Opportunity

The National Education Association (NEA) is the nation’s largest professional employee organization, made up of 50 individual state affiliates. The organization sought to centralize and coordinate all member email communications; however, it was clear that the state affiliates did not need another technology – they needed a strategy for email collection, data management, email deployment, tracking and sharing best practices. The NEA engaged Mansell Group to implement an enterprise email messaging strategy within the national home office as well as state affiliates. The primary objectives of the program included collecting 75% of all members’ email addresses, creating branded templates, consulting on content development, and integrating a central email messaging application with their primary membership database.

Solution

Mansell Group began by visiting with 15 individual state affiliates to build upon our three years of knowledge of NEA. These travels exposed Mansell Group to state affiliates that had limited resources, limited time and shrinking budgets. After visiting with state affiliates and key stakeholders Mansell Group performed primary research by surveying current NEA members (teachers) and assessing what content is most valued by them.

Using all available data from years of experience, in-person visits and survey data, our team proposed the creation of the Member Matters program. At the heart of the Member Matters program was the idea that teachers wanted to feel “valued” by their association and desired content that helped them. The Member Matters program delivered to each state a repeatable program that included state specific templates, content recommendations, email collection strategy and a single email messaging application integrated with their national membership database.

The application and database allows for advanced campaign management; however, the team developed targeted training methods to drive maximum adoption and utilization within the remote field staff. This training was custom developed specifically for NEA and continues to be refined to meet NEA's very specific needs.

Results

In partnership with NEA, Mansell Group accomplished all predefined objectives. Today, NEA can communicate with 75% of its members via email, each state communicates with a controlled state-specific email template, and all email is deployed through a centralized application that is integrates directly with their national membership database.