Last week we had the opportunity to have lunch with one of our awesome clients Beth Cotter from University of Waterloo Faculty of Engineering. We got to chatting about how she is using Blitzen on engineerthefuture.ca

This is what we found out:

Beth, what is your role at the University of Waterloo?

I am the associate director of marketing and communications for the faculty of engineering, leading a team of 5 people. 

Tell us a little bit more about Engineer the Future

Well, it is our Educating the Engineer of the Future fundraising campaign site but also a site to share stories from Waterloo Engineering. When we launched the site the main goal was to raise awareness. One of our campaign initiatives is to #buildE7. Engingeerthefuture.ca was a great way for us to share details about this new exciting space.

We also know that our alumni and industry partners are very keen to stay connected with the faculty and they are looking for information about research thrusts and developing technology that comes from the faculty. The site is an opportunity for us to strengthen engagement with our alumni and help them to continue to feel connected to the university. Sharing our stories in Engineer the Future, in my mind, became an excellent way to provide more insight into all the amazing things happening here. If you look at our stories you will see the stuff I’m talking about.

With such a diverse community coming to the website, what’s one of the challenges you’ve faced trying to increase engagement?

Well we have alumni, students, and partners coming to the site but we still want to offer them content that keeps them interested and coming back. Further still, we would love for them to contribute their own stories. The problem is figuring out what topics our readers are interested in. This is where Blitzen can really help us. We have a form on each article that gives readers the option to tell what they want to read about. These insights guide our content calendar and help us write about the right things.

Looks like your blog already has a lot of articles on it, what’s your primary strategy for growing how many people are reading?

Of course, like any blog, we want to people to subscribe to our email newsletter so we can send new posts to them directly. And that’s another benefit of Blitzen. Since I’ve got a form on every single article, we can log what article they were reading when they submit. With this information, we can add them to a mailing list that corresponds with their interests.

Once we have a solid list we’re going to be sending them content that is more personalized and engages readers on a more individual level. These more personal emails should hopefully keep bringing people back to the blog as we post new content.

You seem to keep coming back to making content more personal. Why is this a focus for Engineering the Future blog spot?

Well people are used to getting hit with thousands of different marketing campaigns and they tend to ignore a lot more than they once did. But if it feels like the email is meant for you, it makes you feel a bit special. It shows that the sender actually cares about you, and maybe it’s actually worth your time to check it out.

We tend to agree with Beth. Personalization is starting to become the norm and thankfully there are tools and strategies to make it easier.

We’ve got more stories coming soon of Blitzen in action and the teams who are learning and succeeding along the way. Join our email list below to get them first! 

Until next time!