UNIFE’s European Year of Rail Campaign named one of Association of Association Executives’ Best of 2021!

Throughout 2021, the European Union celebrated and explored rail’s invaluable contribution to modern European life and its potential to complete the foreseen digital and sustainable transitions that lie ahead. As an essential component of the sector, UNIFE and the European rail supply industry conducted its own 12-month long, EU-wide communications initiative to bring policymakers, industry leaders and the general public together via social media, online events and thematic publications to the table for educational and exciting conversations on how to most effectively position our mode of transport as a backbone of a future multimodal mobility paradigm.

The campaign attracted more than 1700 registered participants from 54 different countries. Approximately 50% of attendees represented organisations that are not currently UNIFE members. These digital events were shared for later viewing on Vimeo and have continued to be accessed more than 230 times. Furthermore, our association more broadly engaged with Shift2Rail conferences and others, like SIFER, throughout the Year of Rail to share our industry’s perspective during this highly visible period.

To reach an even wider audience, these efforts were mirrored on UNIFE’s multiple social media accounts and in contributed articles to industry media. Our longest running digital campaign, UNIFE created and disseminated daily content pertaining to that month’s thematic topic. Directly targeting industry and institutional stakeholders, as well as the wider public, our association generated more than 727.000 impressions on both Twitter and LinkedIn with 435 posts – this figure does not include wider reach created by the activity of the participants and attendees. This constant, strategic activity helped drive upwards of 102.108 visitors to view 391.752 pages on our newly designed website that was released in 2021.

These efforts have been recognised as one of the best campaigns of the year by the Association of Association Executives (AAE) during their International & European Association Awards 2021! As a finalist in the category, UNIFE’s case study will be featured in their Association Success Story Programme to help other organisations craft effective, timely and inspiring campaigns of their own through the use of our best practices.