Vital is a professional development programme to encourage IT teaching and inspire the use of ICT more generally across the school curriculum. It's managed by e-skills UK and the Open University and partially funded by the Department for Education.

We've been involved since its inception, developing and testing the name, logo and brand strategy before helping to launch and market the programme.

It takes an innovative approach. Subject and special interest portals on e-Safety, SEN as well as core subjects are packed with resources to help teachers bring innovation into the classroom and inspire learners.

Professional peer portals

Working on the basis that we listen to and trust our professional peers – who are in any case closest to the issues – these portals are run by educators, specialists in their own subject. They direct users to the best resources available and offer advice about how to use them effectively to motivate students and enhance teaching and learning.

Case studies and lesson ideas from fellow practitioners are also curated on the site. 

Our incentivised e-DM, PPC and mainstream advertising campaign raised brand awareness and encouraged registrations on the Vital website. Then, with Vital’s online community starting to flourish, we developed an integrated marketing strategy to retain and grow the programme’s user base.

Monthly newsletters, targeted eDMs for ICT facilitators, head teachers and teachers and branded collateral for events were supported by a social media campaign.

This was critical, as online collaboration and knowledge-sharing are core principles of Vital's operation. We devised the social media strategy and took over day-to-day management of all social media activity, locating relevant conversations, using keyword searches to identify influential users and mining their public interactions to map the community.

Results

A content strategy and editorial schedule for Vital's existing, desired and recommended social media presence – blog, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn etc. – ensures that all these channels are updated with fresh, enticing content.

• The first eDM campaign generated almost 600 new users in three weeks.
• Email open rates for the monthly newsletter are consistently above 25%, with click-through rates of 30-45% – both higher than the sector average.
• Vital’s PPC ranking is up to 2.7, from 4.5 when the campaign first started.
• Since we took over @Vitalcpd on Twitter, its number of followers has tripled.