Lexipol by the numbers
Lexipol is a trusted source of news, analysis and risk management expertise for public safety and local government agencies. In the past year, it has reviewed almost 11,750 pieces of legislation and regulatory changes and it reaches an audience of two million people through its five specialist online brands: Police1, FireRescue1, Corrections1, EMS1 and Gov1.
The business was established in 2003 and has become a voice of authority for the sectors that it serves. To develop this authority further and grow the number of people it could support, Lexipol knew it was time to overhaul its content management capabilities.
In the run up to this transformation, Lexipol worked with systems integration specialist Indigo Trigger to help it understand how it should structure itself ahead of the project and to ensure it had the right framework in place to enable it to get the best out of the technology.
This support continued during and after the move to the new systems, which include the Brightspot CMS, a new email server solution and an integrated customer data platform (CDP).
The level of support was truly impressive. It’s not an easy thing to take a legacy CMS that supports five brands and 20 years of content and figure out how that translates into a new world.
Lexipol’s content challenges
Lexipol has a clear and consistent mission — to ensure the well-being and effectiveness of the public servants who safeguard our communities. It has stuck to this mission for more than 20 years. Recently, though, Lexipol found itself increasingly hampered by a technology stack that was struggling to evolve with the fast-moving times.
Lexipol’s five digital communities have always been at the heart of what it does. From the company’s start in 2003, it invested in a homegrown content management system (CMS), one that was built to offer content- as well as database-management capabilities.
Lexipol editors used the CMS to create and publish content across all brands — Police1, FireRescue1, Corrections1, EMS1 and Gov1. They also used it to create and publish newsletters and to set up and manage sponsor campaigns. Each campaign was based on a particular tactic such as lead generation, display advertising or newsletter advertising. The CMS platform tracked the performance of each campaign.
Sophisticated for its time, Lexipol’s homegrown CMS was built on what has now become old technology. Lexipol had streamlined its in-house development capabilities and there was limited access to people with the experience and/or expertise to make changes to the system. Any change took a long time and this was making it increasingly difficult for Lexipol to evolve existing products and to develop new ones.
Lexipol realised that the longer it stuck with its legacy CMS, the bigger its tech debt would become. It was time to replatform and deploy modern technology that would empower it to deliver its expertise to audiences in a more powerful way.
Finding a solution in Brightspot
As a specialist B2B publisher, Lexipol was immediately drawn to Brightspot’s proven track record in the media and publishing sector.
It also wanted to transition to new technology quickly and have access to a wide range of out-of-the-box options, which could then be customized and developed as required. This blend of ready-made and flexible options sits right in Brightspot’s wheelhouse.
For example, Lexipol immediately employed out-of-the-box content types within Brightspot like the commonly used article type. Then, with some customization, it was able to extend its article content type to support formatting for press releases, video assets, information pages, how-to-buy guides, downloads or webinars.
It reviews and updates public safety policies and provides online training, wellness resources, grant services and an electronic policy management platform.
The Texas-based company also has five digital brands: Police1, FireRescue1, Corrections1, EMS1 and Gov1. Each of these has its own digital publication providing the latest sector specific news and in-depth analysis
It supports more than two million public safety and government professionals.
This modification of the article content type was easily incorporated as a customization by Lexipol within Brightspot, and is just one way in which it has enabled it to make the CMS work to its exact requirements.
Lexipol also created a specific content type for sponsors, which has more than 40 different fields. Once populated, data from these fields, such as a sponsor’s campaign ID from external systems, can be pulled through and used for a variety of other functions throughout the new technology ecosystem.
This ecosystem has been made more sophisticated by a number of initial integrations with Brightspot. One is with email service provider Delivra and another is with its CDP, Piano.
The email integration allows editors to use content from Brightspot and create newsletters which can then be pushed to Delivra for activation.
The integration with Piano is enabling Lexipol to build audience segments based on people’s behavior and to then serve them targeted content according to their previous engagement.
A third integration that’s proving valuable is with Google Ad Manager, which is enabling Lexipol to enhance its ability to target specific users with relevant content during their visits to its various websites.
Searchability and support
In the run up to the replatforming transformation, Lexipol worked with systems integration specialist Indigo Trigger to help it understand how it should structure itself ahead of the project and to ensure it had a framework in place to enable it to get the best out of the technology. This support continued during the actual move to the new systems, which included the Brightspot CMS, the new email server and the CDP.
Brighspot worked hand-in-hand with Lexipol before, during and after the integration and Amanda Albert, Senior Director, Product Manager at Lexipol, says the help has been invaluable.
She explains: “The level of support was truly impressive. It’s not an easy thing to take a legacy CMS that supports five brands and 20 years of content and figure out how that translates into a new world.”
In practical terms, this meant examining the legacy system and identifying which functionality would translate into the Brightspot world and how previously manual tasks could be streamlined on the new CMS.
Similarly, she said Brightspot was ready with support and guidance on tagging, which is a critical piece of the new implementation. Lexipol has around half a million pages of content and the tagging taxonomy put in place has made this vast library easily and quickly searchable.
The taxonomy used in the old CMS had evolved to become inconsistent, resulting in content that was underperforming in search plus made it difficult for users and editors to find exactly what they wanted when using the old system. Brightspot is saving editors time on a daily basis and making it simple for them to pinpoint old content and have it on their screen in seconds.
Editors are also benefiting from the transparency Brightspot provides on content versions and the clarity with which it presents content history. The previous system didn’t provide visibility on who had made changes to a piece of content and when, which led to confusion and inefficient workflows.
Although Brightspot has only been in place since early 2024, it’s already given Lexipol the freedom and flexibility to improve the way it supports sponsors and to create a more sophisticated proposition to serve its users.
The ongoing collaboration between Lexipol, Brightspot and Indigo Trigger has been central to making the successful switch to a new technology stack and Amanda Albert says she and the Lexipol team are excited about what’s to come.
Lexipol in brief
