Synertec’s partnership with
The National Immunisation Campaign
“In total, Synertec have sent 141,334,758 letters to patients across the country for the COVID and Flu communications.”
Key Takeaways
- Synertec's vital role in supporting the NHS's vaccination campaigns with effective communication strategies.
- By sending physical letters and SMS messages, Synertec effectively reached citizens with vaccine information across England.
- The advanced production facilities at Synertec enabled the capability to handle and dispatch the high volumes of letters required for the campaigns.
The pandemic posed significant issues for the world, and significantly affected the way that our day-to-day lives operate for over a year. Fortunately, the development of several vaccinations has allowed for the support of immunisation against Covid-19. With a clear need to vaccinate citizens across England, this brought further complications of how to contact citizens across the country. That’s where we came in to support.
At Synertec, we were commissioned by NHS South, Central and West to support both the winter flu vaccination programme and the current national COVID-19 vaccination campaign to communicate to citizens nationwide. The trust that was placed in us to undertake such a task was not taken lightly, and we are honoured that we were chosen to support this unique and highly important campaign. Our communications solution provides the NHS Immunisation Management Service with an effective way to create and manage hybrid communications to be sent to eligible citizens across England.
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Our communications solution provides the NHS Immunisation Management Service with an effective way to create and manage hybrid communications to be sent to eligible citizens across England.
Workload Capacity
The capacity at Synertec meant that normal business could remain unaffected whilst also undertaking the significant volume of documents required for the campaign. Our state-of-the-art production facilities in both Bristol and Warrington enabled for large volume output, while also having a contingency plan of rerouting documents from one site to another automatically, should the unlikely event of an external
disruption take place.
Our ability to receive large amounts of data was truly important for the success of this campaign, combined with our capacity to manage the high volume sending of letters/leaflets and SMS messages. The flexibility of our solution meant that, whether physical or digital, we could effectively deliver the communications to citizens across England on behalf of the NHS. For the physical communications, these eventually took the form of the now widely recognised blue envelopes, containing the necessary information to proceed with the vaccination process.
The invitations were sent out in cohorts, focusing on the over 65 age range first, beginning with the most elderly. The focus was then on the clinically extremely vulnerable, and then worked through the age ranges, in line with JCVI guidance. Subsequent reminders were sent via both communication methods to increase awareness of a citizen’s eligibility to receive the vaccine. We also sent out prompts to those who had received the 1st dose, but had not booked their 2nd dose, to ensure that they can be fully vaccinated.
In total, Synertec sent 141,334,758 letters to patients across the country for the COVID and Flu communications. For COVID, this included the initial invitation to book a vaccine, a prompt for some to have their 2nd dose if it was not booked, and also reminders to let citizens know that they were able to book their COVID vaccine, but may have otherwise missed the first letter. For the Flu vaccination, this covered the necessary steps to book their Winter Flu vaccination.
In addition to our physical mailing, we sent out SMS messages to patients that were eligible to receive their vaccine. This included the initial invitation, prompts for their 2nd dose if it was not booked, reminders, and also focuses on geographical areas that were seeing a spike in cases, to help combat the issue. Our SMS messages began to be sent in March 2021, and since then, a total of 189,095,497 SMS messages were sent to patients in England.
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Our SMS messages began to be sent in March 2021, and since then, a total of 189,095,497 SMS messages were sent to patients in England.
Bespoke Communications
While the first campaign was 100% paper messaging, Synertec consulted to advise the importance of multi-channel communications to ensure that the recipient is at the forefront of our minds, and that we can capture the attention of as many parties as possible. Synertec also advised on the implementation of various accessible formats of messaging, in line with the Accessible Information Standards to further support this objective.
With regards to sending the communications themselves, Synertec ensured these volumes met our standard service of same day mailing, with disaster recovery functionality through the sending from multiple secure production sites. Our standard procedure is to treat everything as though it is an emergency, so every document is held under the same level of importance, including its security and
quality when being sent. We also worked to advise on load balancing the sending of communications to take into account the NHS call centres and their capacity to ensure that they are not overwhelmed, which led to segmented sending.
To ensure the content was correct and accurate, Synertec also identified and advised on remedying specific errors such as typos, or for example a letter being sent in a different language, but then containing some English sentences, which was flagged and remedied to ensure that the recipient could understand the entire communication. We also performed quality checks on the data for identifying
poor quality addresses and phone numbers for cost efficiency. Furthermore, our advisory led to altering the font size of the content to have fewer pages being sent per communication, leading to significant cost savings while ensuring the same communication goals are met.
This service was built from the ground up in only four weeks, and included accurate reporting to show that we were sending a million documents per day, including working with our partners at Whistl and Royal Mail to ensure quality through our handover reports. This reporting was bespoke, so that this could be reported to the government on their plan.
Here at Synertec, we are very proud to have been involved in such a campaign. As with our company values, we believe in
integrity, accountability and openness. Our support in a campaign of this scale helped us to demonstrate these values in supporting such an important service for the NHS, while working tirelessly to support our existing customers, ensuring that we could provide support and as best we can.
The hard work from every single member here at Synertec has been pivotal in both the campaigns and the company’s success, so it is important to take this time to thank our people.
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