. These messages have an overall engagement rate of 55% — well above the industry benchmark of 45%. Importantly, they no longer need to send invitations or information through the post. The savings on postage has more than paid for the cost of implementation.
The Refuse and Recycling team estimate that each time the crew did not have to return unnecessarily, they saved between £29 and £43 depending on factors like the distance travelled, traffic conditions etc.
Before govDelivery, communications were mostly sent by individuals to their own email lists. Now, with the ability to pool and organise data in one easily managed platform, it ensures compliance with GDPR and offers staff an easy to use digital platform. Team members have been reassured by the success of the govDelivery platform and its ability to demonstrate higher levels of stakeholder engagement.
