Campaign of the Month

Improved design and CTA deliver higher engagement for RIBA CPD Roadshows

Learn how RIBA got more seats booked through higher engagement with their emails.

With an improved design and copy, RIBA got more seats booked through higher engagement with their emails.

Company name: Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)
Designed and developed by: Andrew Green
Website: www.ribacpd.com

Campaign details

Subject line: Registration now live for the RIBA Glasgow CPD Roadshow
Open: 26%
Click: 20% of opened

Context

What data was used?

The RIBA database filtered by region, including previous attendees of the Glasgow CPD Roadshow.

Who was the campaign targeted at?

People who had previously attended a RIBA Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Roadshow in Glasgow and those who subscribed to receive news from RIBA CPD. The CPD Roadshows are one-day events where construction and design professionals gain up-to-date knowledge and enhance personal proficiency.

Objective

  • Increase number of registered participants to CPD Roadshows.

What makes this a performing campaign?

RIBA were experiencing low click-through rates (CTR) in their emails, which in turn affected participation at their CPD Roadshows. They experimented with different Calls-to-Action (CTA) and an improved design to see if engagement with their emails improve.

RIBA adopted a simplified and responsive design with sections differentiated by color blocks, and clearer CTA buttons in contrasting colors. They cut the copy of their emails to focus on key messages. RIBA also introduced more than one CTA around the different areas of interest of potential attendees. So they added ‘View more seminar topics’, ‘Getting to the venue’ and ‘Learn more’.

Adestra’s Heatmap and Link Reports gave RIBA insight into the success of this different approach so that they could replicate it in the future.

The results

This campaign was compared to a previous one promoting a CPD Roadshow in the same city, which used the old campaign design and single CTA. Using Adestra’s Reporting functionalities RIBA discovered the difference:

  1. Old campaign: 7.8% open rate and 10% CTOR
  2. New campaign: 26% open rate and 20% CTOR

This means a fantastic improvement of 233% and 100%, respectively.

Also, Adestra’s Heatmap feature revealed that 59% of the total clicks were driven by the ‘View more seminar topics’ CTA. This was a new CTA introduced in the new format of the campaign. The second most popular CTA was ‘Book your place now’ scoring 49% of the total clicks.