Case Study: Engaging Essex on health and wellbeing

Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System works to deliver support and advice across a wide range of health and wellbeing topics. The system consists of all the NHS organisations, local authorities and the voluntary sector responsible for the health and wellbeing of 1.2 million residents of Mid and South Essex. 

“During the pandemic email became a critical tool to get information out quickly and efficiently, and this inspired the way we now use email as a key part of our digital communications. We have also found that our audience also prefer to receive information via email, so they can keep the information at their fingertips”

Important and in-depth topics

Mid and South Essex have six key topics that they focus on.  These topics involve ongoing campaigns including ‘Children’s Health Matters’, which is intended for parents and caregivers, ‘My health matters’ an email series that offers advice on lifestyle changes such as how to break unhealthy habits and  ‘Mental Health Matters’ which advises subscribers on how they can help their mental health, when to know when further support may be needed, and the mental health benefits of keeping active and eating healthily.

Large, disparate, geographically spread audiences

Alongside these external audiences which they have worked to increase to over 10,000 subscribers, the team also connect and update their primary care network, GPs, pharmacists, dentists and optometrists as well as their own large network of staff who are spread throughout the area. 

Reduction of workforce

Re-organisations over the last couple of years meant that we have gone from a team of ~25 members to a team of just 7, so anything that helps with capacity or can save time is essential to the success of our department. e-shot has been able to support both through the ease of use of the platform which really saves time and the ability to set up automated campaigns that can run in the background with minimal on-going involvement or resource to support it. We have also found the template library invaluable and use the national campaign templates that e-shot create to support our local messaging.

Segmentation and subscriber number growth

Email plays a pivotal role in a range of tools that Mid & South Essex use to engage and inform their staff and residents, and through the cross-pollination of channels, and effective use of email to support in-person events and consultations the team have steadily grown their subscriber numbers. Along with capturing contact information other key segmentation information is also captured, in particular geographical location, to ensure personalisation of messages and that the right local information goes to the right people as there are nuances to which services are available where throughout the area the ICS serves. Segmentation of interest is also provided through the subscription to the various available topics registrants can choose from.

For their internal audience, the segmentation is based on area of specialism and role – again to ensure that the right people receive the right information.

The Marie Curie palliative care survey

Marie Curie were running an engagement exercise looking to survey people around the topic of end of life care. There were 6 ICBs in the east of England that took part, and through the strategic use of email Mid & South Essex were able to  meet 98% survey completion purely through the use of two targeted email campaigns (with just four email sends).

Engagement Analytics

A key reason for moving to e-shot was the quality of the analytics available, both at a campaign and contact level. With e-shot it is also possible to delay the sending time or speed to have  complete control over the larger sends, along with the ability to analyse the response times and better performing send times.

Transparency and Collaboration

The e-shot account includes area for both the ICB and the Trust to operate their campaigns from. These sections are completely separate, and all data held is owner by the section owner but the costs have been shared as well as giving senior team members the opportunity to view the campaigns each entity is focused on. This subaccount structure supports both different organisations, but also different departments. It also ensures that staff and resident data are kept separate. Templates, modules (segments of designs) and messages can be shared to save time and improve consistency. Collaboration has improved as a result along with a shared financial responsibility.