CLIENT REQUIREMENTS:
Internal and external newsletters
About the Company
Malta Tourism Authority is part of Malta’s national tourist board, working to communicate the unique culture, events, sustainability movements and beauty of Malta.
It takes a regulatory role, connecting with hotels and restaurants and promoting the island to tourists.
The organization is responsible for promotional campaigns driving awareness of, and visits to, the area. Our client’s department conducts research and explores new opportunities, for example with airlines and boat companies, to create new tourism routes that would benefit the country.
The Challenge
MTA juggles newsletters for different audiences: Esteemed partners such as the airport, tourist information offices and business partners, as well as the Authority’s CEO, chairman, deputy CEOs, and other senior managers. They have to send four newsletters every day, plus weekly newsletters that go to colleagues, overseas offices and industry stakeholders.
In an always-on industry like tourism, this is no walk in the park.
1. Keeping up with high-frequency and real-time newsletters
MTA is responsible for the gathering and sharing of endless information. From airline data updates to current economic matters and hospitality news, they have to pinpoint what matters most and share it internally and/or externally.
On top of the regular newsletters, they might have to share one-off, time-critical emails, such as announcing new airport routes.
They needed an email builder that wouldn’t slow them down, so urgent news could come out fast.
2. Designing templates that look great, even in Outlook
The team was struggling with the build of templates. Design resources were limited and other platforms were falling short. Their chosen ESP, Outlook, is famous for impacting newsletter code and not rendering emails perfectly. Another email builder the team used was presenting Flash issues and proving difficult to use.
They needed a tool that was reliable, easy to use, and built to solve these common Outlook issues.
3. Adding credibility to newsletters
MTA often shared articles with their audiences. However, their previous software hid the source of each article, which impacted credibility.
In order to build trust among readers, being able to easily credit the source of all articles was paramount.
The Solution
Switching to Publicate gave MTA a new kind of agility. They could spend less time getting bogged down in the design of hundreds of emails, and more time sharing valuable content with their audiences.
1. Enhancing source credibility, quickly
Malta Tourism Authority regularly sends emails that link to various publications and websites. Now, the team can use Publicate’s dynamic web scraping tool, which lets them simply copy and paste the URL of any source into the editor. The tool then automatically populates information such as the title, copy, image and source URL.
MTA says this feature is not only super helpful and a great time saver, but that when readers know where an update comes from, this adds credibility and helps build trust among their database.
To further streamline the process, MTA have integrated Feedly to their Publicate library. This means anything they save in Feedly is automatically added to their Publicate library, ready to be dragged and dropped into newsletters. This saves lots of time, capturing any important articles the team finds.
This Feedly integration is just one of many provided by Publicate! Users can also integrate Pocket, Slack, and RSS feeds to quickly and easily upload content to their newsletters.
2. User-friendly editor for everyone on the team
Publicate’s editor is one of the most user-friendly solutions on the market.
MTA takes full advantage of the Team Workspace functionality in Publicate. This enables the whole team to add content to the library, and for any team member to build engaging newsletters from the shared content in minutes. This makes it easy for MTA to keep their audience in the loop even when things change quickly. They can now be confident that their partners know the latest news, and that any airline updates can go out as and when they happen.
With Publicate, Matthew can create and customize templates, and any of his colleagues can reuse those templates. All they have to do is drag and drop their new content on top of the existing newsletter, with no need to re-design anything. This speeds up the process and reduces the risk of a team member building a newsletter that hasn’t been approved by MTA.
3. A better audience understanding through newsletter analytics
Malta Tourism Authority, with Publicate in their tech stack, can now access powerful analytics to track the performance of every newsletter they send. This was not possible before, as Outlook doesn’t have the ability to track email performance on its own.
MTA uses analytics to track user behaviour, particularly to see what content gets the most clicks, so they can gauge which updates readers are most interested in, and adjust future emails accordingly
“Give Publicate a try - you will keep using it. There are lots of use cases and the customer service team attends to any questions or issues, usually on the same day. It’s a very easy tool to understand.”
Matthew Frendo
Executive - Tourism Trends & Updates, Malta Tourism Authority
The Results
Professional, engaging emails are great for brand image. Malta Tourism Authority makes great use of Publicate’s features to improve the reader experience while making internal processes faster and smoother.
1. Ability to send newsletters that look great in Outlook
MTA always use Outlook, so their distribution list was already available on that platform. Migrating the list to another ESP would have been a headache.
Publicate easily integrates with Outlook, so there was no need to switch platforms. This dedicated integration also supports great rendering, meaning all emails look as they should when sent via Outlook.
Not only that, but MTA can now track the performance of every newsletter sent through Outlook (including open rates and click rates). This wasn’t possible before bringing Publicate into the mix.
2. Speed and ease when creating newsletters
Malta Tourism Authority has invited speed to the email-building process, and can now produce 3 newsletters side-by-side in about 1.5 hours. They’ve been able to easily set up templates for their newsletters. Now, they have pre-approved templates that are ready to go, which they can easily update with fresh content for each newsletter. This couldn’t be easier (or faster!) thanks to the drag-and-drop editor.
This feature lets MTA update readers with real-time, often critical information, without delay.
3. Quick, clear navigation for readers
MTA has been able to add an internal navigation bar to its emails. This is a top menu that highlights key topics so readers can easily navigate to the topic they’re interested in most, and get direct access to the right information more quickly. No more wasting time or trying to navigate lengthy emails to reach the part you’re interested in.
This is great for the reader, but it offers some knock-on benefits for the client, too. Publicate feeds back details around what people click, so MTA can instantly discover what people want to read more about. These audience insights can help steer future newsletters.
4. Streamlined content collection
With the Publicate content library, MTA now no longer haves to spend time searching the web for content every time they build a newsletter. Instead, the team collects content on the go, using the Feedly app integration, where everything they save in Feedly automatically appears in their Publicate library. They also use a Publicate Chrome extension (which they can use to save links and content as they browse the web).
Since MTA manages all sorts of different topics, they find the folder system to save, organize and easily find content in the Publicate library incredibly valuable. Anything saved in their content library in Publicate is available to the whole team, and ready to be dragged and dropped into their newsletters.
The Experience
As part of Malta’s official tourism board, MTA constantly has important news to share. Often, this needs to happen immediately.
With Publicate, they can respond quickly whenever there is news and updates to announce. Publicate’s support team is supportive and responsive, especially when the team is up against deadlines.
One invaluable benefit is that the team didn’t have to sign up and learn the ropes of a new ESP - no steep learning curves or productivity slow-downs! They could keep using Outlook and just bolster their newsletters with great designs that always render perfectly, thanks to Publicate.
Matthew even mentioned that he’s so happy to endorse and credit Publicate that he leaves the ‘Created in Publicate’ line at the bottom of his newsletters, even though he could remove it. We’re proud to have a proud customer on board!
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.
