Fresh from being awarded the title of ‘Europe’s Best Use of Social Media’, we outline the success of the multi-event, multi-use Nationwide Events App built using Sequel’s app:ic framework.

At the FEIEA Grand Prix in Paris this month, Nationwide’s Event app won the award for ‘best use of social media’, built and developed by Sequel. FEIEA is the European Association of Internal Communication and their annual Grand Prix awards benchmark communications across Europe.

Ian Neave, Manager – Engagement & Events at Nationwide, says: “We were really pleased to win! The Event App is fantastic at building excitement and anticipation of any upcoming event and helps us land key messages.”

Rozi Pearson, Sequel’s Digital Project Manager, adds: “It was a fun project to work on! We work closely with Nationwide throughout – a great example of teamwork.”

The origin story

Two years ago, Nationwide realised the app they’d purchased for an individual event was clogging up devices and displaying out-of-date information.

The team saw little value in repeating the purchase – and the entire set-up process – for the next event and each one after that, wasting users’ time by creating a profile each time. And multiple apps would soon become too unwieldy for the system.

They wanted a flexible, multi-user, multi-event, multi-purpose event app that could be used repeatedly, with minimal effort.

Enter: the Events App

Based on Sequel’s app:ic framework, the Events App has unique functionalities that set it apart from the competition.

Users can be assigned to a single event or multiple events, each with its own branding on the homescreen, and profile information is automatically transferred to each event.

The Nationwide Events App provides all that for a potential audience of 19,000 colleagues. But when it comes to actual guests, numbers can be as few as 10 or as many as thousands.

It’s includes all the social functions you’d expect, such as user profiles, activity feed and the ability to upload pictures and comment. It also includes standard key event information, like the location and agenda.

When Nationwide used the app for their annual employee award ceremony, they sent out push notifications for four ‘Ask me anything’ sessions featuring previous award winners. And afterwards they used it for an official survey to gain feedback on top of the huge volume of unsolicited (positive) feedback that users channelled through the app.

Even if you couldn’t attend the ceremony, the app keeps you involved. Nationwide filmed and uploaded a video of the event to the app so users could watch live on their device.

The value

Nationwide employees really embraced the app for the award ceremony, uploading pictures of them getting ready for or travelling to the event, and commenting and liking posts throughout the evening.

Between them, the 361 users used the app 4,605 times – on average 12 times over the four-week period for each user – an excellent result! They described the app as ‘fulsome’, ‘awesome’ and ‘wonderful’, with 91 per cent of users saying they ‘liked’ or ‘loved’ the app.

Making your organisation tick with clever technology

Find out how we could help shape your digital employee experience – get in touch at nick.andrews@sequelgroup.co.uk or explore our digital case studies.