Case Study

Engaging Stakeholders Securely and Efficiently at Elections Saskatchewan

Background

Since 1905, Elections Saskatchewan (ESK), in some shape or form, has been serving the province and protecting electoral integrity by organizing, managing, and regulating Saskatchewan’s provincial elections. As an independent office of the provincial Legislative Assembly, ESK champions integrity, service, and innovation in everything it does.

A key part of ESK’s mission is removing barriers to voting, and this includes engaging with voters — whether it’s sharing employment opportunities or educating citizens about the democratic process. Since November 2022, Elections Saskatchewan has relied on Envoke to provide an efficient, secure platform to drive stakeholder communications.

The Workload: Informing Thousands of Stakeholders

Tim Kydd, Director of Communications and Outreach has been with Elections Saskatchewan for 12 years. Together with Communications Consultant Katherine Reidel, he handles communications with various stakeholders including media, voters, and the general public.

ESK’s mailing list currently numbers 12,000. Initially created to source workers for provincial elections, the contact list is also used to educate and inform voters about elections and the democratic process. Tim says emails go out — sometimes to all 12,000 contacts, often to smaller audience segments — more frequently during an election cycle; and less often between electoral events. The list is regularly reviewed and cleaned to ensure its quality and relevance.

“These are people who may have originally added their information to our contact list because they’re interested in working,” says Katherine. “But they’re sticking around because we’re giving them content they’re interested in and that is of value to them. They continue to open and read our emails because they care about what’s going on in Saskatchewan’s democracy.”

“It started as a real hiring tool,” confirms Tim. “Now it’s more of an engagement tool. We’re not selling anything, but we want to know that we have an easy, secure, efficient way to have a touchpoint with the people and voters of Saskatchewan.”

The Problem: A Need for Better Security

When ESK began curating their email database for outreach and stakeholder engagement in 2016, they used another email marketing platform to create and send emails. Tim says the solution worked fine, but as time went on — and ESK began to collect more stakeholder information — they sought a product with a strong focus on data security. They also preferred a Canadian vendor.

“We always have privacy and security issues in mind,” says Tim. “We remain focused on protecting our stakeholder’s information.”

As an elections management body, Tim explains that maintaining Elections Saskatchewan’s integrity and reputation is essential. To be trusted, they must be trustworthy.

“We did not want to risk a data breach or have any issue with the data that we were collecting or the contact information that voters have trusted us with,” says Tim. “That’s very important to us.”

The Procurement Process: Discovering Envoke

Elections Saskatchewan learned about Envoke through a consultant who was familiar with the Canadian email marketing platform and had recommended it to another client with good results. He suggested ESK look at Envoke’s features to see if there was a fit.

“For us, the selling points were that it was a Canadian company and it has good data protection. We started to investigate Envoke and it is now our tool.”

Tim Kydd
Senior Manager of IT and Administration

Defining Success with Envoke

In addition to searching for a Canadian vendor that was serious about data privacy, ESK hoped to find a platform that was discoverable and straightforward to use.

They also needed a platform that would display Elections Saskatchewan’s own branding at all touchpoints, without interjecting obvious third-party branding. Tim and Katherine both hoped for a tool that was easy to use but could produce attractive results. Envoke delivered on all fronts.

Measuring Success: Engagement and Value

When it comes to measuring success, Tim says typical metrics like click rate, open rate, and bounce rate were used to confirm that emails sent with Envoke had good engagement.

Katherine adds that ease and speed of use is another metric that helped Elections Saskatchewan confirm that Envoke was a good fit.

“All of the features involved with building, creating, and managing lists were super important in the grand scheme of determining Envoke’s success for us."

Katherine Reidel
Communications Consultant

“Things like: How long does it take me to build an email in Envoke? Is it an efficient use of my time? Is the user interface really helpful? When I’m asked how many contacts we have in Saskatoon or Moose Jaw, can I easily find that information? Can I export that data if I need to?” Envoke measured up on all fronts, and provided an easy and efficient working experience for Elections Saskatchewan.

The Experience: Smooth Workflows

Easy-to-use subscription lists

Katherine says Envoke’s efficient subscription management was a great asset in hiring election workers before Saskatchewan’s 2024 provincial election.

“When we hired four to five thousand people to work in the last provincial election, almost half of them were people who were on our email list in Envoke,” says Katherine. “We sent one email before the election started and with the push of a button, we found half our workers. It’s just so effective.”

Envoke’s intuitive interface and clear reporting make it easier for Elections Saskatchewan to identify geographical areas where they have fewer contacts. Tim says this data is used by ESK to drive business decisions.

“When we are looking for workers in a specific constituency, we’ll look in our Envoke list and see where we’re high and where we’re low in overall contact numbers. Where we’re low, we make business decisions such as using other ways to reach people and add them to our overall list, like mailing out actual postcards to their homes to get them to work. We might look at paid advertising in areas. And we’re making those decisions based on the numbers that we pull out of Envoke. So it’s driving actual business decisions that we make,” says Tim.

Friendly, accessible customer service

Tim and Katherine found onboarding to be easy and quick with friendly customer support that was readily available via chat and other channels.

“The customer service is excellent,” says Katherine. “I’ve used the chat feature two or three times and the knowledge base feature too. I entered a keyword and found an article that, in plain language, explained exactly what I needed to know. All of the onboarding and implementation has been very smooth.”

Easy to import contacts

Tim says the ease of importing spreadsheets and CSV files is an important feature, too. “Importing our lists is basically seamless. We’ve never had a time where we import a list, and the last names are in the wrong column for example. It works very well.”

The Results: Attractive, Beautifully Branded Emails

Elections Saskatchewan wants contacts to feel secure when interacting with ESK. They prioritize data security and they also want to deliver a fully-branded experience that constituents can trust.

“The fact that Envoke remains kind of invisible to the people receiving our emails is great,” says Katherine. “We don’t get any comments back from people saying they were concerned because this looked like spam or a marketing scam. The email has an authentic look and feel. It’s very clear to people that it’s Elections Saskatchewan that they’re hearing from — and that helps with the trust we work to safeguard which is essential to what we do.”

The Future: Continued Partnership

Tim says he relies on the consistent and accessible functionality of Envoke, but he looks forward to future innovations that will help engage stakeholders in elections down the road. In the meantime, both he and Katherine enjoy Envoke’s discoverable and reliable interface.

“It’s exactly what we need,” says Katherine. “We can send out the messages we want to send, and have people do the thing we want them to do. It’s doing exactly what we wanted it to, which is perfect.”

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