e-citizen research shows that up to 46% of the adult population of England are ready and waiting to use local authority e-channels. It also showed that Local Authorities are in a good position to tap into this potential and drive take up of their channels.
Colchester Borough Council had seen this trend growing, with more people choosing to use "remote" methods of contacting the council and using council services. As a result of the e-citizen research the council began an awareness and take-up campaign for their electronic services; some were already available, but most were new and scheduled for launch in September 2005.
As well as aiming to increase overall awareness of the availability of the council's e-Services, a number of specific service areas were pin-pointed for promotion in the communications campaign, including: payments, planning, bookings and reporting.
Research
As part of the campaign and following the methodology set out by e-citizen, pre and post research of Colchester's customers was undertaken to measure changes in attitudes and awareness resulting from the campaign.
Both qualitative and quantitative research was conducted prior to the campaign launch to investigate customers' existing knowledge and usage of e-Services. Questionnaires were used to gauge large-scale opinion from a representative sample of Colchester residents, whilst focus groups and workshops where held to gain more in-depth knowledge. The focus groups held amongst citizens explored reasons for use/non-use of e-services, tested creative and helped to define marketing concepts. A workshop was also held amongst council staff and members to ensure their buy-in from the very early stages.
Communications
The campaign was structured around three distinct waves of communication: a general awareness layer - introduced at the outset and scheduled to run throughout the campaign, a second more comprehensive and targeted layer which promoted the numerous e-service areas, and a final wave of communications which promoted individual services, targeting specific market segments.
Colchester devised a marketing communications campaign using elements from e-citizen, particularly the recommendations to segment key campaign messages. Messages about the e-Services were carefully targeted to the borough's different residents and businesses.
Messages for each of these waves of communication were rolled out over various channels, including press, web, email, radio and outdoor advertising and PR. These were carefully controlled throughout all visual communications to achieve a consistent 'tone of voice'.
They were also made available to Colchester Borough Council in a 'kit form', so they could also be used on any parallel or in-house activity.
Results
The first wave of the general awareness campaign was launched in November 2005 with local press and radio advertising and the first stage of the planned PR activity.
Early indications are that take up has increased with both web stats and the number registered users improving. It is expected that this will continue to improve as the campaign intensifies.
Phil Pettit, ICT programme manager at Colchester Borough Council, comments: "There's no doubt that we've directly benefited from the e-citizen project. By segmenting the market and researching it thoroughly before we launched the campaign we were able to ensure that our messages were carefully targeted to individual groups. This, combined with a bespoke and hard working local media and pr plan, has resulted in a cost effective campaign which is already showing positive signs of success."