Property

The Client
EC Harris is a leading international consultancy working on the real estate, infrastructure and construction sectors. It has 40 wholly owned offices worldwide employing over 3,000 people with an annual Group turnover in excess of £200 million. Its professional skills include quantity surveying, project management, building surveying, management consultancy, software development, facilities management and 15 other disciplines including engineering and design-related professions.

Background
In the summer of 2006, EC Harris decided to review how it interacted externally with existing customers and its prospect base. 
During the review, EC Harris realised that an online strategy could save the company money, but more importantly enable it to monitor marketing campaigns more effectively. As EC Harris commenced dialogue with a number of digital providers, it became aware of Concep and its leading interactive email marketing platform, Campaigner. EC Harris was impressed with the range of functionality available via the tool and the detailed reporting that could be extracted following a mailing. As far as EC Harris was concerned the market alternatives were not as advanced as the Concep proposition.  

The Solution
Once EC Harris had familiarised itself with what could be achieved via Concep’s suite of solutions it soon became apparent that a number of key marketing activities could be made more effective through an online channel.

The distribution of Christmas cards globally was traditionally an arduous, painstaking and time intensive process. Data was held in silos and PA’s were tasked with manually writing the cards.  In addition, there was a good deal of repetition, with many partners sending cards to the same person. 

After discussions with Concep, EC Harris decided to issue e-cards.  Although there would only be one design, the delivery mechanism needed to be flexible enough to display a range of messages depending on which country it was being sent to. Also, a number of partners wanted to send their own personal greetings.  To solve this problem, Concep developed an e-card platform which sat in front of Concep Campaigner and allowed partners and other teams within the company to use an e-card template to create their own personalised cards. To maintain a degree of quality control, an approval process was introduced which enabled marketing to check the messages before the e-cards were issued. The process was now simplified, saving time and money:

• A sender profile is generated
• The user gets to choose from three subject titles – “Happy Holidays”, “Seasons Greetings” or “Merry Christmas”;
• The user creates a personalised message;
• The recipient list is electronically uploaded;
• A template is selected from the various options
• The e-card is sent

Another major marketing activity which has benefited from the use of Concep Campaigner is EC Harris’s attendance at MIPIM, one of the world’s biggest property events. Held annually in Cannes, it is perceived internally as the premier event of the year.  In 2008 over 20 employees attended the forum.

For the first time Concep Campaigner was used as the platform to send out invites to attract clients and prospects to a networking event hosted by EC Harris. To garner momentum, the tool was also used to publicise the hot topics and key industry drivers that EC Harris would be commenting upon at MIPIM. Following the success of EC Harris’s participation at the conference, Concep Campaigner was also used to thank attendees and provide follow up information.

As the understanding of the capabilities of Concep Campaigner has spread within EC Harris, the system has also been used to:
• Distribute newsletters
• Deliver invites for regional events, most recently in Birmingham and Manchester
• Communicate with the company’s Asian audiences in Hong Kong and Singapore via white papers

Most recently, Concep Campaigner has been used to invite customers to EC Harris’s hospitality box at the Emirates Stadium  
Overall, an important aspect of the Concep solution was to provide EC Harris’s in-house design team with flexible templates that could be adapted to the message that was being conveyed. As far as the recipient was concerned, he or she would never receive a standard invite from the firm, the look and feel of the communication could be changed depending on the requirement. 

The Result
For the Christmas e-card campaign, over 5,000 emails were sent out to a number of different countries.  Just under 10% of recipients responded to each individual card, which for the time of year is an extremely high response rate. Due to its success, the same platform has also been used for the distribution of Chinese New Year e-cards.

At MIPIM, EC Harris was limited to the number of guests it could accommodate.  Therefore, the email invite needed to be staggered so as to limit the possibility of over subscription. The functionality available through Concep Campaigner enabled a ceiling to be placed on attendees which resulted in the controlled registration of more than 100 recipients. The campaign achieved an average overall view rate of 40%.  

The EC Harris online marketing team can now send out a range of communications online. This diversity has, in turn, built up acceptance of Concep Campaigner across the organisation. In addition, EC Harris is now able to electronically survey its audience to ensure that the material that is being issued is relevant and of interest.  

Testimonial
Michelle Reeve, Online Marketing Manager, at EC Harris said:  “We are constantly trying to improve our marketing communications. The simple fact that we can now access real time data enables us to judge the effectiveness of any particular campaign in a very short space of time. The reality is that the traditional approach to direct marketing does not provide this type of information.
“We are now able to feed the results back into the business which in turn gives the email marketing platform greater credibility. We now know what our view rates are and what links were followed. In terms of future campaigns this data is invaluable. As the education process continues within the company, the general consensus is that Campaigner will be pivotal to our communications for many years to come.”