EITB first public audiovisual group to launch personalised news through WhatsApp

The public audiovisual group EITB has implemented an innovative project for personalized news delivery through WhatsApp, developed by the technology company Inetum and the communication platform Infobip. Thanks to this project, EITB, a leader in information in the Basque Country, achieves a more direct communication with citizens.

The WhatsApp Orain news service, promoted by EITB News, is born within the framework of the adaptation of the Basque radio and television to the digital consumption of audiovisual content and motivated by the change in the way news is consumed. This new public service information system via WhatsApp is immediate, truthful, and selective, and prioritizes news with more social impact. It is part of the Orain Berriak digital brand and consists of the selective and proactive sending of current affairs, politics, and alerts news, in text, graphics, photographs, and short videos formats, to different subscribers, according to their preferences. It has been developed by the Systems, News, IT, and Content departments of EITB, in collaboration with Inetum and Infobip.

One of the main challenges of this project has been the implementation of the compliance system of the service, in accordance with data protection, data collection, management, and incident management. The main objective of the project is to establish a direct, personalized, and immediate relationship with citizens, overcoming the barriers of organizational entities and reaching each user personally according to their interests. In addition, the project has managed to involve citizens in the identification and evolution of events that occur around them as key pillars of first-hand information.

Since the launch of this WhatsApp channel, EITB has sent more than 500,000 news in Basque and Spanish, with a highly attractive visual language, which have had a positive impact on the EITB audience with personalized content based on the segmentation of its subscribers. Delivery rates were 87%, reaching 90% of total views. In the first weeks, the project had more than 1,200 subscribers, and more than 5,000 personalized news were successfully sent with a delivery rate of 87%. In the first month, the number of subscribers increased by 250%, and only 0.11% of subscribers left the service.

EITB has taken a qualitative leap in its attention to society, as explained by Oihane Mateos, head of EITB Media's Digital News: "Our goal was to reach a wide spectrum of the population to offer a fast, immediate, and personalized service, and at the same time, we worked on a communication, knowledge, and enrollment campaign. At the same time, we have sought to make the audience an active part in the dissemination of real-time news and establish a direct relationship with citizens."

Orain Whatsapp

"We are very proud to have contributed to the success of this innovative project," highlights Jabier Ruiz, Head of Sales at Inetum Iberia Latam. "We have worked closely with EITB and Infobip to ensure the seamless integration of our solution into existing systems and ensure compliance. The result has been a project that has significantly improved communication between EITB and its subscribers and has laid the groundwork for future personalised communication initiatives in the public sector. Moreover, this successful project is an opportunity to transfer this service to other sectors”.

From Infobip, an international cloud communications platform, they also express their satisfaction with the success of the project deployment: "Our communication platform has been key," says Álvaro Ansaldo, Country Manager Iberia at Infobip, "for the selective and proactive sending of personalized news through WhatsApp. And it has been a success in terms of personalization, agility in response, and effectiveness in management."

EITB thus becomes the first public audiovisual group with media to adopt a direct communication project with citizens, a cross-cutting project that has encouraged other administrations to pursue this same objective in different use cases. This project has also collaborated in improving the internal processes of the public communication group and has had a positive impact on citizens.