Case Study: Royal Institution of Naval Architects

e-shot™ helps RINA build their brand and boost their bottom line

The Royal Institution of Naval Architects (RINA), is an internationally renowned professional institution whose members are involved at all levels in the design, construction, maintenance and operation of marine vessels and structures. RINA organises an extensive programme of international conferences, workshops and training courses, along with publishing a wide range of technical journals, conference proceedings and books, covering all aspects of naval architecture and the maritime industry.

Royal Institution of Naval Architects

Challenges

There are a number of ways email supports RINA’s marketing, publishing and promotional activities. This led to complex communications requirements and often challenges with deliverability. 

Email fulfils a number of strategic and tactical aims for RINA. From generating attendance in their conference and event programme, promoting products on their e-commerce website and even as a revenue stream in its own right, email is crucial.

 

Email is central to our marketing mix. We have been with e-shot™ since 2008, when we were only really focusing on event registrations. Over the years we have developed and now have much more sophisticated campaigns and even email based revenue streams. e-shot™ is essential to keeping our subscribers engaged and keeping us competitive

Graeme Mitchell, IT Manager

How e-shot™ helped

By organising their data into appropriate sub-accounts and groups RINA have complete control over their communications. Able to make sure the right people get the right messages at the right time, with the added benefit of being able to cost-effectively send out news as it happens, even if it falls between print publications. Through e-shot™ RINA can keep their subscribers informed and ensure that their media brands remain front of mind with their audience. 

RINA used to rely significantly on RSS feeds, but the ability to have more engaging contact with the audience through email, complete with imagery and tracking capabilities, opens the door to far more significant subscriber insights. 

The addition of email as a dedicated revenue stream was also made possible through e-shot™ allowing the team to create/send sponsored solus mails, promoting partners to their extensive database. 

The team also have autonomy, now they don’t have to depend on designers and can create effective, professional emails regardless of technical ability, with both an HTML expert and a marketer with no HTML knowledge able to create compelling campaigns. As both creation options in e-shot™ are intuitive and straightforward to use, it enables the team to put together campaigns quickly and easily, so they can focus more time on understanding the impact of their campaigns through the detailed reporting.

Results, ROI and the future

For the publishing arm of the business the insights from e-shot™’s reporting, feeds their understanding of levels of engagement in particular subject matter. Insight that is useful for both their email communication planning and results, but also informs the editorial and advertising teams who can focus on the most well received topics. By giving all the teams deeper understanding of the popularity of their content and what stories and advertisers are generating and retaining the most traffic, they can prioritise on profitable and engaging themes. 

Understanding the popular content also offers the team the ability to follow up on those areas, either with new or enhanced content or special promotions, offers or events related to the subject. 

Looking forward, the team are keen to build on their solid foundation to start using some of the more sophisticated campaign types and automating some of their standard communication streams, to free further time for ‘value add’ activities.

 

The majority of publications in B2B arena offer a complimentary e-news service – and it’s pretty obvious why. It’s really handy because it reminds people you are out there, building the brand. It is a good way of targeting people and helps our advertisers as a great way of getting incremental revenue. e-shot™ helps us achieve this easily and efficiently.

Martin Conway, Editor, Ship & Boat International
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