Optimized newsletters for the Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian War Museum

Mandate

To support the great popularity of their events and exhibitions, the team at the Canadian Museum of History (CMH) and the Canadian War Museum (CWM) sought solutions to reach their subscribers more effectively with their newsletters. That's why they approached us in 2022 to be accompanied throughout the process.

The work to be done as part of this digital partnership was divided into two main aspects:

1. Firstly, we were asked to provide recommendations to help the Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian War Museum choose the best email marketing tool according to their needs.
2. Next, we needed to revamp the design of the newsletters and implement best practices for creating and sending these emails.

With this ongoing mandate, the museums aimed to achieve several objectives:

• Save time by simplifying and optimizing the process of creating and sending newsletters;
• Increase the level of engagement of newsletter subscribers;
• Create uniform and easy-to-reuse templates;
• Measure the performance level of marketing emails more effectively.

Realisations

Technological Recommendations

For the first aspect of the mandate, we initially provided a series of technological recommendations using various elements, including:

• An analysis of specialized sources used;
• An audit of the currently used tools;
• Information on potential technological solutions;
• A heuristic evaluation of interfaces;
• Feedback from different expert users;
• Interviews with representatives of the selected technological solution.

After conducting a comprehensive analysis of the organization's needs and challenges for their newsletters, we provided a series of recommendations. Among them, we suggested the use of a flexible technological solution like Dialog Insight for newsletter management, as well as ways to revise the process of sending automated emails.

Newsletter Redesign

Once the new technological solution was implemented, it was time to embark on the second part of the mandate: creating newsletter templates that are easy to fill out and evolve over time according to the needs.

We developed simplified and standardized template designs with reusable modules to provide maximum flexibility for different types of newsletters sent, including:

• News updates from the Canadian Museum of History;
• News updates from the Canadian War Museum;
• Invitations to an exhibition or event.

In addition to designing simplified and reusable templates, we incorporated the color palettes specific to CMH and CWM to adapt each template to both museums. We also implemented writing tools with character limits to reduce the amount of text used in each section of the newsletters.

The Beginning of a New Business Relationship

This newsletter redesign mandate marks the beginning of a promising relationship with the CMH and CWM teams. And we will be there, if needed, to accompany them in the next steps of their digital growth!