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Round Table
The Client
With an 80 year history of providing a forum for people to meet, learn and share with one another, the Round Table has developed a loyal international following. However in more recent times there has been a realisation that in order to maintain membership they must modernise. This has prompted the organisation to understand more about themselves, their members and the target audience they need to attract.
After comprehensive research an understanding of the current UK national membership was established. The learning showed that the organisation needed to create a channel that truly engaged with existing membership and effectively raised the profile of Round Table to attract new members. Fundamental to this was the re-development of the national public facing website and the inclusion of localised microsites for individual Round Tables.
The public facing site was to be developed to attract, primarily, those within the 30 to 40 year old target audience whilst reflecting their traditional values. Playing heavily on the intrinsic benefits of being a member, the site needed to effectively drive the Round Table proposition of value, really selling the reasons to become part of the club and enjoying all the experiences that come from being part of it. The local table sites, or 'Your Round Table' was to help raise the profile of the club within the local vicinity focusing on the individual and their interests over a generic mass broadcast approach.
With a long and traditional history the Round Table is one of the country's most recognised social circles and from its creation they've established over 650 tables with 9,000+ members. However in recent times the organisation has seen membership numbers begin to dwindle and recruitment struggle. A proactive organisation, the Round Table actively looked to understand more about themselves, their members and most importantly how they can offer their experience to more members of the general public.
Throughout researching the brand and talking to its target audience a core theme appeared focussed around the design and delivery of their website. With a web presence since 1997 Round Table had long understood the importance of providing its members with a means to engage with the brand, however the website had never been considered as the key communication tool and means to move the organisation on in 2010 and beyond.
9xb began to work with the Round Table in 2008 exploring how the online environment could be used to drive recruitment for new members and retain existing membership. Working closely with the national committee the 9xb team developed a holistic approach to Round Tables online proposition starting with a national public facing website portraying the core messages about Round Table. Further to this a network of 'Your Round Table' microsites would provide a means for all tables to have an equal share of the Round Table online with self-management and most importantly hundreds of content managers throughout the UK, effectively powering the SEO for the organisation.
Finally to complement the new public/local facing websites a social network for members is being developed in phase 2 powered by a management administration tool that controls the membership renewal process year on year. A forward thinking organisation Round Table and 9xb are enjoying exploring how digital can effectively engage with the public and drive its organisation on beyond 2010.
"Working with the Round Table has been a really rewarding challenge. From the moment we met them they had clear objectives and allowed us creative freedom to come up with a digital strategy that would effectively achieve them. Really immersing ourselves in what Round Table stood for and how they could effectively modernise the brand; we developed a holistic strategy that concentrated on delivering a message to drive recruitment, retain its loyal membership and dispel the common myths associated with such a club.
The solution was to create websites that would effectively cater for each allowing messaging, proposition and information to be targeted to the individual rather than a mass broadcast. The 9xb website design team created a look and feel that was slick, modern, friendly and personable ensuring the brand portrayal was truly reflective of the clubs and members. Further to this the development team worked tirelessly to develop a comprehensive system that effectively allows the management of 600+ websites from one easy to use, intuitive system.
We're very proud of the work we've done for Round Table, indeed we've become their incumbent digital agency working with them on social networking, ecommerce and email marketing. Our Managing Director, Rob Burns was so intrigued about the organisation he's now a member of our local club!"
Gyles Seward, Account Director
Project: roundtable.co.uk website
Objectives
- Modernise the brand - move away from the traditional perception and portray the forward thinking approach
- Increase membership - drive awareness and encourage people to become part of the Round Table
- Public facing - add value to the Round Table brand through offering a greater level of information and knowledge
- Create a flexible, future proof website - ensure the website is fully scalable to cater for all demands now and in the future
- CMS - easy to use, understand and action content management system with tailored functionality for your needs.
Features
- Comprehensive content management system covering the national public facing website and 650 microsites
- Tiered User Access - allowing different levels of management throughout each and every website
- Events database - automated events database that allows publishing on both national and local websites
- Table Database - centralised database of 650 tables information
- Workflow System - publishing system that allows web editors to submit content to a national web editor for approval
Technology
- PHP
- MySQL
- Javascript
- Ajax
- XHTML
- CSS
Work for us
Experienced Digital Account Director / Senior Manager
