One Voice, Greater Impact: How MidCoast Council Amplified Its Reach Through Unified Communications

Before adopting Granicus, MidCoast Council relied on multiple Mailchimp accounts across business groups — like the library, entertainment centre, art gallery, tourism newsletter, and corporate and local channels. Each team managed its own tags, templates, and subscriber lists, which made consolidation nearly impossible, creating significant inefficiencies, like:

• Duplicate subscribers across multiple Mailchimp accounts.
• Thousands of tags to maintain segmentation.
• No single view of a customer across services.
• Limited ability to customise signup forms or embed them across the website.
• Inconsistent branding, tone, and fact‑checking across newsletters.

“Each department had distinct needs, but no unified infrastructure to support them,” explained Communications Coordinator Leah Curtis. “This fragmentation made it difficult to deliver consistent messaging to residents across the region. We found that trying to bring them into a central MailChimp database was becoming exponentially harder.”

The overarching goal was a consolidated approach to the way the council communicates with who it serves. “We want it to be clear that you’re getting all of these great resources, events, and opportunities because the council is providing them,” said Curtis. MidCoast Council needed government technology that could help create a consistent tone of voice, look, and feel that could be adopted as a cohesive brand across channels.

MidCoast Council adopted Granicus Communications to equip its team with a single, organisation‑wide view of each email subscriber list — something impossible under their former collection of independent accounts. Although departments still supply content, the MidCoast Council communications team now manages template compliance, fact‑checking, and quality assurance — reducing errors and ensuring accurate, consistent information is sent across the departments.

The onboarding and design support from Granicus played a critical role, helping the team migrate more than 12 newsletters. With Communication’s whitelisted servers, the council saw immediate improvements in deliverability, ensuring informational updates reliably reached residents’ inboxes.

Residents can now manage newsletter preferences in one place, subscribe to new updates more easily, and enjoy an intuitive overall experience. “More direct communication with our entire community ensures our message is as relevant to those people as possible,” said Curtis.

MidCoast Council saw a major uplift in engagement immediately after migrating its News Wrap newsletter to Granicus. News Wrap is now sent to more than 5,000 subscribers, and its open rates jumped from 28% to 51%, an 82% increase. Total opens increased as residents returned to the content more than once — reflecting improved trust and reliability driven by stronger deliverability.

Internally, the shift created far better alignment across the organization. “Subscribers now know what to expect from our communications, receive reliable updates, and benefit from a smoother, more professional experience every time we reach out,” said Curtis.

Design workshops and hands-on onboarding with Granicus experts significantly reduced friction and built confidence among staff during the transition. The functionality of the service opened opportunities for staff to look ahead; next, MidCoast Council aims to deepen engagement through:

• Automated welcome journeys introducing residents to additional newsletter topics.
• Website-embedded signup forms for higher, more contextual engagement.
• Better segmentation informed by 12 months of unified engagement data.