Mid and South Essex Health and Care partnership strengthens its ICS communications with Granicus

Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership, a partnership of the all the NHS organisations and councils responsible for health and wellbeing for Mid and South Essex, has gone live with an integrated communications solution from Granicus, a leading provider of digital solutions to the public sector.

The organisation, which completed the implementation of Granicus’ govDelivery in September 2021, acquired the cloud-based, integrated communications platform to enable the organisation to create e-marketing campaigns. The platform will help the service engage with its subscriber base on relevant health and social care topics — with campaigns targeted to staff, stakeholders, and partners in the community — and it will also be used to create and distribute several newsletters in the local area.

As of first of July 2022, Mid and South Essex will become an Integrated Care System (ICS), subject to the passage of the new health and care bill currently undergoing parliamentary review; as a result it will join forces with other organisations within the region, meaning they will have one communications directive. The govDelivery platform will support communications to stakeholders around any changes that will arise as a result and feed into the new ICS website with news round-up sections.

The Partnership is also one of the first UK customers to utilise the Granicus Experience Group (GXG) service; an in-house team of digital experts and strategists who conduct audience research to create targeted digital messaging campaigns, to support Mid and South Essex in creating and distribute a winter 2021/2022 campaign, in which residents can sign up for winter alerts. Through this, subscribers will get a weekly email with health advice, such as how to boost your immunity, the importance of checking in on elderly or vulnerable relatives, looking after your mental health, or reminders around getting a COVID-19 booster or flu vaccination.

This will encourage people to take control of their own care and wellbeing with a view to reducing pressure on the service during the busy winter period. The campaign is already running above benchmark for all high-level stats so far, with 1620 current subscribers for alerts and emails, an open rate of 44.8% and 76% engagement rate, well above the industry engagement rate benchmark of 50%.

James Sharp, Digital Media and Marketing Manager at Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership says, “We were drawn to the Granicus govDelivery platform because it’s tailored for the public sector, along with the analytics and the results it provides.

We find its functionality is much more pointed towards our needs as an organisation. We wanted to engage with a wider demographic amongst our residents by offering them a choice of how they wanted to be communicated with; whether that’s by email, website or mobile notification.

“We are also seeing some excellent results from our winter campaign powered through Granicus’ platform and we haven’t seen a significant number of unsubscribes from the campaign. Users are signing up and staying subscribed for the whole series.”

Ian Roberts, Managing Director at Granicus UK says, “NHS communications need to be clear, timely and secure, and our platforms are designed with this in mind. We are excited to see how Mid and South Essex are using the govDelivery platform and the outputs of our Granicus Experience Group (GXG) service, and we are even more excited to see how they will use it next. We hope that through the application of smart and interesting content made possible through this system, Mid and South Essex will continue to see their digital marketing engagement rise.”

As a next step, Mid and South Essex is looking to expand its platform to include weather alerts and advice based on data shared with the organisation directly by the Met Office, as well as also looking at fresh ways to engage with subscribers through a new podcast service.

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