ICCA

The snapshot

With a decline in member engagement, The Institute of Chartered Accountants (The Institute) wanted a centralised communication system designed to improve open and click through rates.

We worked with The Institute to learn what their members' needs were and our data team developed thirteen core segments, split into three themes, to reduce the number of communications and ensure messages were relevant.

Initial results are very promising, proving that the more targeted your message, the better the result. With regular monitoring and ongoing adjustments, communications can be targeted even further to maximise engagement.

The challenge

The Institute was experiencing a decline in member engagement, with low email open rates and ineffective communications. Our task was to improve the member engagement score from 6.74 to 6.97 by the end of 2010.With a longer term goal being to improve the Institute's ranking against other industry bodies from 18th in the tracker survey to 5th position by December 2015.

The approach

Our vision consisted of timely communications delivered with a high level of personalisation. Each communication would have a distinct visual identity and purpose. We would drive an action of outcome from every touch point.

The solution

To better understand disparate groups within the member base, we carried out an in-depth data audit.  Working with the team at ICAA we collated all available member data sources, using key variables to build a member segmentation, describing key member groups via:  employer type (business, practice, NFP/Government, overseas and unknown), life-stage (from graduate through to retired) and tenure (with the ICAA).  We created 13 distinct member segments (with the ability to group them up to 6 mega-segments), and profiled each of them using key geo-demographic and event attendance data available from the ICAA.

The results

The message is clearly getting through, with open rates up from 22.1% to 26.1% and click through rates up from 19% to 24.5%, achieved. This has resulted in significant cost savings that will improve over time as communications become more targeted, through the regular updating of data and increased segmentation.