CIELO MARKETING CASE STUDIES

The Governance Institute:
Conference Brochure Update

Background:
The Governance Institute has produced educational conferences and materials for boards of non-profit hospitals since 1986. They operate on an annual membership model with 475 members, out of 3,500 non-profit facilities. Members and non-members are encouraged to attend the six conferences held each year in resort locations. The 8-page brochure, developed in-house, was mailed out two times before each conference to a homegrown list of hospital CEOs, board members and any over previous attendees.

Challenges:
The company’s conference department produced their materials independently from the publications department so the look and feel was uncoordinated and occasionally conflicting. They had never spent any money on an outside agency. They also had conflicting survey results about why attendees selected certain conferences, making it difficult to prioritize messaging and organize content.

Solutions:
We facilitated a brainstorming session among company management to isolate features of the current materials they valued, aspects they didn’t like, surveyed members about their needs, and then overhauled the layout, established a new template for the 2006 slate of conferences and created a new icon to act as a unifying logo throughout all the materials associated with conferences such as the Education Agenda, at-conference binders, online calendar and even the registration booth.

Then we brought in a database company to append the existing mailing list and identify who on the list was not likely to be current. With that information and a contract for monthly database updates only on the most valuable prospect titles, we reduced the mailing list from more than 14,000 names to just over 9,000. Last, we negotiated a long-term contract with the mailing house for smaller drops mailed more frequently.

Results:
The brochure grew to 10 pages with a tip-out registration form on the last page, perforated to make it easy to return to the company, the layout was simplified and white space added to improve readability, the resort hotel was featured more prominently as a benefit of the conference and the speaker topic descriptions were massaged to indicate a theme for each conference. Other departments picked up the look voluntarily for their own projects. 3,000 out-of-date names were dropped from the mailing list, saving the company $12,200 in ineffective mailing. Through efficiencies in delivering the target lists to the mail house, the company realized another $1,000 in savings. Registrations for 2007 conferences were 114% of goal.

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