Communication planning

Keeping in touch with your members through regular communications helps with engagement and ensures members are aware of all your latest news, activities and future developments.

By keeping members engaged you will gain more interest for events and activities whilst encouraging people to become more actively involved.

Make sure you regularly discuss your communications at council meetings to ensure they remain fit for purpose; actively reviewing any member feedback you might receive.

Timing of your communication can be critical - the more notice members are given, the greater chance of success, so if it's a physical event send out communications if you can approximately 8 weeks before. This ensures that you have time to send chaser communications as well as looking at other options such as sharing the event out to other institutes within your region or further social marketing.

Make sure you space your communications out to avoid overburdening your audience which could result in a member opting-out of your communications. Ideally you should be looking to communicate once a week maximum, if you have multiple events going on which you want to advertise then please look at the guide below on how to create a newsletter email.

Your local institute brand is a vital part of how you communicate to your members. It delivers an instantly recognisable identity for your institute and ensures all communications are consistent and professional in appearance.

Local institute logos consist of an arrangement of the CII and PFS logos and the name of your local institute.

Your branding is accessible below in the tools section under “stationary”

For further details on how to use your local institute logo and branding download the guide below.

Social media is an online communication tool used by individuals and organisations: it’s low cost and, when used effectively, can instantly allow you to connect and engage with your key stakeholders or customers.

Social media may not be suitable for every local institute since it requires ongoing commitment.

To be effective your accounts and pages must be updated regularly (a minimum of once a week) with content that will inform your followers of your key events and activities, and encourage two way communications.

If you chose to use social media as a communication channel for your local institute then our simple Local Institute Social Media guide will provide you great guidance on how to post on sites such as LinkedIn and X.

Please also see a self filming guide if you wish to post videos promoting council on your social pages

In order to reach a wider audience and promote the successes of your local institute you can submit stories and articles to the CII's national publication for general insurance members - The Journal.

The Journal publication is distributed to every CII member on a bi-monthly basis.

All readers are either qualified or working towards a qualification, so they see the magazine as a key resource in their learning and career development.

Past issues of The Journal can be viewed on the CII website - The Journal.

The media plays a big part in our everyday lives. It tells us what is happening in the world, what is new and above all broadens our knowledge.

Working and communicating with the media is a valuable opportunity that can help to raise awareness of our profession, your local institute and the CII.

Before contacting your local media try to research what media is actually out there. Look at what your local radio stations and newspapers are and where they are distributed.

Another important point is to look at what stories are being reported. Take some time to read your local newspapers and examine the types of stories being published. This will give you a good idea of the type of stories journalists are looking for and will help you identify relevant stories that you can then pitch.

Press releases can be used to actively promote the work of your local institute and allows you to target both members and non-members.

You may have only 20 seconds to interest a busy news editor so try to sum up the subject or provide a teaser for your event. The first paragraphs should outline the activity answering the following questions: Who? What? Why? Where? When? and How?

The inclusion of a quote from your president will also strengthen your messaging.

Press releases should be submitted on your local institute press release template and should include a title, summary and date. Leave double-line spacing between the paragraphs to make the release easy to read and keep it short and sweet, with adequate margins. Aim for one page of A4 and certainly no more than two.

Write in the active tense rather than the passive tense. This sounds much more punchy and exciting. Use plain English – don’t use long words when short words will do and avoid jargon at all costs. Your press release should be easily understood by someone with no specialist knowledge.

For more information contact your Regional Membership Manager.

A range of stationery templates have been designed to create a consistent identity for local institutes which reflects the CII brand and promotes a professional way of working for local institute councils.

Branded institute logos, letterheads, PowerPoint slide decks and report templates (including minutes and agendas) can be found under 'Stationery' on the 'My LI' tab.

Other templates are accessible through the 'Tools' tab once you log in through the 'My LI' tab.

GDPR has replaced previous data protection rules across Europe that were almost two decades old – with some of them first being drafted in the 1990s. Since then our data-heavy lifestyles have emerged, with people routinely sharing their personal information freely online.

GDPR can be considered as the world's strongest set of data protection rules, which enhance how people can access information about them and places limits on what organisations can do with personal data.

At the heart of GDPR is personal data. Broadly this is information that allows a living person to be directly, or indirectly, identified from data that's available. This can be something obvious, such as a person's name, location data, or a clear online username, or it can be something that may be less instantly apparent: IP addresses and cookie identifiers can be considered as personal data.

Under GDPR there's also a few special categories of sensitive personal data that are given greater protections. This personal data includes information about racial or ethic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, membership of trade unions, genetic and biometric data, health information and data around a person's sex life or orientation.

The crucial thing about what constitutes personal data is that it allows a person to be identified – pseudonymised data can still fall under the definition of personal data. Personal data is so important under GDPR because individuals, organisations, and companies that are either 'controllers' or 'processors' of it are covered by the law.

"Controllers are the main decision-makers – they exercise overall control over the purposes and means of the processing of personal data," the UK's data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) says. It's also possible that there are joint controllers of personal data, where two or more groups determine how data is handled. "Processors act on behalf of, and only on the instructions of, the relevant controller," the ICO says. Controllers have stricter obligations under GDPR than processors.

We have developed a number of FAQs in relation to local institutes, member data and GDPR; these can be downloaded below.

The RMM team have been working with the CII Membership Marketing Manager to create a campaign targeting CII membership to promote the benefits of getting involved with your local institute and to encourage members to join council.

Assets have been created for you as institutes to use that will enhance this campaign. These resources will then become part of your institutes toolkit that can be used yearly when trying to obtain new council members.

These assets are:

Please see below a screenshot of the banners that have been made for your marketing emails on the umbraco system, please add this as an 'image block'

Please see below the leaflet and social media cards that councils can use.