Ak@Play

Playing in the digital space brings event information to thousands of Aucklanders

The Results

  • Consistent 65% open rate, with a further 30% click-through on at least one story; 5,000 click-throughs in total
  • Minimal unsubscribing
  • The Council has already exceeded its goal of 10,000 subscribers. The current rate of subscriber acquisition is around 300 per month
  • Quality of interaction is high and validated as Council can see who has opened the newsletter and what was viewed

The challenge

Auckland City Council (ACC) oversees a vast and diverse number of events, exhibitions and venues. From parks, volunteer tree planning, recreational centres, libraries, art galleries, a zoo, international cultural festivals, and teddy bear picnics, Aucklanders have a huge range of leisure options to choose from.

An expansive organisational structure meant that Council event promotion tended to be done on a granular basis. Therefore, Aucklanders commonly sought out their favourite things to do and stuck to them, missing out on events that they otherwise might have attended had they known about them.

Since a high proportion of the two million plus annual visitors to the Council's website, www.aucklandcity.govt.nz, accessed its events section, the clear indication was that a single access point was the best way to expose Aucklanders to a larger number of leisure time options.

The Solution

To address the gap, ACC created a new brand called ‘Ak@Play – 1001 things to do every day’, which brought together all of Auckland's leisure options under a single, searchable portal.

Portal visitors can choose to subscribe to a weekly e-newsletter, which delivers updates and information via email. The Council uses a number of channels to promote Ak@Play, including the back page of City Scene, which reaches 168,000 households every week as well as the Ak@Play brochure published at the beginning of summer and distributed to 300,000 Auckland City households and businesses.

Gary Wilton, marketing strategy manager, Auckland City, explains the campaign’s success: "An ASP solution like Touchpoint is fantastic from our point of view because you can forget about the administration and concentrate on the communication, which is our core business skill.

"What's been fascinating for me as a marketer is that when we first launched the e-newsletter we were thinking about researching subscribers to find out who they were and their interests, which is what you do, classically. But this is now old thinking as reporting tools and database driven communications mean you get the necessary information without having to directly canvass your subscribers.

"Launching a mass e-newsletter is nerve wracking. Your brand is at stake. You've got to make sure the content is meeting recipients' needs in the first two-to-three deliveries. You don't get a second chance after that. With reporting tools that provide immediate feedback it is easy to protect your brand, because you are able to react and change content, should you need to."

How Touchpoint technology helped

Marketing database management: NZTE can manage their marketing database, view comprehensive reports and query, maintain and extract data securely.

Interactive messaging: gives NZTE the ability to create and deliver personalised communications across different channels.

Content management: NZTE can maximise their relationships with Aucklanders by managing and updating their web content.

Campaign management: NZTE can create, execute and report on multichannel campaigns.

Reporting: real time reporting provides a dashboard view of databases and campaign participation, and can be used to track consumer behaviour.

Auckland City Council
Brand
Auckland City Council

Campaign
Ak@Play

Channels
  • Web
  • Email

Target audience
300,000 Aucklanders