The solution
The ideal solution had to be engaging, intelligent, and scalable
The university’s audience was vast and very diverse, and they needed to respond to the needs of many generations. That meant the new solution needed to be:
- Easy to navigate — nothing too complicated
- Simple and straight to the point
- Engaging: the reader experience needed to be enhanced by the platform
- It couldn’t be flat like a flip-through PDF. As Amélie-Anne puts it, “We wanted something with depth.”
- Insightful: what were readers reacting to? What did they like? What were they reading, and what were they skipping?
- High quality: “We weren’t willing to compromise the quality of the magazine just to switch to online.”
- And easy for a small team to produce
“We decided to make the transition once we’d found a product that we could really get behind, where we could say, “Yes! The quality will still be there, and in fact, it will be even better.” And that’s when Amélie-Anne found Foleon. “From the first point of contact with Foleon, it’s been easy, simple, and the communication has been great — it’s just been a very, very good experience.”
From print alumni magazine to multi-award-winning digital content experience
Spoiler alert: it went better than Amélie-Anne ever could have anticipated.
It was a risk to switch from a printed magazine that had been around for so many years. “But to this day — and it’s been three years since we switched — I’m still waiting for a bad comment from someone. We’ve only had positive feedback from staff, faculty, alumni, and the wider community.
“Everyone has been super impressed with what we’ve done on Foleon. A big part of that is the content, the design and our own knowledge of our community, but our secret weapon is the platform. Because if we didn’t have the tools to support all of that creativity, it just wouldn’t be the same.”
Eyes on the prize
Amélie-Anne knew she and her team were on to something big. Back in 2018, she recalls, she was attending the CCAE (Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education) Prix d’Excellence award ceremony. “And there are different categories. In our case, in 2018, I was attending, and they gave an award for best online publication. And I remember nudging my boss and saying, I want that award next year. And she warned me that it was difficult. It was very competitive. We were a small institution, but still, I knew it: this was my goal.”
They didn’t win the next year, but Amélie-Anne and her team kept plugging away. They continued to learn and optimize their digital magazine based on reader insights. In that time, they brought the entire magazine production in-house.
"I exported some stats that are available in Foleon to show the team which articles had more views, where we could see longer readership time, etc. It was great because now we can actually make decisions according to data, not just feelings."
“We have our own graphic designer/photographer/videographer, and he does everything,” tells Amélie-Anne. “We have a writer who takes care of all the text, and I’m kind of the middleman who puts everything together. Foleon makes it very easy for us to get to a final product fairly quickly.”
Because Amélie-Anne’s team no longer has to spend time going back and forth with an agency or other contributors, they’re able to carve out more time creating compelling stories for the university alumni readers. “It’s easy to work with the platform and use the drag-and-drop functionality. The fact that it’s easy to use and comprehend without much training makes it a perfect solution for a smaller team.”
“We just had a brainstorming session with our team, and I exported some stats that are available in Foleon to show the team which articles had more views, where we could see longer readership time, etc. It was great because now we can actually make decisions according to data, not just feelings. We’re a very, very small team, and we’re very proud of what we’re able to create.”