Email Communication | Reach The Public

Top 10 Email Don’ts

Recently, I wrote an article on how to create mobile-optimized emails. That blog post provided tips on how to improve the experience of reading email on a mobile device, which led me to think about what you shouldn’t do when creating emails.

So, here are some things to keep in mind when putting together your next email:

Don’t copy and paste from a word processing program.
Most word processing programs (such as Microsoft Word) will actually insert a lot of unnecessary, and unseen, code into an HTML email if you cut and paste it into your email software. Oftentimes, this will cause your email to look strange, and you won’t know why. A better solution for cutting and pasting is to paste your text into a basic text editor such as Notepad or the code portion of Dreamweaver. Then copy from the text editor and paste into your email solution. Taking this extra step will strip out unwanted code and make your emails display better in the various clients’ email.
Don’t forget to include “alt image” text.
I know how it goes. We’re all busy. It’s easy to drop an image into an email and move on to the next task without pausing to fill in extra details like the “alt text” on your images. This is a bad habit, so make the effort to break it now. When you skip this important step, your emails will not encourage people to accept images from your organization as well as making it difficult for people with vision problems to decipher your email. Take the extra 5 seconds it takes to enter in alt text. It’s worth it in the long run.
Don’t make your emails too wide.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we are rapidly headed toward the time where the majority of emails will be viewed on a mobile device. To ignore this trend could be the difference between highly engaged readers and a digital ghost town. The old standard for email widths was 600px – 750px. Given the rise in popularity of mobile devices, I would suggest shooting for a standard width in the 350px – 500px range. They will display on mobile devices a lot better and will still look good on a larger desktop screen.
Don’t assume your email will render the same for everyone.
Did you know that, with the number of email clients, browsers and operating systems available, there are literally thousands of ways one individual email can look? Thousands! What can be done about this? First, try to find designs, layouts, fonts, and color schemes that will render well on some of the most common email/OS/browser combinations. For example, how does your email look in Outlook 2007 while running on Windows 7, or in Gmail running on Chrome? If it looks good for the most common possibilities, you can assume it will look OK on the rest. To find out how it will look across multiple combinations, use an email testing service such as Litmus or Email on Acid. These services are inexpensive ways to see how your message will look without spending a lot of time trying to cobble together lots of different systems to test on your own. Also, some email sending systems provide this type of testing as part of the platform.
Don’t use long URLs in the text version of your email.
When you’re creating HTML emails it’s fine to use a long URL, because the link gets hidden in the attribute tag. But, when you check out the text version of your email (you are sending a text version with every HTML version, right??), you may discover that a nice looking “click here” becomes “http://www.youragencyname.gov/files/05012013/web/stories/new/this-is-your-story-that-you-want-to-share99477546.html.”For readers who see the text version of your email, this is not visually appealing or informative. I suggest you go in and edit the text version of your message and use a link shortener, such as Bit.ly or Goo.gl to create something that looks like this: “To learn more about this story, click here: http://goo.gl/n3ZTe.” It will be a much cleaner read for your readers.
Don’t embed video.
Videos are a great way to engage your audience, and I highly recommend that you find creative ways to present your content in a video format. But, please don’t embed a video inside of an email. This will likely get your email to be marked as spam. A better approach is to use an image of one part of your video, such as the title page, and link the image to the video.
Don’t use ALL CAPS.
This one continues to baffle me. Writing in ALL CAPS is internet code for yelling or spam. I thought everyone knew that by now, but I still get at least one email a week where some portion of the email is written in ALL CAPS. If you need to highlight something exciting, choose a larger font, a different color, bold the font. Please don’t capitalize all the letters.
Don’t use monster pictures.
This is related to tip 7. While a nice, high-resolution image will look great when you display it on your 36 inch monitor, it probably doesn’t need to be in your email. Remember to shrink the image to something that’s web-ready. Leaving large images in your email could make them undeliverable if the email bumps up against file size limits. If it does make it into the inbox, the email will still take a long time to load. This can be annoying for people viewing your message on a mobile device. If you do want to offer the large, high-res version of your image, that’s great. Just create a thumbnail for your email and link to a spot where people can download the large version. That way those who want the big picture can still get it.
Don’t use unprofessional fonts.
There really is no place for Comic Sans or Papyrus fonts in professional emails. They just look silly and, depending on if people have that font installed, they may not display correctly. Personally, I prefer a nice sans serif font for emails. Something like Calibri, Arial or Verdana. But you can determine what you think looks professional and matches your brand. This also applies to using more than two different font types in one email, or using multiple colors and sizes. You want people to read your email, so make it easy on their eyes.
Don’t forget etiquette.
It doesn’t matter if it’s an email to your boss or a message you are sending to 75,000 people; following basic email etiquette will go a long way. Here is a great article that lists 25 tips for ensuring you aren’t creating an email faux pas with your messages.

I know some of you are thinking these items are pretty obvious, but you would be amazed at how many emails I get every day that violate one or more of these ‘don’ts’. If this list is basic stuff for you, then you’re probably well on your way to designing compelling emails. If you realized you violated one or more of these principles, then take some of these tips to start improving how you’re communicating with your audience. It’s never too late to start getting better. Remember, as Thomas Edison once said, “There’s a way to do it better – find it.”

communications, digital government, e-gov, email, engagement, mobile, outreach, responsiveness, technology

How to write and send a marketing email

May 17th, 2013 | Posted by GovDelivery in Email Communication | Mobile | Social Media | UK Government - (0 Comments)

Guest Post by Darren Caveney, co-creator of comms2point0 and Vice Chair of LGcomms

Email? Send them an email? But, hasn’t the world all shifted across to social media, I hear you cry?

Well yes and no. A whopping 94% of UK adults have an email address (source: Ofcom, 2012) That knocks into a cocked hat just about every social media statistic you’ll ever see.

Actually, most of us switch back and forth between both without really thinking about it too much. Smart phones and tablets have made it all so easy and seamless.

As [communications] professionals we know that we need to be confident using both mediums, but understand the subtle differences, the advantages offered by both and where synergies exist.

Crafting, targeting and loving your marketing emails. Now that’s a skill which will come naturally for some. For others it needs a bit of thought and a bit of work. Just think about the array of approaches, of content, of style of the emails you receive each day – the good, the bad and the ugly. Occasionally, I scan through my spam folder with sheer wonder at some of the nutty stuff people have thought appropriate for me.

As always, there is much to learn and case studies a plenty out there so when I nabbed a ticket for the excellent mailcamp at the swanky National Audit Office’s HQ I was all ears.

So, here’s a top 10 things you need to consider when sending an email, as suggested by the speakers at mailcamp

80% of your email’s content should sit at the top of the email – above the fold, as we used to say
What you put in the subject box is vital. Make it interesting and relevant, make it stand out in a busy inbox
Use links rather than pictures – pictures may look nicer but links will generate more click-throughs
Include surveys and competitions to encourage interaction, but only if the content of them is relevant to what your subscribers want
Be fleet of foot – think about relevant opportunities which breaking news, current affairs and live events can throw up, and how you might time your emails to coincide
Timing is key – if you want people to attend a weekend event, hitting their inbox on Friday late morning/early afternoon can be key in influencing their weekend plans
Your ‘call to action’ must be clear and simple. And it must be referenced in your email subject line
Integrate your email activity with your social media channels – cross-promote, co-ordinate, converge
What works for social media can also work for email – be authentic, be honest, tell stories
Measure, measure, measure – study the analytics. But do measure the right thing – don’t fret about openings if your goal is click-throughs and sign ups.

Of course, there’s more to running successful email marketing campaigns than this but if we nail these as a starter for 10 then we can expect a decent return.

Thanks to Steph Gray for organising mailcamp, to Nick Halliday for hosting and for GovDelivery and Dave Worsell for sponsoring and buying the pizza.

See original post on comms2point0 blog.

photo credit

channel shift, Citizen Engagement, comms2pointo, communications, Darren Caveney, email, LGcomms, mailcamp, outreach, responsiveness, social media, technology, UK Government

Universal Credit Implementation: Meeting the Communications Challenge

May 10th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Community Management/Engagement | Current Affairs | Email Communication | UK Government - (0 Comments)

The most extensive reform to the UK welfare system in five decades- Universal Credit – is underway and presents some unique challenges and opportunities, as outlined in a recent article in The Guardian. With a change this massive, how does the UK government implement Universal Credit consistently and communicate clearly with its citizens?

Defining the Change
Universal Credit is a new, single payment system for people who are looking for work or on a low income. Its goal is to cut costs by simplifying the benefits systems by bringing together multiple benefits into a single payment, which citizens apply for through one online source. Transitioning to Universal Credit will involve a focus on citizen self-service by going digital and centralizing services within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Digital by Default
One of the most significant changes in making the transition to Universal Credit is the shift it requires in the way citizens have traditionally interacted with government authorities. Historically, citizens needed to work with a number of different local authorities to apply for and manage the set of government services they receive. The bulk of this interaction between citizens and government has been paper-based and moving to a digital delivery system will require effective communication with citizens. Issues to address in this area include applicants’ potential lack of digital skills and access to digital channels.

Delivery Plan
For a successful Universal Credit transition, local authorities need to evaluate their role in implementing the change. To support that task, the DWP has published a Local Support Services reference document to help local authorities build their citizen outreach efforts and tailor the ideal delivery model region by region. The most critical components of building the delivery model will be:

• Identifying Customers
• Understanding and Planning to Mitigate the Impact
• Demand Management and Influencing

How can local authorities reach the most citizens most efficiently? In his white paper, Universal Credit: Challenges, Changes and Digital Communication, Dr. Gerald Power – an expert in public sector change and efficiency improvement – discusses best practices for how local authorities can inform and engage their citizens. Local authorities with a comprehensive set of digital communication solutions can leverage a wide range of tools to enhance citizen communication initiatives related to Universal Credit.

Download Dr. Power’s white paper to read more about how robust digital communication platforms can help local authorities implement the transition to Universal Credit.

Best Practices, citizen service, communication, community, Department for Work and Pensions, Dr. Gerald Power, DWP, engagement, outreach, responsiveness, technology, UK Government, Universal Credit, Universal Credit implementation

Top 10 (Easy) Ways to Make Your Emails Work for Mobile

I don’t need to convince you that we are in the midst of a massive shift in the way we access information. The days of desktop dominance have given way to mobile devices. This is especially true for email. With each passing month, more and more people are accessing their email on their phones and tablets. If your emails are not designed to accommodate smaller screen sizes, your readers will become frustrated with your emails and discontinue reading.

In a previous post, I talked about how to create a mobile friendly website using Responsive Design. But, what about email? What can be done about my newsletters, alerts and notices?

Responsive Design for email is not going to be the solution for everyone. First, to use Responsive Design for email, you have know how to code. You have to write CSS code that will scale and re-arrange your emails to fit on mobile devices. This is a specialized skill set that not everyone has. What if you don’t know how to write CSS? How can you make your emails look better without getting a masters degree in computer science?

Second, Responsive Design for email will only display properly on iPhones, with the built-in Apple mail client. Responsive Design currently won’t work with email apps like Gmail or Yahoo Mail. For people viewing their email on a mobile device, which pulls the content from a hosted mail server like Exchange or Lotus Notes, Responsive Design elements will not work.

So what can you do? Although more people are reading their emails on mobile devices, Responsive Design is not currently a great solution.

To get around this issue, and make things easier for you, I suggest optimizing your emails for mobile using solid scalable design principles. Scalable design uses a single column layout and grid system for alignment and proportion. If you don’t know how to set this up, or your system doesn’t allow for this, it’s easy to design your emails, in any email provider, by using some simple tricks.

So, here are my top 10 (easy) tips for making your emails work on mobile devices:

Try to keep in mind how you use your own phone or tablet to look at email. If you think through the steps you take, the fingers you use and the way your device works, it will go a long way in making your emails look good.

1) Single Column
When you put together your emails, a single column is going to work the best. Classic web design prescribes keeping as much as possible “above the fold” to catch a person’s eye. The result was web pages that got wider and wider so that more information could be at the top of the page. With mobile, wide is bad, because most mobile devices are not as large as your 24” monitor. For mobile devices, skinny and vertical is better. It’s much easier to read and scroll up and down than it is to go right and left (or worse, to zoom in and out).

2) Width
Speaking of skinny and vertical, you should reduce the width of your emails to allow for the smaller screens of mobile phones. I would suggest you keep your email width to 450px and definitely less than 600px. This will allow your email to fit nicely on most devices.

3) Text Size
Now that you have a skinny, single column email, you will need to compensate for the smaller dimensions by increasing the size of the font. I suggest you go with 14-16px for body copy and 20-26px for headers. The larger font will allow people to read your content without having to squint (or as I mentioned, the dreaded zoom in and out).

4) Shorten Content
Remember way back in point 1 when I said it’s easier to scroll up and down on a mobile device? Well there are limits. If people have to scroll for 17 minutes to get to the bottom of your email, your email is way too long. Try writing shorter, teaser summaries to your stories and then link to the full story on a landing page or your Responsively Designed website. This helps people get right to the content they want and will drive up your engagement rate. It will also help improve search engine optimization (or SEO) of your site and keep your readers happy by getting them exactly what they are interested in.

5) Buttons
While you are linking to those landing pages, get rid of simple text links and go with touch-friendly buttons instead. For most people it takes pin-point accuracy to actually click on linked text and many times we hit the wrong things if we are a little clumsy or have large fingers. Replacing those links with clickable buttons will help solve that problem; 50x50px to 75x75px should be enough to get the job done.

6) Alt Tags
When using buttons as links, make sure you are putting alt tags in place for people who have images turned off. Also, make sure the alt tags make sense to people viewing your message. Instead of the outline of your button with “mobile_button_2.png” in place of the image, why not try an alt tag that displays something like, “Click here to go to the full article. Please allow images from Central City to improve your reading experience.”

7) White Space
Even though you are using buttons for your links, remember to place ample white space between text, paragraphs, images, buttons, etc. This will help make your emails easier to read and provide more forgiveness so people don’t click the wrong thing.

8) Thumbs
The majority of people use their right hand, more specifically their right thumb to scroll and click on things. Even lefties like me scroll through emails on their phone using their right hand. So, placing your buttons on the right hand side, or in the center, of your emails will make it easier for people to click while using one hand.

9) Subject Lines
Keep your email subject lines short and sweet. Subject lines that are too long will get truncated with smaller screen sizes. I suggest 60 characters or less.

10) Test, Test, Test
Just like a pool, it pays to test the waters before diving right in. Send a test email to several different email clients and look at them on several different devices of varying sizes. You will be amazed at how different one email can look. Try to find a design that looks good for all devices and email clients. If you can get that right, you can be confident that people will have a positive experience interacting with your emails.

There you have it. 10 simple tips for making your emails look great on mobile devices without using Responsive Design. If I’ve missed any you can think of, put them in the comments section below. For more great tips, check out our new white paper, “Integrating Email in Government Communications.”

communication, data, email, engagement, GovDelivery, government, mobile, mobile friendly, outreach, responsive design, responsiveness, SEO, technology

Email Finds New Life in Integrated Campaigns

There’s a school of thought that says email is outdated – that people are moving to social media channels (Facebook, Twitter) and mobile text messaging. Many think the generation entering the workforce today sees email as an ‘old-fashioned’ communication medium.

So, should forward-looking government agencies focus their digital communication strategies on social media and mobile messaging rather than email?

Research suggests the opposite.

Reports of email’s death are greatly exaggerated

Research by Nielsen suggests that heavy social media users use more, not less, email. Even for the socially savvy “Gen Y” demographic, email is an essential part of life.

Email is a powerful communication channel for governments. It’s cost-effective and increasingly pervasive. And as more people have phones with email capabilities, it’s a very fast and efficient way to reach many citizens wherever they are.

In fact, combining email with other digital communications increases the reach of government agencies across all channels. Many agencies use email as part of integrated outreach and interaction strategies:

Letting citizens subscribe for email updates to current road conditions, new video postings, meeting announcements or new website resources.

Using email for emergency communications in conjunction with Twitter, text messages and other real-time channels.

Combining email with social media – such as emailing a daily digest of Twitter updates to citizens who subscribe.

In the white paper “Integrating Email in Government Communications,” industry analyst and blogger Liz Azyan profiles how the Driving Standards Agency in the U.K. uses email as an integral part of driving engagement along multiple digital channels.

For example, the agency sends email updates to subscribers about new videos it releases on YouTube. As a result, they have seen a 163% increase in video views, and their new video releases quickly become among the most popular on the YouTube Motoring channel.

Download the paper to read more about specific strategies and best practices for integrating email in digital government communications.

citizen service, communication channel, digital channels, Driving Standards Agency, DSA, email, Facebook, GovDelivery, government, government communications, Liz Azyan, outreach, research by Nielson, responsiveness, social media, technology, Twitter, UK Government, YouTube Motoring

Leveraging Technology to Do More with Less

With sequestration officially underway, the phrase “doing more with less” carries more weight than ever before. While cuts are being made across the board, citizens’ needs remain, posing quite a challenging situation for government organizations and their communications efforts. As budgets are forced to become even tighter, organizations are being called upon to serve the needs of citizens by thinking innovatively and creatively.

The need to innovate to solve public sector challenges is quite familiar to Phil Bertolini, CIO for Oakland County, Michigan. While struggling with decreasing revenues and budgets, Bertolini and his team found that citizens were demanding more information than ever before. They quickly realized the need to find an efficient and effective way to meet citizens’ needs while simultaneously meeting the county’s budget.

Realizing that traditional methods would not suffice, Bertolini looked elsewhere, looking to technology as a solution for Oakland County’s communications challenge. The transition to digital communications began changing the way Oakland County handled their communications. Oakland County began placing more and more information online, leveraging various social media channels to reach a larger audience much more quickly than before. Citizens now had easy access to the information they needed through a variety of convenient, online channels that provided savings in both time and resources to Oakland County.

Oakland County is not alone in this transformation. Many organizations are now turning to technology to provide more efficient solutions to increasing communication challenges. There are many other ways in which leveraging technology around your office can help your organization cut communication costs. Here are three examples of where to begin.

Work “in the cloud”. Cloud computing refers to computing resources that are delivered on a network, (most commonly the internet). Working in the cloud reduces office storage and hardware costs because all of your information is online. Many companies, such as Google, provide a variety of cloud-computing applications that include email accounts and collaborative document sharing (GoogleDocs) in lieu of standard office software. The best part? Cloud computing allows this information to be accessed anywhere on a variety of mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and e-readers.

Leverage video communications. Video communications can greatly reduce the costs associated with in-person meetings and conferences, travel expenses, and phone bills. While it’s great to have everyone in the same room at the same time, it can be very costly. Videoconferencing allows everyone to maintain the critical face-to-face contact that helps facilitate communications while eliminating the many costs (travel, accommodations and food) that can result from in-person meetings. Videoconferencing also allows for an even larger number of attendees to participate in the conversation. Adapting video communications software can greatly reduce the expensive phone bills most organizations experience. Skype is one example. Skype is a cloud-based software application that allows users to communicate by voice, video, and instant messaging at no cost. Using Skype in place of phone calls (when possible) for communications between employees on a regular basis can reduce the costs associated with company phone bills.

Go paperless. Think of everything that gets printed in your office a day. Flyers and printed information for your customers aside, think of just the memos, notes, forms, and contact lists alone laying around your desk. I myself can count six separate items on my desk right now. Try going paperless. For internal items, you can have scans readily accessible on your desktop. For internal communications between employees and colleagues, you can send emails with attachments to digital documents. These steps can help you reduce the costs associated with printing quickly and easily.

There are many ways to begin cutting costs around your office; it’s just a matter of where to start. Examining your organization’s most extraneous costs is a great place to start. While you may not be able to fully eliminate some of these costs, it’s fairly easy to find both short and long-term reduction strategies.

For more ideas of where to cut costs throughout your organization, check out 22 Ways to Cut Costs in Time of Sequester and watch Phil Bertolini’s video discussing Oakland County’s communication challenges.

communication, communications, digital government, do more with less, Oakland County, saving money, sequestration, technology

Mobile Communications Change How Americans Live

Mobile: the new frontier in digital communications. This is a voyage in which 87 percent of adult Americans are participating. The mission: to explore new opportunities, seek out improved ways to communicate, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

For example, after the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, individual donors contributed an estimated $43 million to the assistance and reconstruction efforts using the text messaging feature on their cell phones. The first-ever, in-depth study on mobile donors finds that these contributions were often spur-of-the-moment decisions that spread virally through friend networks, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The study found that for 74 percent of Haiti text donors, it was the first time they had used their phone’s text messaging function to make a donation to an event, cause or organization.

Americans are doing many things via their mobile phones that they used to accomplish in other ways. An April 2012 survey finds that 70 percent of cell phone owners and 86 percent of smartphone owners (62 percent of the entire adult population) have used their phones in the previous 30 days to perform at least one of the following activities:

Coordinate a meeting or get-together
Solve an unexpected problem that they or someone else had encountered
Decide whether to visit a business, such as a restaurant
Find information to help settle an argument they were having with someone
Look up a score of a sporting event
Get up-to-the-minute traffic or public transit information to find the fastest way to get somewhere
Get help in an emergency situation

This exploration of new ways to accomplish routine tasks has a broad impact. According to the Pew study, 87 percent of American adults own a cell phone and 45 percent own a smartphone. What is striking about these statistics is that they apply to adults in every category of race, age, education, household income and urbanity. For example, in urban areas 87 percent own cell phones; suburban, 85 percent; and rural, 88 percent. The disparity between rich and poor is minimal with 82 percent of those earning less than $30,000 per year owning a cell phone compared to 94 percent with household incomes of more than $75,000. The disparity is also minimal for other categories, with the exception of age, where 68 percent of 65-plus Americans own a cell phone compared to 93 percent of 18-29-year olds. Smartphones are most popular with 18-29 year olds, college graduates, and people in the highest income brackets.

While a recent Harvard Business Review article states that 68 percent of consumers’ smartphone use happens at home and 46 percent of that time is spent on “me time” activities such as watching funny videos, reading a gossip website or playing solitaire- those statistics are misleading. The reported percentage of all interactions exclude text messaging, emails and voice calls, the basic functions for which people most often use cell phones.

According to the Pew study, activities people use their cell phones for include:

Taking a picture (82 percent)
Sending or receiving text messages (80 percent)
Accessing the internet (56 percent)
Sending or receiving email (50 percent)
Recording video (44 percent)
Downloading Apps (43 percent)
Looking for health or medical information online (31 percent)

Truly the American public is on a voyage to explore the varied ways mobile communication can improve their lives. It’s a new frontier and one that government must capitalize on to ensure the best service available to the public sector.

How is your department utilizing mobile communications?

Getting Your Message Heard: When Communication is a Matter of Life or Death

Imagine for a moment that you are in an area that is about to be hit by a hurricane. What would you want to know to prepare? Do you know where the safest place will be? How will you contact other family members if separated? These questions are extremely important when faced with a disaster. And if you work in the public sector, another important question is: What good is your message if your audience isn’t getting it?

As a government employee, you may have critical information that could potentially save lives before or during an urgent situation, but if your message doesn’t actually get to your intended recipients, the message is useless.

The town of Ocean City, Maryland, quickly realized the importance of this question during the aftermath of Hurricane Irene in 2011. Overall, the storm caused 47 deaths and over $15 billion worth of damage. Despite the myriad of communications being sent out by town staff, Ocean City residents felt they hadn’t received adequate or timely information about the storm.

Ocean City officials listened to their citizens and stakeholders and took action. They began by discussing their current communications system. The town already had a system in place that pushed out email alerts; however, administrators felt that a more flexible system was necessary. They wanted the ability to send messages, especially emergency alerts, via multiple channels, including text messages or SMS. They knew there was a much more efficient and effective way to communicate emergency and other high priority information to residents.

In July 2012, Ocean City selected and implemented a multichannel, integrated digital communication platform: GovDelivery Digital Communication Management (DCM). Residents are now able to sign up for a wide variety of topics such as Jobs, Council updates and City Wide Alerts.

The system not only allows Ocean City to send out email and text messages, but it has also helped the town dramatically increase its reach.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Ocean City was significantly more prepared, using the system to get the word out about preparation, storm updates and recovery efforts.

“In times of emergencies, it’s critical for the town to have a system in place that allows us to quickly reach out to our residents and stakeholders with information that they need to keep themselves and their properties safe or secure. With Hurricane Sandy, I was glad to know that we were using the same system that FEMA was using to get the word out about the storm,” said Joe Theobald, Emergency Services Director, Ocean City, MD.

Despite Hurricane Sandy’s devastation, Ocean City residents reported being “extremely satisfied” with officials’ communication throughout the storm. To read the full success story, click here.

If you’d like to know more on how to guide the public in preparing for emergency situations, click here to get the FREE E-BOOK, Leveraging Digital Communications in Emergencies.

citizen, citizen service, communications, community, digital government, engagement, GovDelivery, Hurricane Sandy, outreach, responsiveness, technology

Do RSS Feeds Still Matter?

Co-written by Mary Yang, Senior Communications Manager, and Anna Stroncek, Marketing and Communications Intern- GovDelivery

The recent Google announcement that it would be shutting down Google Reader has led to a flurry of blog posts and discussions around RSS feeds, their importance (or lack thereof), and what to do now.

What is an RSS Feed?

For those of you non-techies out there, or maybe those of you whom just need a quick refresher on what an RSS feed is, here’s a short and sweet explanation.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (RSS), which is essentially a format for delivering regularly changing web content. RSS feeds allow a user to subscribe to their favorite news sources, blogs, websites, and other digital properties, and then receive the latest content from all those different areas or sites in one place, without having to repeatedly visit each individual site.

Picture your Twitter Feed filled with postings of new content from your favorite sources rather than 140 characters informing you of which friend is currently enjoying the new vanilla spice latte from Starbucks, #delicious.

RSS was developed in the 1990s, giving websites the ability to push information out to their subscribers as opposed to a subscriber having to check for new content by going to each individual website. This new development brought on increased capabilities for websites and blogs to capture new visitors and turn them into returning visitors, as well as helping to increase the online ranking of the website to bring increased overall awareness.

Now fast forward to 2013. RSS feeds still exist, and they still do get used. However, they’re no longer the new kid on the block, so they’re not as ‘popular’ as they once were. More and more that small orange widget seems to go missing from the ever-increasing lineup of widgets on any given website.

With all the buzz surrounding social media, it’s easy to argue that RSS feeds are dying out and becoming a thing of the past. Who needs to subscribe to RSS feeds when you can get instant news and updates from outlets like Twitter?

Maybe that’s what Google’s thinking by shuttering Google Reader, which, just a few of years ago, was the RSS tool to use. But what’s next, especially with this new development in the tech world?

The Future of RSS

Today’s world is filled with massive amounts of information. According to IBM, 90% of today’s existing data has been created in just the past two years. People no longer sit down at their desktop and surf the web for an hour a day. Instead, they are constantly creating, searching for information, and retrieving content from all types of devices – smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and laptops. As these digital technologies continue to evolve and move in a more mobile direction, new opportunities arise for technologies like RSS.

Hot new mobile applications like Flipboard provide a great example of how RSS feeds can be leveraged to bring updated digital content to customers. Flipboard publishes content from thousands of sources via optimized RSS feeds. Publishers are pushing out their new content via RSS, and Flipboard leverages these feeds to users in a magazine-like layout (within Flipboard). This application can be used on smartphones, tablets and e-readers bringing customers the content they desire in a simple, convenient, personal and aesthetically pleasing way.

Another example of leveraging RSS feeds is the application Pulse. Pulse, quoted by Steve Jobs as “a wonderful RSS reader”, is an elegant newsreader application that uses publishers’ RSS feeds to read and publish content. Pulse brings its 25 million (and counting) users their favorite blogs, magazines and social networks to one place at one time. Similar to Flipboard, their application is compatible across iOS and Android platforms, but also makes content even more accessible and convenient with its compatibility to Windows, Nook, Kindle, Xbox and the web.

These two applications have been around for a while now but still mainly pull from well-known publications or newspapers. With the death of Google Reader on our doorstep, tech firms are already on the hunt for Google Reader’s massive user base. Digg announced just this week that they’re speeding up the release of an RSS reader/application. But in their statement, they note that they’re going to push the envelope of RSS too:

We hope to identify and rebuild the best of Google Reader’s features (including its API), but also advance them to fit the Internet of 2013, where networks and communities like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and Hacker News offer powerful but often overwhelming signals as to what’s interesting.

So what does this mean for you?

The demise of Google Reader sounds like an open invitation for some tech firms to start innovating on a well-defined technology to make it more relevant and integrated into the tools we’re already using every day. This could mean that RSS feeds could become the new cool in digital technology, and since it leverages technology that’s fairly stable, you could roll with this curve once it hits simply by instituting an RSS feed.

Much like magazines and newspapers, governments and their organizations possess a lot of information and produce a lot of great content. However, it can be a challenge to attract regular visitors to your digital properties, which is why RSS feeds and proactive communication comes in handy. For GovDelivery clients, all your digital communications created and sent out via the Digital Communication Management (DCM) platform can be collected in an RSS feed, allowing you to push content out to your citizens and stakeholders easily. One great example is the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) in the UK. They offer different types of RSS feeds, tailored to the topics they’ve defined in GovDelivery DCM:

Their digital communications management system allows them to segment their RSS feeds so readers don’t have to figure out what’s important – if you’re an instructor, you merely subscribe to their instructors email topic or you follow their instructors RSS feed.

Another great government example is the White House. The White House has developed a mobile app that pushes out content from The White House Blog, press articles, photo galleries, LIVE stream videos, speeches and more all by way of RSS feeds. The app is visually appealing and easy to navigate. This is a great way to emulate apps like Flipboard and push your organizational content into the mobile sphere while leveraging content and tools you already have available.

And although the White House may have a slight advantage over smaller government entities in terms of content (a live stream of the State of the Union), state and local governments can leverage RSS feeds and content that’s already available to inform and educate. People like to know and see what’s going on where they live. So take a look at what your organization currently produces (blogs, photos, events, news updates, videos, etc.) and find out if you can pull those pieces of content into an RSS feed (or multiple RSS feeds) to help expand your digital communications reach even more.

Do you use Google Reader personally? How do you feel about the announcement? Let us know what you think might be ahead for RSS feeds in the comments.

collaboration, communication, community, digital government, e-gov, engagement, Google Reader, RSS, social media, technology, Twitter, web 2.0

How NHS could benefit from proactive public health alerts

By Kathy Kyle, Digital Communications Consultant, GovDelivery

A recent BBC article explores how the National Health Service (NHS) has spent £13 million on public relations and whether the Trust and the public is receiving value for money. Some NHS Trusts have commented that the use of PR firms is necessary to educate the public on health issues, especially with regard to high-profile public health campaigns.

There is no doubt that when it comes to public health, proactive, timely, and targeted communications can raise awareness, prevent illness, and inform the public, keeping them safe and healthy. Whether it is a campaign regarding healthier choices around smoking, caffeine, or alcohol, an urgent international health crisis, or every day communications with the public to keep them healthy and safe, the value of proactive communications can – and should be – evaluated. Government healthcare organisations and institutions can be much more effective with digital communications by measuring reach, engagement, and in-person visits. This not only bolsters public trust in the system and saves funds, but can dramatically improve healthcare outcomes.

NHS communications staff can potentially demonstrate the return on its digital investment on a campaign basis by measuring any correlation between the reduction of reported illnesses, office visits, and avoidable contact and the increases in the number of people subscribed to digital communications, engagement rates with digital messages, web traffic, and social media follows.

Instead of focusing funds and efforts primarily on PR campaigns, NHS could complement its outreach efforts by maximising direct connections with the public using an integrated digital communications platform. This kind of platform is available at a fraction of the cost of hiring an external PR firm. GovDelivery Digital Communication Management (DCM) is one system that has been successfully used for proactive public health programmes in the United States by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centres for Disease Control (CDC), and many state Departments of Health – as well as in the UK by the Health Safety Executive (HSE), Health Protection Agency (HPA), Department of Health, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), and the Food Standards Agency (FSA). These government institutions and organisations are directly connecting, educating, informing and engaging the public without spending a fortune – and their internal staff are easily managing the message and the process.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s goals include safeguarding public health by ensuring that the products they regulate meet required standards, that the products work and that they are acceptably safe. From a communications perspective, MHRA must ensure accurate, timely and authoritative information is provided to healthcare professionals, patients and the public.

MHRA uses GovDelivery DCM to send nearly 28 million messages to opt-in subscribers; more than 50,000 stakeholders around the UK have self-subscribed through the Agency’s email alerting service. MHRA must ensure a high message delivery rate due to the time-sensitive and potentially life-saving nature of its alerts. If you’ve ever had to ensure that a message was delivered quickly, with metrics to ensure it was delivered, you know how difficult this can be to manage in-house. There could be serious consequences if messages are delayed in reaching pharmacists, physicians and the public. By partnering with GovDelivery, MHRA leverages GovDelivery’s active management of relationships with all major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on behalf of over 550 public sector entities worldwide. MHRA is then assured a high deliverability rate, and MHRA communications staff can spend their time engaging directly with constituents, ensuring potentially life-saving, time sensitive medical and drug-related messages are delivered, instead of troubleshooting why messages are caught in filters and flagged as spam. View the complete MHRA success story.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a $941B organisation with over 65,000 staff, invests in health care, disease prevention, social services, and scientific research. HHS was already reaching a large audience through its use of GovDelivery email alert subscriptions, when the H1N1 pandemic flu outbreak threatened the United States. HHS needed to reach the largest audience possible to ensure individuals were kept informed and safe.

Email subscriptions to Flu.gov information increased more than ten times the normal rate due to higher interest as well as collaboration with CDC and other partners in the GovDelivery Network. Average new subscribers exceeded 3,000 per day versus the previously established average of 215. Over one million email alerts were sent to subscribers at their request regarding H1N1. Emails included “Share This” links with content being repurposed and shared over 120 times via social media channels. HHS also cross-promoted the email alert service with social media networks. Twitter links embedded in email alerts generated more than 10,000 clicks and helped boost HHS’s Twitter followers. View the entire HHS success story.

The difference between proactive digital communications and a PR campaign without measurable impact has more than just financial repercussions. Now more than ever, investments in communications must be made with the goal of building and sustaining public trust and health.

Kathy Kyle
Digital Communications Consultant, GovDelivery

Kathy can be reached at kathy.kyle@govdelivery.com or on Twitter @bonominiyogini.

citizen service, communication, community, digital, digital government, e-gov, email, engagement, GovDelivery, government, local government, outreach, responsiveness, technology, UK Government, web 2.0

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