CTTM@il Case Study – Sustrans

Although people might initially see Sustrans as a ‘the cycling charity’, the reality is far broader than that. The sustainable transport charity doesn’t preach at people to change their mode of transport – it looks to make practical changes to the community environment that will encourage people to naturally choose an option that benefits their health and the environment.

This might be cycling; it could be walking or public transport.

Jenny talks through some of the initiatives the charity runs. “25% of traffic at ten-to-nine in the morning is the school run. But kids actually love cycling – it’s parents and the school who are often more worried about it. So we’ll talk to them about it, we’ll identify the safer routes, then we’ll meet up one morning and all cycle in together,” she says.

“We do a lot of outreach work to help people to change their mode of transport,” she continues. “We might help them with bus routes, or give them practical support to start building cycling and walking into their lives. Demonstrating how it’s possible to change travel habits takes more cars off the road.”

“Then we’ll work with communities and councils to address local concerns about traffic, about parking, about rat runs etc, and try to achieve practical change in that neighbourhood. If we create an environment that makes it desirable for people to walk or cycle then they will.”

“If we moved the population of Britain to the Netherlands, then we’d probably cycle as much as the Dutch do,” adds Jenny. “But if we moved the Dutch to Britain - as it is, it’s likely that they’d cycle as little as the British.”

Sustrans’ involvement with CTTMail began as a technical requirement more than anything else. “We wanted to email 1200 people to tell them about a local event,” recalls Jenny. “Our own mail software couldn’t do it – but we were told of a system that could.”

This was back in 2004 and – ironically – Jenny admits that they would have been happy to find something that could merely send a one-off text-only mail to those people. As it was, the capabilities of CTTMail helped to prompt a major shift in the organisation’s communications strategy.

“Initially, the software gave us that sending capability - and the extras were a bonus,” says Jenny. “But I quickly cottoned on that CTTMail would allow us to cross-promote by using graphics and photos.”

“Out of around 40,000 supporters, we had only those 1,200 email addresses. So we started to collect email addresses in any way we could – we asked for them on all forms, and in our newsletter. We successfully campaigned for a £50million funding from ‘the People’s £50 Million lottery giveaway’, and that led to our email newsletter address book being increased to around 36,000 addresses. We started to send a more regular e-newsletter, which achieved a 40-45% open rate – which was really good.”

Since that time, Sustrans have been developing a wide-scale email marketing strategy that promotes news, campaigning, events, and the charity’s own online shop, amongst other areas. As one of the key figures behind this, Jenny has some good advice for other charities who are looking to increase their volumes of email marketing.

“Strange as it may sound, you can plan too much,” she says. “Sometimes you should just get on with it – you can talk yourself out of trying new things. It’s not a big cash investment – not really – and sometimes good things can happen by accident.” One of the beauties of the medium is – of course – that the success of everything that you try can be subsequently measured in fine detail, hopefully leading to what Jenny terms ‘a eureka moment.’

“I couldn’t fault the service from CTTMail,” states Jenny. “They have a good structure in place, and can give lots of advice. They are very good technically – you feel that you’re dealing with experts, and there is a very low staff turnover. I am definitely happy with them.”

If you publish an e-newsletter then of course it helps if you have things to boast about. And Sustrans can point to several major successes, not least their flagship project, the National Cycle Network.

Our e-newsletter aims to bring together the latest news about what Sustrans is doing across all our projects, but also about what’s happening in the wider world around transport issues generally.

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