Customer Story: Town of Lexington

We chatted with Thomas Romano, the youth and family program coordinator for the Town of Lexington Recreation and Community Program.

Tell us a bit about your organization and your mission.

Our organization is with the license and recreation community programs department. We are a municipality of around 34,000 people, and we do programs for ages 0 to 100 throughout the entire year. We’ve got your traditional day camps over the summer, various classes, and senior lunches twice a week throughout the entire year for seniors aged 60+. There’s a variety of programs more along the lines of a vacation week that range from cooking classes to martial arts, ice skating, and street hockey – there’s really something for everyone. Our mission is to provide affordable, quality programs for in-town residents and non-residents alike.

It sounds like you’ve got something for everyone. How large is the team that supports your programs?

There's around ten full-time staff running various programs throughout the year. Depending on the season, we have a part-time staff of around 200 over the summer and about 50 throughout the school year, and instructors from previous programs throughout. My role is the Youth and Family Program Coordinator, which includes any of the family programs. We had a chess tournament and a Winter Wonderland program over December break that I developed.

I imagine a lot of work goes into producing these programs, how long does it typically take for your team to organize?

It certainly depends on the program, but it’s typically a three-month turnaround time. We started planning our summer schedule in December because we typically advertise for the program in February. And it takes two and three months of designer work building the brochure until it’s ready for advertising to the public.

How did you discover Issuu?

Issuu was referred to me through word of mouth. There was another rec department that said they used Issuu and had a positive experience. Prior to Issuu, we had a PDF available for download from our website, but half of the people that viewed it said it never loaded and it wasn’t very user-friendly. Using Issuu made it easier for people with screen readers. The ability to zoom in, linking directly to classes and programs, and all of the information is right there at their fingertips. They don’t have to look it up elsewhere. It turns an otherwise frustrating experience into something magical, and members of the community are able to see a class they like and click on the document to register. I like using it, and I recommend it to other departments, also.

Were there any big changes when you started using Issuu?

We used to print out the brochure and send it to every household. Surprisingly, we didn’t see a drop in registration when we moved to online distribution only and stopped sending out a physical copy. People seem to find it pretty easy to navigate, and I really like the feature where I can add website links for each program’s registration page.

You mentioned that you used to print these, do you know how much you spent on printing?

Let’s see, we typically do four brochures per year, sent out to 12,000 households, and let’s say each brochure costs around $1 to produce and print. The math is a little rough, but by going fully digital with Issuu, we save around $55,000 every year in printing costs. We invested that savings back into our programs and expanded the number of people we serve.

Besides the links feature, are there any other features that you use?

Another feature I use frequently is analytics. I like using the insights from Issuu statistics to see how many people read it and how long they read it. We then use this information to build future brochures and understand how many people read it compared to how many registrations we had. It helps us know how many people actually went from reading, clicking on what they wanted to, and then registering for a program. I use this frequently.

Can you tell us how using Issuu statistics has improved your reach? Or any changes you’ve made based on those analytics?

We reached out to some communities that we hadn’t really thought of reaching out to before, and 43% of those reads correlated to signups for our programs. The results were awesome to see, and we are very excited about delving deeper into our statistics.

Are there other features that you plan to implement in the future?

We don’t currently have videos in our brochures, but it’s something we’ve been considering for our summer program to highlight what the program can look like, especially for parents who want to know more. Also, we are making updates to our website and hope to embed the program guides directly onto the website.

Do you have a favorite program?

I really enjoy archery. I did a lot of archery as a kid and in boy scouts, and someday I would absolutely love to run our department's archery program.

Is there a favorite brochure that you’ve published on Issuu?

Is it cheesy if I say they’re all my favorite? I’m really excited about the more recent brochures because we have a design team working on them, which is certainly better than what we could create alone. The design team helped us establish a great template where we switch up the cover and color scheme for the season, but the overall template stays the same. Plus, each brochure sees a new program added, and we’re only getting better as we go, so they’re all my favorites.