The South African Veterinary Council (SAVC) is the custodian of the veterinary and para-veterinary professions in South Africa, overseeing and regulating the conduct of veterinarians, animal health technicians, veterinary nurses, laboratory animal technologists, veterinary physiotherapists and veterinary technologists. It aims to ensure all of these animal healthcare professionals uphold high standards and practise ethically, to create a safe environment for all animals – be they pets, livestock, poultry or wildlife.
One of the most important platforms the SAVC has to communicate with its registrees is its quarterly newsletter, The Council’s Voice, which serves as a compendium of the most relevant recent developments surrounding the professions while featuring interesting and relevant industry-related news.
When the SAVC brought Flow Communications on board as its communications partner in 2021, they asked the agency to bring its expertise in writing, design and publishing to the table to improve the content mix and readability of the newsletter, which is also hosted on the Issuu digital publishing platform and embedded on the SAVC website.
This has been more than accomplished, with a mailer open rate in the past year (up to April 2023) of between 31.8% and 44.9%, and a click-through rate of between 3.3% and 5.9% – both markedly above the industry average, even for niche and business-to-business newsletters.
Besides this, the actual digital publication is read and downloaded hundreds of times, with average reading times of up to seven minutes – a remarkable achievement, considering these are busy professionals with a lot on their plates!
More importantly, the SAVC’s partnership with Flow has ensured that the content mix has been broadened beyond operational and technical matters to include well-written, topical articles such as the implications of cultured meat for the local veterinary and agriculture sectors, the shortage of vets stemming from the removal of this profession from the country’s critical skills list, and deep dives into issues such as antimicrobial resistance and animal vaccine shortages.