The Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority (SFPA) oversees the effective and fair regulation of the Irish Sea-Fishing and Seafood Sectors. A relatively new organisation, it had a directive to produce a content rich email newsletter for internal communications. The SFPA selected Newsweaver’s unique microsite technology to produce and send multi-page email newsletters to all staff and offices located around the country.

 

 

The SFPA needed to ensure that relevant internal news was disseminated in a timely fashion to staff.  Eleanor Buckley, Communications Manager for SFPA says they were looking for a solution that allowed them to get information out quickly and reduce the volume of emails sent. SFPA selected Newsweaver because email newsletters address the challenges of lessening lead times and reducing emails. Eleanor says Newsweaver also provided a unique microsite technology, which lets SFPA create as many back pages as are needed for an issue.

 

 

By using a microsite for their email newsletter, SFPA can put as many articles as they want into each issue. The front page features article summaries, with a link for each that takes readers to a specific article located on a back page of the newsletter’s microsite. No additional IT help is required – as article back pages are automatically generated as needed. This ‘walled garden’ environment keeps readers within the email newsletter pages, and encourages multiple article readership. An additional benefit of the microsite is that multimedia, such as videos and photos, are easy to embed into the newsletter’s back pages.

 

 

SFPA first ran a pilot project to get feedback, identify content sources, create an editorial team and build a strategy for going forward. They then launched a monthly email newsletter. Almost a year later and engagement remains impressive. Open rates have been consistently above 60%. The SFPA has taken advantage of Newsweaver’s report system to track activity over several issues and have found that almost 90% of readers open at least one in three issues. In addition, most subscribers read three or more articles (out of seven offered) in every newsletter. Eleanor says they use these details to ensure important information has been received by staff, including content decisions for future editions.