Teachers Building Society

Main services provided

Strategy, Digital Marketing, User Experience, Creative and Copywriting Support, Analytics, Experience Platform, Integration, Analytics

Technology Used

The scene

Appius have worked with TBS as their sole digital partner for over a decade, redesigning and building the website in Sitefinity alongside the delivery of all digital marketing strategy and services.

Next up, Teachers needed a refocus on their core audience, complete a digital rebrand and to take the use of Sitefinity to the next level and for the website to deliver data capture and sign ups to their Buyers Club.

The story

Appius completed a full digital first website rebrand with Teachers Building Society getting back to their core proposition of 'sixties rebels' helping teachers get onto the property ladder, and delivering great savings products for everyone. UX testing was completed with teachers themselves, old and young, to develop and deliver a new digital first brand that would resonate.

We also created distinct Sitefinity personas tailored to specific customer segments. Leveraging Sitefinity Insight personalized content, such as homepage messages, is dynamically delivered to users identified within each persona group. Sitefinity split testing was also setup to improved paid conversion to mortgage appointments, savings applications and the Facebook and email based 'Buyers Club'.

Additionally, bespoke audit trails and workflows were developed to enhance compliance processes, reducing manual workload resulting in significant conversion improvements driven by data-informed user journey enhancements and the creation of self-service tools for lead generation.

Furthermore, our data capture mechanisms now integrate seamlessly with marketing automation programs. As part of our comprehensive approach, we also oversee lead generation and digital marketing initiatives, encompassing SEO, PPC, and social media strategies.

The technical transformation

As part of the full site re-brand and re-build, Teachers Building Society embarked on a major infrastructure transformation which included:

Domain name change
CMS Upgrade
High availability hosting environment
DevOps release process enhancements
Web Application Firewall
Load Balanced environment
Secure VPN access solution
Integrated intermediaries and consumer product content

The experience

The project, in combination with weekly Appius optimization and digital marketing support, has delivered exceptional results in the consumer and intermediary channels. The Appius designed broker portal has won an award voted by brokers themselves. Overall the digital strategy has contributed significantly to the growth of the building society and digital is now the primary marketing channel.

Top 3 google natural search positions for targeted keywords

10%+

Plus uplift in website conversions from Sitefinity personalisation

3%+

Iterative uplifts in conversion from Sitefinity split testing

6000+

Teachers signed up to private Buyers Club and emails

Client feedback

As a Society our roots are quite rebellious.

We were founded to offer mortgages to teachers at a time when they weren’t seen as attractive lending prospects by high street lenders. For example, a founding principle was to offer 95% mortgages to single female teachers without the need for a guarantor, something that was really rare in the 1960s.

In designing our new website we wanted not only to bring out more detail around our purpose and vision but to demonstrate this sense of being different. We’ve done that by departing from the traditional colour palettes associated with older banks and building societies and by using language that clearly shows we’re not a stuffy boring lender but a forward thinking brand with a strong desire to keep serving teachers.

Cutting the BS from our URL was an important part of that decision. We’re proud to be a building society and the fuller URL is more transparent for teachers who aren’t yet familiar with us. The Appius team have been fundamental to every step of our digital journey as our strategic partners since 2004 and are integral to our success in this channel, and our results are based on working closely with them on a weekly basis.