How the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Presents Corporate Engagement Materials with FlippingBook

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the institution’s flagship campus, spanning a wide range of disciplines and playing a major role in research across the state.

Part of the university’s focus is building institution-to-institution partnerships with corporations that are exploring opportunities to collaborate, whether by getting involved through research, professional education, or developing a talent pipeline. To support these relationships, the team creates materials that showcase partnership impact and help guide future cooperations.​

Challenge

At the Urbana-Champaign campus, strategic partnerships are managed by the Corporate Relations Office, which produces large, information-rich documents, such as annual reports, brochures, or research overviews. This content is designed to give a clear understanding of the university’s capabilities and the ways companies can collaborate.

As Desiree Clayton, Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications, shared, before implementing FlippingBook, materials were primarily sent as PDFs through email. Files could easily get lost, and it was difficult to maintain a clear, centralized system for storing and accessing content.

Another priority was maintaining brand consistency. Desiree emphasized the importance of making sure all materials reflect a unified visual identity.

The university has made efforts to align our branding efforts cross-campus.

Solution

To address the challenge of keeping reports organized, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign started using FlippingBook to centralize and distribute its corporate-facing documents through shareable links. Flipbooks are available on the website or can be shared individually with companies, tailored to their specific requirements.

We keep the reports accessible on our website, but we also share specific links depending on what a company is interested in.

Within each report, the team embeds links and occasionally videos to connect readers with additional resources.

Inside each flipbook, we can link people to other resources they might need. It makes the document interactive instead of just a file we send around.

At the Corporate Relations Office, the team uses FlippingBook to keep every document aligned with the university’s visual standards.

We’re speaking with a more cohesive voice, and I’ve been focused on making sure we stay consistent with branding, for example, by ensuring consistency with the wordmark we're using.

Results

With FlippingBook, the university can confidently share reports with corporate partners in an easy-to-access format. Annual and stewardship reports are no longer lost in email threads. Overall, documents in flipbook format are easier to navigate, and their interactive presentation helps readers focus on the sections most relevant to them.

People really value having easy access to the reports and the format itself. Externally, the feedback we hear most is that the reports look great.

Since implementing FlippingBook, the university now has access to analytics that show how its flipbook reports are being used. Weekly summaries highlight top-performing materials and where the audience is coming from, helping the team see how readers engage with their content.

I like understanding the audience. Those insights help me see who’s accessing our reports, and what’s performing best.

Together, these changes allow the university’s team to:

• Keep all corporate-facing reports accessible through links
• Share targeted materials without resending large files
• Present complex information in an interactive format
• Maintain consistent branding across content
• Monitor audience behavior through built-in analytics