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UKRIO - growing brand visibility through social media and email marketing

The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) is a registered charity set up to provide independent and expert support on good research practice. They help the UK research community to do the best research that it can – work of the highest integrity, quality and efficacy.

UKRIO provides support towards research integrity through education, training and development. They provide resources and advisory services to their subscribers, especially in UK universities.

A composite of 2 screenshots with X and LinkedIn. The background is a gradient going from blue to pink.

Project overview

Scaramanga started working with UKRIO in 2022 to develop a stronger brand presence and identity to their subscribers and potential subscribers of research organisations, including universities.

We developed a marketing strategy across multiple channels, including social media, their website, email marketing and printed marketing materials to promote events, webinars, research white papers and evergreen resources.

Our approach

We started by identifying the different audience segments, their specific needs and how the subscription model could be enhanced. We then established a marketing plan that reinforced UKRIO’s existing value to subscribers, attract prospects and raise their profile amongst other relative stakeholder groups.

Following this, we created a strategy centred around content creation, event promotion, media coverage of the organisation, industry consultations and evergreen resources.

Email marketing

  • Monthly newsletter to UKRIO’s database
  • Email campaigns around each of their events and webinars to introduce speakers and encourage sign-ups
  • Launch of new services
  • Built the database with relevant target contacts

Social media marketing

  • Active organic posting and engagement on LinkedIn, X and Mastodon
  • Set up LinkedIn’s newsletter function and sent fortnightly to an ever growing subscriber list
  • Actively promoted webinars across all platforms. Our content creation ensured easy sign-ups and high engagement
  • Worked closely with UKRIO to keep their community up to date with crucial industry updates and misconduct cases

New service launches

  • Online training programme to UKRIO’s subscriber base and promoted it to prospective subscribers.
  • Worked closely with UKRIO to develop their new subscriber packages, proposition and marketing materials
  • Launched new reports and consultations 

Press and media relations

  • Wrote and distributed press release emails for a variety of campaigns including new reports, resources and senior appointments
  • Engaged with all industry media outlets and interacted on social media

Engagement campaigns and community building

  • Ran challenges on research integrity topics, driving high engagement and increasing UKRIO’s following
  • By following relevant stakeholders and engaging with them, we raised awareness of UKRIO’s work.

Data-driven decisions

  • Analytics from Zoho Social informed our decision-making, optimising timings for posts for when their followers were most active
  • Monitoring which posts and email marketing campaigns were most effective to ensure maximum engagement and impressions
  • Introduced "last chance" emails for webinars which significantly increased registrations

Results delivered

Over the course of our time working with UKRIO we saw the following increases across their social media, webinar and email marketing:

Chart showing growth in social media and email marketing performance

Email marketing

  • Increased newsletter open rate from 38.2% to 59.5%
  • Increased the newsletter click-through rate from 9.3% to 40%

Webinar marketing 

  • Increased average registrations by 48%
  • More than doubled the number of registrations – up by 107%

LinkedIn

  • Increased followers by 85%
  • Increased engagement on posts by 63%
  • Increased page views by 86%

X (formerly Twitter)

  • Increased followers  by 50%
  • Increased engagement by 361%
  • Increased image click-through rate by 26.7%

Outcome

Scaramanga successfully boosted UKRIO’s visibility and engagement within the research community. We streamlined their social media, email marketing, and event management, refined their brand, and established consistent communication templates.