CLIENT REQUIREMENTS:
External & internal communication
About the Company
Crystal is one of the biggest financial institutions in Georgia, Eastern Europe.
The company focuses on green, innovative financial products and services for both individuals and legal entities.
Through ongoing support and knowledge sharing, it’s committed to promoting growth for farmers as well as micro-entrepreneurs so they can meet their business potential and achieve financial stability. Beyond that, Crystal has a vision to reduce poverty and protect the environment in Georgia.
A truly purpose-based business we’re proud to have as a Publicate user.
The Challenge
With a high number of stakeholders providing considerable funding, Crystal needed to present detailed communications in a clear, consistent way. A newly fully remote team meant collaboration was more important than ever.
1. Creating high-quality comms for stakeholders with ease
Crystal is connected to lots of stakeholders, including shareholders, investors and international companies with whom they have legal partnerships. Crystal receives $100 million + in funding, so clear communication with all parties has always been paramount.
Crystal has always used Outlook to build and send newsletters. With its basic design capabilities, all newsletters created in Outlook were missing structure and overall aesthetic appeal. The team knew this impacted readability and user experience. Plus, Outlook lacked key features to make the newsletter build simple and streamlined; getting the structure right could be a difficult and time-consuming process.
2. Bringing a remote team together
Over the last few years, COVID-19 and political turbulence in Georgia triggered a need for Crystal to go fully remote. At this point, there became a bigger need for a platform that enabled collaboration and even better communication. Crystal needed to structure their comms in sophisticated and professional ways, with a tool that let multiple team members contribute to each newsletter.
3. Presenting detailed information in clear ways
Crystal sends quarterly newsletters to stakeholders, containing detailed updates, reports and information. Presenting the dense information clearly through Outlook was proving difficult. They needed a tool that made it simple for them to format and present the information in a clear and consistent way for the stakeholders.
The Solution
From reusable templates that speed up the design process and enable clear, consistent messaging, to Outlook integrations, Publicate made it easier for Crystal to spread the word to stakeholders.
1. Professional, engaging designs, every time
Bringing Publicate into their processes meant Crystal could continue sending emails via Outlook – while overcoming Outlook’s limitations. Outlook can impact newsletter code, which affects design and messaging. Thanks to Publicate’s Outlook integrations, these issues are prevented. So, Crystal can now be sure every newsletter renders perfectly for their stakeholders.
2. Reusable templates
Crystal saves newsletter templates in its Publicate library. Each quarter, they dip into this library and can quickly customize each template with the necessary updates or information based on market changes. Choosing a readable and easy-to-digest format, Crystal opts for the same basic structure for each newsletter. This consistency means readers know exactly where to go to find the relevant information, from inflation stats to company performance.
3. Streamlined workflows
Publicate lets teams collaborate on newsletters in real time. For Crystal, that involves one team member adding relevant information to a Publicate template and then pasting the finished newsletter into Outlook, where another person sends the email to all stakeholders.
Through Publicate’s collaborative features, Crystal can invite multiple people into the editing and approvals process, to check the accuracy of information and make edits without leaving the team workspace. Publicate also has Outlook integrations that let users select their Publicate newsletters directly in Outlook, where they can send them in seconds.
“The Publicate platform is well-organized, user-friendly and sophisticated. Sometimes platforms with lots of tools are overcrowded, but Publicate is easy to navigate.”
Giga Bodokia
Head of Funding & Investor Relations at Crystal.ge
The Results
Staying in touch with stakeholders has become a much faster, simpler process that provides much clearer communication for stakeholders. Plus, with Publicate’s user-friendly editor, Crystal can be sure every newsletter looks great.
1. Improved investor relations
Since Crystal receives high amounts of investments, maintaining positive relations with investors is a priority. It demands quality, clear and transparent communication, which is all made possible with Publicate.
Crystal can now confidently and easily communicate with stakeholders (despite outside challenges like COVID and political unrest). Consistently positive feedback from stakeholders and management is a strong sign of more successful newsletters, which also play a part in positioning Crystal as a top company that maintains high standards, year after year.
2. Increased collaboration
A library of saved templates is great for collaboration, since anyone with access can edit the templates in order to design emails quickly and effortlessly – even without a design background.
Plus, with Outlook integrations, Crystal’s CEO (and anyone on the team with access) can edit newsletters and access them in Outlook. As Crystal navigates remote working, this keeps everyone on the same page and streamlines the email build process, as remote team members can play their part in Crystal’s newsletter.
3. Time-saving benefits
Crystal saves around two hours with every email they build in Publicate, compared to their previous methods of writing emails in Outlook. This is possible because they can access saved templates and simply update information for each newsletter, using drag-and-drop functionality and copy/pasting details from company documents.
The Experience
While other tools felt overwhelming and overcrowded, Publicate stood out to Crystal for being user-friendly and easy to navigate, making the quarterly newsletter build process much more manageable.
Crystal now relies on Publicate for both external communication (this accounts for around 80% of its Publicate use) as well as to share internal updates with colleagues.
The team made use of our tutorial videos on YouTube when getting started, to simplify the onboarding process and make sure they were getting the most out of the Publicate platform.
About Publicate
Publicate is the leading email builder giving teams the tools to build professional, beautifully designed emails and export them to your favorite platform.
With pre-built templates, professionally designed content modules like CTAs and headers and footers, drag-and-drop functionality and easy image editing, you can quickly and easily design emails without coding or design experience.
Whether you’re a marketing team reaching out to your customers, or an internal comms team trying to enhance processes and share company news, Publicate’s detailed analytics mean you consistently get performance feedback for an understanding of what works best for your email campaigns, regardless of where you send from.
We’re proud to be the email builder of choice for universities, marketing agencies, local businesses and huge names such as Netflix, Microsoft and Disney.
Try Publicate for yourself with our free 14-day trial (no credit card required). Get started today.
