About
A world leader in providing weather and climate services, the Met Office delivers accurate forecasts and important weather data to millions of citizens, the government, businesses, and other organisations. Clear and timely communication is critical to ensuring people are well-informed and equipped to prepare and respond appropriately to changing forecasts. The Met Office uses govDelivery to deliver weather updates (including the National Severe Weather Warnings Service) to 250,000 email subscribers.
"The Granicus campaign had a strong impact on our ability to reach, engage and convert new and existing Met Office audiences. The campaign drove approximately 11,000 downloads of our new weather app in just over one month; far surpassing the initial target of 5,000 downloads."
Lisa Martin
Senior Marketing Manager, Met Office
SITUATION
Staying a step ahead of the weather
The Met Office recently launched a new mobile weather app to help more people stay one step ahead of the weather. They wanted to make people aware of the new app and increase downloads, setting a target of 5,000 downloads to be attributable to a time-bound digital campaign delivered in partnership with Granicus. The Met Office also wanted to increase the number of people subscribing to email updates (especially their National Severe Weather Warnings), and to maximise the impact of this channel on app downloads.
SOLUTION
Leveraging Granicus’ expertise for Met Office’s winter campaign
The Met Office enlisted the support of Granicus’ dedicated Digital Engagement Services team for an email outreach campaign to run during winter with the aim to increase awareness and downloads of the new app among new and existing subscribers.
To help maximise the campaign reach, the Met Office took a prominent position in the govDelivery Network; a network exclusively for organisations using Granicus’ digital engagement technologies which provides access to millions of citizens who have opted to engage with other central and local government organisations. As citizens subscribe to one organisation’s digital updates, as a final step, they are invited to subscribe to the Met Office’s services too.
This visibility in the network, coupled with a powerful website “overlay” message, enabled the Met Office to engage and “convert” thousands more people into action; specifically, to sign up for email updates and download the app.
To drive more downloads of the app among subscribers, Granicus designed and implemented a custom footer for use across the Met Office’s email updates. Granicus crafted a series of five email messages targeting existing subscribers, aligning the artwork and messaging with the Met Office’s winter campaign collateral.
"We were able to attract new audiences through strategic placement in the govDelivery Network, giving us a means to immediately inform thousands more people of severe weather in their area, helping them to plan ahead and keep themselves and their loved ones safe."
Lisa Martin
Senior Marketing Manager, Met Office
RESULTS
Meteoric success exceeds expectations
By collaborating with Granicus for this one-month campaign, the Met Office smashed its target of 5,000 downloads by 120%, prompting 11,000 people to download the app. Spikes in downloads correlated with email sends. The emails deployed during this campaign achieved an average open rate 43% higher than the Met Office’s average, and a click rate 121% higher than usual.
Prime placement in the govDelivery Network led to an 11% increase in subscribers originating from the network (on the previous year). The website overlay was in place for two weeks only and drove 4,673 people to subscribe to updates; a 618% increase on the same period the year before, and a 1,160% increase in comparison to the same timeframe during each of the previous six months.
