content | Reach The Public

Email: The Major League Player

When you are formulating your digital communication strategy, what tools form the foundation for your execution? Social media is most likely the first thought that comes to mind these days. And understandably so; social media, in its many forms, can be a very effective communications tool. However, email remains a key tool, especially in the evolving communications industry.

Jeremy Greene, VP of Product Management at GovDelivery, recently shared these key success factors in digital communication strategies during his “What’s Next In Digital Communications” presentation at our kick-off event of GovDelivery’s 2013 Communications Tour. To find out where the next tour stop is, click here. Here’s a quick summary of some of his main points:

1. Email remains the foundation of digital communications
Of the over 80% of adults who are online, 94% of those adults are leveraging email. These are numbers that are hard to ignore. To further illustrate just how large the email user base truly is, picture this for a moment: if the following communication platforms were countries, Facebook would have a population of 1 billion; Twitter would have a population of 200 million (the size of Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakstan); and email’s population would be a whopping 3.2 billion.

2. Multichannel communications
The main goal is to create content once, and then push it out through all of your communication channels. Chances are, you and your colleagues don’t have time to create new content for each of these channels on a regular basis. This model is often known as the C.O.P.E method (Create Once, Publish Everywhere).

This can be done from either angle as a starting point. In other words, take content from your blog or email newsletter and use the same content in your Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and any other communication channels. Or pull content from your social media feeds and use it to create email newsletters. This is an efficient and effective way to get information to your audience faster and increases the opportunities for your content to be shared within multiple channels.

Jeremy suggests adding an icon option on your website that allows for people to sign up for a weekly digest of all tweets that come out of your organization. He says this “tends to gain a lot of traction” and that “many clients have more recipients on their Twitter email list than they actually have of Twitter followers.” Find out where your target audience is hanging out — which social media channels they are already using — and hone your focus to those.

3. Messaging optimized for mobile
How do your current communication efforts look on a mobile phone? More people are using their phones to check email and surf the web, and this continues to grow as “78% of US email users will also access their emails via mobile by 2017” (Forrester Research, 2012). In fact, “43% of email is now opened on a mobile device” (Litmus, Email Analytics, 2012).

Jeremy emphasizes the importance of “taking the time and due diligence to make sure that the content that you’re creating looks good on a mobile device.” If you aren’t, less than half of your intended audience will see the message on a device that isn’t optimized for mobile use. The take-away here? Take the extra time and really focus on making your digital communications optimized for mobile.

4. Capturing subscribers during key contacts
Jeremy recommends taking an audit of all the customer touch points that you have with your citizens, and try to turn unhappy moments into a positive experience. For example, if someone is unhappy about missing a town meeting, instead of just giving them the next date, ask if they would like to get signed up for email alerts for all future meetings. Use various opportunities to capture subscribers.

Do you know the answer to this question? (Knowing the answer can be a powerful way to find out where you should be focusing your communication strategy.)

“What percentage of my audience within the last 90 days has seen any of my content?”

To find out how you can get this information, if you don’t have it, attend one of our stops on our 2013 Digital Communications Tour. We’re traveling to different cities nationwide to get the word out on best practices & trends in digital communication. Hear from public sector experts, providing insightful perspectives and strategies on government communications, and from your peers in government on their successful tactics and projects. Register today. Space is limited!

Citizen Engagement, communication, community, content, digital government, e-gov, email, engagement, innovation, local government, outreach, social media, technology, Twitter, web 2.0

Digital communicators transform service delivery. We are change agents.

By Kathy Kyle, Digital Communications Consultant, GovDelivery

Among the many topics discussed at this year’s Communications Camp (@commscamp | #commscamp13), the one that resonated most with me was how to best demonstrate the value of digital communications. If we can’t measure our impact as communicators, how can we influence and transform our organisations?

As a former Communications and Marketing Director in both the public and private sector, I found the most traction when I aligned communications performance metrics with customer service outcomes. In my central government agency roles, I ensured our communications approach focused on internal and external customers’ interests. Regardless of whether I was working on an internal communications programme to engage employees or a multi-faceted, externally facing digital campaign to generate support for a new regulation, I measured our success by aligning our communications efforts to our mission and by focusing on shifting my audiences’ activities and behaviours: web impressions, media coverage, social media activity, survey responses, focus group outcomes and anecdotal feedback.

We were able to demonstrate the value of digital communications by aligning our strategy and performance metrics with the people we served – both internally and externally. If you are struggling to develop a comprehensive evaluation programme, or just want to demonstrate your value as a communicator, consider the following activities:

Build support internally with leadership and cross-functionally across the organisation.
Drive your audience to online channels for accurate measurement of activities – measure whether you experience fewer calls and in-person visits due to your digital strategy.
Create content once and repurpose it (the COPE model: Create Once, Publish Everywhere)
Use the most effective, inexpensive and targeted communication channels that suit your audience. But don’t just use a social media tool because it is “free” – ensure your audience uses the channel. For example, 3.2 billion people use email, over a billion use Facebook and over 500 million use Twitter (some analysts indicate 140m active users).

Should you care about how many Twitter followers your organisation has? Or “likes” on Facebook? Yes and no. How do you know those followers are really fans? Or even in your target population? It matters more if you reach your intended audience and change their behaviour about government services. According to a study conducted by LGiU, “a Facebook ‘fan’ or Twitter follower doesn’t necessarily capture the connection and lead to a direct, sustainable, two-way relationship with a resident.” I am not suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater – instead, focus on your mission (some form of government service) and the people you serve (your customers) and create a bespoke plan to reach them.

There isn’t an exact science to measuring communications success – but there are ways in which we can demonstrate our value. We must shift our role from press release writers to service delivery communicators, and then delivering results that matter to our customers. We are change agents.

Kathy Kyle, Digital Communications Consultant at GovDelivery
kathy.kyle@govdelivery @bonominiyogini

citizen service, communication, community, content, responsiveness, social media, technology, UK Government, web 2.0

What an entrepreneur can teach us about public sector communications

January 18th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Compelling Content | Events | Government Success Stories - (0 Comments)

Jeff Freeland Nelson, a local Twin Cities entrepreneur, took hard-earned lessons from his former career in public affairs and service and built his company, Play From Scratch, with a simple mission in mind: raise kids who are creators. Play from Scratch believes that “creative kids become adults who thrive” and seeks to inspire families through open-ended, problem-solving play with sustainable materials.

Government communicators can learn from Jeff’s crossover expertise in the public and non-profit sectors, public leadership, and education that have led to Play From Scratch’s innovative approach to business and playtime. Here’s an overview of the company’s key tenets and how you might be able to take his lessons and turn them into government magic:

1. Find Raw Materials

Play From Scratch encourages families to use recyclable materials like newspaper, boxes, cardboard tubes and tape as raw materials for playing. Communicators in government organizations with limited resources (and who isn’t?) can apply the same mindset. You should identify basic resources and information that may be taken for granted around your department or office. Then tease out creative ways to invigorate and transform that content.

Source: Uploaded by user via :: Play From Scratch /:: on Pinterest

2. Create a Challenge

How do you tease out ways to be more creative? Create a challenge! Creative people are motivated by challenging problems. Play From Scratch drives enthusiasm and inspiration through fresh ideas for kids like a “Go Creative” card game or building giant cardboard structures. Adults can jump start their imagination by adding challenging elements to project initiatives and organizational goals. Putting a goal out there that is bigger than anything ever tried before inspires innovation and motivation.

3. Build Big Ideas

Jeff built a toy company by expanding on the idea that the world is full of exciting challenges and available resources that make solving problems fun. Government communicators with a mindset of “go big or go home” open up a whole new level of opportunity. Highly successful campaigns such as the CDC’s Zombie Apocalypse campaign, which we just talked about in our last post, are brought to life through agencies willing to seek out interesting challenges; looking for ways to build those ideas into something bigger; and identifying what makes the idea resonate and “stick” with the public. This doesn’t mean that you have to max out your limited budget, though. Jeff’s company is built on reusable cardboard, boxes and newspapers — the stuff most people toss out at the end of the day. Don’t underestimate how big you can go using the small stuff. Leverage sparks of creativity by noting out-of-the-box ideas as they come to mind and working in teams to stretch the limit of what is considered possible.

4. Share What You’ve Created

Play From Scratch encourages families to share imaginative experiences with neighbors and friends. Their website offers many channels for sharing online, including using social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube. Their perspective is that sharing what you’ve created with others fuels creativity and only helps people learn from each other. Social media and the web have made sharing efforts and accomplishments easier and more fun than ever. New and existing social channels can be used as a forum to talk about big ideas, what has worked, and what doesn’t work. The knowledge gained from trying something new and asking for public input – whether the idea is successful or not – can only help the next time around.

5. Recycle Raw Materials and Start Over

“Raw” materials don’t have to be brand new. Just like kids playing castle can re-use couch cushions over and over again to build new forts, communicators can break down existing content to digestible pieces. Smaller components broken out from previously created content can be used to brainstorm new ways to use the material. Communicators can use previous successes as a foundation to tackle new challenges, build big ideas from the ground up, and create content that helps you meet your organization’s mission goals in an innovative and engaging way.

Want to hear more? You’re in luck. Jeff will be joining us as the keynote speaker for the Minnesota stop on our Digital Communications Tour.

Register now to join more than 100 of your colleagues from around the state – the event is free for all government employees!

communications, content, engagement, events, GovDelivery, innovation, outreach, responsiveness

Zombies and Buzzwords – Communication Strategy That Gets Inside Your Brain

January 16th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Compelling Content | Government 2.0 | Government Success Stories - (0 Comments)

As your organization fills the fresh slate of 2013 with a new communications strategy, consider the issues and topics that make you squirm. Many government agencies struggle year after year with the same topics that are either uncomfortable for the org or are avoided by the public. Citizens shy away from topics that make them nervous, afraid, or even bored, while organizations skirt issues that are difficult to explain or to present in an engaging way.

Misinformation circulated by journalists on the particle physics work performed at the international laboratory CERN suggested that the lab could destabilize and cause apocalyptic reactions without warning (you can see information about the safety of the lab’s particle accelerator here). This has led to widespread misconceptions about the research and a general fear of “radiation” by the public. PhD students working in the lab decided to try and provide education on the public’s long-standing misunderstandings in a new and entertaining way… with a zombie movie.

zombies

Image credit: http://www.decayfilm.com/category/media.html

Researchers with little film-making expertise and a $3,500 budget created a gory flick called “Decay” that takes place in CERN’s real maintenance tunnels. The film showcases brain-eating, undead lab workers in bloody detail but also sneaks in scripted informative snippets on the Large Hadron Collider (the world’s largest particle accelerator), how it functions, safety features of the lab and the “God particle” discovered by CERN researchers. The creators wanted the film to “[appeal] to a wide-ranging, science-savvy audience, as well as to zombie enthusiasts as a new approach to the genre” and took the chance to “do some satirical commentary on various aspects of people’s perceptions of science.” The film sold out its premiere at the University of Manchester, was released for free on YouTube and has been over 400,000 times, and has gained a Twitter following of over 700 users.

CDC also played on the past few years’ zombie trend with their 2011 campaign, “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.” CDC director Dr. Ali S. Khan explains, “If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack.” The initial blog post includes information on how to build an emergency kit, creating an emergency plan with your family, and the services provided by CDC. The post went viral in May 2011 and the increase in traffic crashed the blog website. The campaign has been so successful since its launch that it has been expanded to include lessons plans for educators, t-shirts, posters, and a graphic novella.

These examples of clever campaigns demonstrate the benefit of sharing information with the public with a “wink and a nod” that is accessible and entertaining. Dare your organization to take a hard look at the keywords and themes that have historically been off-limits and confront them in the New Year. Building a communication strategy around them can provide a fresh boost to your organization’s approach and increase public outreach and education in surprising ways.

What is the biggest issue or idea has your organization been avoiding? Share with us in the comments about how your organization takes on tough topics in out-of-the-box ways!

Statistics on page views current as of 1/6/2013.

CDC, communications, community, content, engagement, Gov 2.0, government, innovation, outreach, zombies

Content Marketing – Government Style

October 26th, 2012 | Posted by Mike Bernard for GovDelivery in Compelling Content | E-Government - (1 Comments)

On October 16, 2012, GovDelivery hosted our Annual Federal Digital Communications Event in Washington D.C. Our CEO Scott Burns discussed the need for government organizations to adopt methods used by private sector marketers in order to dramatically increase the number of people being reached. Some assume the best way of doing this is to push your message out to as many channels as possible. That’s an important step, but it’s only half of the picture. Promoting your messages to email, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, etc. isn’t very helpful if it only goes to an audience of 50 people. Fortunately, we’ve developed several tools to help our clients build massive audiences such as the GovDelivery Network and following the best practices in our best practices guide.

I think a great way to complement these tools is for government communications professionals to take Scott’s advice and adopt the principles employed by “Content Marketers.”

Content Marketing has been one of the hottest topics in the business marketing world for the past few years. Copyblogger defines Content Marketing like this, “Creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.”

But, what does this have to do with government? You’re not looking for prospects or customers. You’re probably not selling anything.

You might not be directly selling anything but are trying to obtain “customers” for your information? Of course. Creating compelling content attracts people to come to you for information. Once they are there, you can get them to subscribe to future information, follow you on social media, and share your content with their friends.

Here are my Top 10 tips on how the government can adopt the principles of Content Marketing:

Re-purpose existing content
The great thing about working for government is that you are sitting on treasure trove of content. It just takes a little bit of creativity to think about ways you re-use it. For example, say you work for the Department of Transportation. Have you thought about bundling up pictures of your big trucks, stats about the vehicles and stories from the workers who operate them into a downloadable, tablet friendly, eBook? Parents could download it and share it with their kids to learn about the great work you are doing. I know my son would love that!Or maybe you’re a taxing authority and you put out a document on important changes to the tax code. What if you shot a video of one of your policy experts asking them to explain the changes? Then put the video up on YouTube or Vimeo so people can watch a video as well reading the document. Maybe you also make it into a slide presentation and put it on Slideshare?Or let’s say you are in the parks department for your city. Why not create a “Colors of Fall” or “Animals You Can Find in the Park” board on Pinterest or Flickr? Maybe you ask people to submit their favorite memories of a certain park and highlight those stories in your next newsletter? The point is great content is all around. You just need to find ways to re-purpose it in multiple mediums so the maximum number of people can find it.
Post where your audience is
Too often we adopt a lopsided “field of dreams” mentality. We think, “If we build it they WILL come…” – but don’t expect that they will all take the same road as you to get there! You do want people to make their way back to your key digital properties (i.e. website, blog, etc.), but you need to direct traffic using every possible way you can. Host your Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter images on your site so people are driving back to your own site. When you post that slide deck on Slideshare, make sure your final slide tells them where they can go to get more of your great content. Same with YouTube and Vimeo. Put email sign-up boxes on your social media properties and popular pages to ensure that you’re capturing people who are interested in your content – even if they aren’t on your website.Once you figure out how to re-purpose your content, get it out to as many channels as possible and begin directing traffic back to your main destinations (website, blog, Facebook, etc.)
Curate, Curate, Curate
Sometimes it’s hard to come up with new content all the time. And, nowadays, people have information overload. So help yourself and your audience out by serving as a curator from time-to-time. People love a “Top 10 list” of the “Best” blogs or books or articles or experts or…fill in the blank. This works especially well at the end of a quarter, end of the year or around major events like holidays or sporting events.Who wouldn’t want to read a list of the “Top 10 Healthy Thanksgiving Recipes” by the USDA a week before Turkey Day? I would check that out. What about “The Governor’s Top Ten Local Bloggers”? Sounds good to me. How about the “5 Must Read Government Tech Blogs for Anyone in IT”? That’s something that would be compelling.If that’s too much effort, why not let a site like Paper.li do the curating for you? Set it up, plug in the relevant topics and people, and let it curate for you. Simple and easy.The point is you don’t always have to invent new stuff. People love it when you can make things simple for them. The bonus is this solidifies your organization’s status as an official expert, so people will keep coming back for more of your expertise.
Write in easy to understand language
Let’s be honest, it’s easy to get buried in technical jargon, acronyms and legalese when we communicate. Unless you are communicating with a highly technical audience or a small group of people in the know, tone down the language. I suggest shooting for a middle school reading level – think USA Today, not Wall Street Journal. Not sure how readable your content is? Check this out for help.
Make your content easy to share
If you aren’t giving people the option to easily share your content, in every possible medium you can, you are making things very difficult for yourself.Take a look at the footer of every email The National Science Foundation sends out

And on their landing pages

Guess what, the majority of the articles they post on Twitter and Facebook have easy sharing options built in. The NSF is doing everything they can to promote the viewing and sharing of their content.And on their landing pages
Take some risks
This is a tough one for many organizations. How do you push the envelope without going too far? I think some great questions to ask yourself when creating edgy content are: Is this going to offend anyone? Is this going to make us look stupid? Is this actually funny? If you can answer No, No, Yes then you are probably safe. The best example of taking risks I can think of is the CDC Zombie Apocalypse blog post. They took a risk and it’s probably generated the most buzz out of anything they’ve ever done. And, it has legs too. Recently Yahoo! ran an Associated Press story about this blog post a year and a half after it debuted. How’s that for traction?So, maybe you aren’t ready to start warning people about the dangers of the undead, but you can still take risks. Try creating a YouTube channel and post those videos you make with your webcam. Post those pics of your employees enjoying a ball game or a picnic or a concert. Start small and see how it goes. This is the concept of taking “Little Bets” author Peter Sims talks about.
Make it look good
Marshall McLuhan famously coined the expression, “The medium is the message.” If your content is visually boring, dated, or is all text with no images, it portrays that the information isn’t very important. Spend a little bit of time with layout and design. This goes for you website, blog and anything else you direct the public to. Design a nice header for your email templates. Create a custom background for your Twitter account. Use a contemporary design with your blog. Make up a nice template to use for slide decks and PDFs. Always remember – If you can explain something with an image rather than text, go with the image. If you can demonstrate something better with video than an image, go with the video. And, clip art and animated GIF’s are not acceptable in any form!Getting the design right can often mean the difference between no one reading your content and having it go viral!
Stories over statistics
Joseph Kony had been brutally terrorizing people in Uganda for 20 years, but before the Kony: 2012 video started sweeping the web earlier this year, you’d probably never heard of him. I hadn’t. Was he off the radar? Did we know nothing about the horrible things Joseph Kony was doing? No, not really. There were all kinds of available about him: 10,000 children abducted and turned into child soldiers. 1.5 million people displaced because of the fighting. Tens of thousands killed in the conflict. Sadly, those things didn’t move people. The stats didn’t connect with people on an emotional level. It wasn’t until the filmmakers with Invisible Children created their Kony 2012 video that the world took notice. Over 92 million people watched that video.Why?Because it took the statistics people had known about for years and used them to tell a very compelling story. The data was always there — it just took some creative people to tell it in a way that moved people to action. Try to find ways of telling 1) the story behind the data or 2) what all the data means….it makes for much more interesting content.
Ask!
Ask coworkers for help. Ask for creative ideas. Ask where are places your content should be hanging out. Ask people to be guest bloggers. Ask if you can republish other people’s content. Ask people you admire for advice about getting better. Ask your boss if you can try something new as an experiment. Ask if you can go to a seminar or event or conference that will inspire your creativity. Ask if you can buy a book to give you a better understanding. Be bold. Ask!
Make it fun
Always remember your main goal; you are trying to get people to engage with your content, sign up to get additional information from you and keep coming back in the future. If everything you put out is safe, boring to read, boring to look at, in outdated mediums and doesn’t move me, most people won’t be back. Try to always think about how you can make things interesting for your audience. Also, finding new and exciting ways of getting your material in front of the eyes of the public should be fun for you. Sort of like those choose-your-own-adventure books you read when you were a kid. “I wonder what will happen if I go this direction.” Don’t stress yourself out with this. Take it slow. Bite off small pieces at a time and get creative. You can build up to bigger and better things with time.

There you have it. My Top 10 Tips for thinking more like a business marketer in order to build your audience and reach more people than you’ve ever done before.

What things did I miss? Give us your additional tips below.

communications, content, digital, e-gov, email, engagement, Gov 2.0, govd12, government, outreach, responsiveness, technology

4 Awesome Government Mobile Use Cases

October 1st, 2012 | Posted by GovDelivery in E-Government | Government 2.0 | Mobile - (0 Comments)

By Steve Ressler, Founder of GovLoop

In 2012, the number of smartphone users will reach 106.7 million with 94% of these users accessing the mobile Internet. With citizens and government employees increasingly adopting multiple mobile device and having increased expectations on mobile services, how do agencies adapt?

It’s important as agencies rush to go mobile to understand that mobile is a different use case than web with different strengths and weaknesses.

Thus, I wanted to share 4 awesome government mobile use cases:

1) Mobile Employee Reporting - Many agencies have employees that spent lots of time on the road collecting information. Maybe it’s a utilities worker collecting data, a police officer documenting a case, maybe it’s a EPA worker collecting environmental stats, or a transportation worker counting cars at an intersection. This is an amazing opportunity to do mobile reporting – rather than report twice (one on paper at the site, and one time putting it into a system) you can solve it 1 time. Additionally mobile has a unique feature – a camera. Include this as part of the reporting – would you rather have an officer draw a diagram or take a quick photo for the records

2) Location-based Real-time Updates – The best mobile applications are built on the fact that you have it with you at a specific location and are looking for instant information. For example, you are waiting at a bus stop and want to know when the next bus is coming. A simple 2-way SMS mobile system where you text your route and location and get the next bus time solves a real problem. This can apply other places to like wait times at airports. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) does this very well.

3) Mobile Content - You can assume that a high percentage of your audience will find your content on a mobile device. Imagine your family planning a trip to Russia over breakfast, and Bob asks, “Do we need a visa?” The first thing you will do is probably Google it on your phone which will lead you to a government website (State Department) with the information. At that moment, you need mobile-optimized content that is easy to read, as non-optimized site will probably be too hard to read. Nothing fancy like a mobile app – just mobile-optimized content.

4) Mobilize Your Most Popular Task

Most government agencies have 2 to 3 main offerings that represent 80% of the organization’s website traffic (i.e. GSA per diem rates, taxes for IRS). Start offering mobile content with these programs versus more obscure programs. A general rule of thumb – if the item is popular on the web, it will be popular on mobile, even if it isn’t the 100% perfect use case. For example, the USAJOBS mobile app is super popular even though it’s not obvious on first take that people will want to search for jobs on their mobile device.

Same with IRS2Go – do people really want tax updates on mobile phones? Do they really need to check their tax statement on mobile? I wouldn’t have guessed so but it has over 1,500 4 star reviews across Android and iOS platform.

How is your government agency using mobile? Can you see where your agency can leverage mobile to innovate and provide better customer service to citizens? If you’re interested in learning more about government innovation and hearing from major federal agencies on the work they’re doing around digital communications, check out this free event in DC on October 16.

app, citizen, citizen service, communications, content, digital, digital government, Gov 2.0, government, IRS, mobile, USAJOBS

Segmentation, analytics & integration: what’s the point?

September 12th, 2012 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Analytics/Data | Email Communication - (0 Comments)

As discussed in a previous post, for anyone who thinks email is dead, you’re in for a surprise. The truth is, email is just being accessed differently these days, with more people using email on smartphones or other mobile devices rather than from a computer. If you haven’t explored options to make your email communications more targeted, you should consider segmenting your distribution lists and running email analytics to find out what content is most compelling for your stakeholders.

For some of you, list segmentation is a step you may not have had time to explore. And you may find that integrating your systems may help increase your productivity. You’ll also want to analyze what people are paying attention to so you can hone your messages even more. Finally, if you’re using social media to communicate, integrating your email with your social media channels will help you be more successful by combining and cross-promoting all your communication channels.

Segment Your Emails

Let’s face it, your organization produces a lot of information covering a variety of topics every day. And while one citizen may be extremely interested in information about road closures or construction, another may only want to know about city parks or how to renew a license.

If you’re wondering what list segmentation involves, think of it this way. When you receive a message that has nothing to do with you or your interests, what happens to that message? You probably delete it without reading it. If you target your communications and send information that people have indicated that have an interest in, it will likely boost your open and click-through rates and instill a higher sense of loyalty with your citizens. You also avoid the likelihood of people opting out of your messages or just marking your communications as spam. Also, your deliverability rate improves, as well as your online reputation. Generally speaking, those who send relevant email messages enjoy lower opt-out rates than those who send email to everyone on their list.

Here are just a few ways for you to think about segmenting your email lists:

Demographics (ZIP/postal code, gender, age). If your subscriber lives in one ZIP code, why are you sending her information about activities in another ZIP code? Or if your subscriber is 25 years old, why are you sending him information that pertains to senior citizens? You get the idea. Taking note of demographics can give subscribers the impression that you’re listening to their needs and interests.
Behavioral Data. Open and click-through rates, when they joined your list, etc. — that type of information can help you target your messages. The subscribers who open your emails all the time or regularly can be used for A/B testing to help you refine your email messages and content.
Recent Subscribers. Recent could be 3-6 months, or it could be since the last campaign you sent a month ago.
Inactive Subscribers. Any subscriber who hasn’t opened or clicked on your email over an extended period of time can be deemed “inactive.” Instead of writing them off as a lost cause, think about putting them in their own group and sending them a targeted reactivation campaign in the near future.
Preference Surveys/Interest-Based Preferences. Don’t be scared to ask for information you don’t have, such as new interests and updated email addresses. Tell subscribers that it will help you send more relevant emails, and remind them that you will maintain their privacy at all cost.

List segmentation is important in any email system for several different reasons. It is especially critical if you want to truly engage the public in the work that you’re doing. Knowing what people are interested in helps you send more targeted, relevant emails.

Hubspot, a private sector marketing consulting firm, reported that email list segmentation and targeting increased open rates, provided more relevant emails and decreased opt-out rates, as well as many other positive results.

Connect Existing Applications with Your Email System

Another key component to consider is how to connect your applications and systems, as well as your existing content management systems, such as Drupal and WordPress, with your email system. You should find out what sort of APIs (or application programming interfaces) might be available to helpl automate manual actions between your existing applications and databases with the right communications tools.

Analyze For More Targeted Content

If you’re pushing out email messages and have no idea who has opened the messages or which content subscribers are paying the most attention to, you should strongly consider reviewing any available reports or analyses. In addition to the need to communicate with subscribers, you also need to measure the effectiveness of your messages. Ideally, you should be able to find out:

who opened your messages
how many topics each person subscribes to
who has clicked through to specific content within your messages
which links generate the most activity
how much your subscription base has grown over time
which messages are being shared

All of this gives you more insight that you can use to create messages that have an even bigger impact with your audience.

Integrate Email with Social Media

With the increasing use of APIs and open source platforms, it’s become fairly easy to integrate your email communications with your social media efforts. In working with more than 550 government clients worldwide, we’ve found that government organizations that cross-promote information via email and social media see the greatest effectiveness. For example, if you’re creating new web content or pushing out specific information using email, it also makes sense to package those messages and post to your social media sites. Consider the endless possibility of having your subscribers share your information on their own social media networks, thus increasing your potential reach with the public – and possibly even helping you gain new subscribers.

Are you using any of these tactics currently? Which ones have helped you refine your communications to achieve greater effectiveness or engagement?

API, APIs, communications, content, data, email, engagement, filtering, integration, responsiveness, segmentation, social media

Severe Weather and Social Media: How effective are you?

Social media affects our lives in many ways but perhaps none more significantly than when we deal with a crisis. Whether it’s a runaway fire, a buckled highway or a hurricane (Isaac, anyone?), it’s becoming increasingly clear that social tools are an essential component of communications in a time of shared need.

There are many examples where social tools have become the go-to channel for communicating during severe weather situations.

With regard to the most recent severe weather situation, the use of social media to communicate during Hurricane Isaac is a great example. A recent article on NextGov highlights how the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the White House and the National Weather Service (NWS) all used Facebook and Twitter to spread the word about the storm as well as offer tips on how to prepare for the disaster.

On a local level, the City of Minneapolis has leveraged a number of digital communication tools, from emails to text messages and social media, to alert and respond to residents after a tornado caused major damage to the north side of the city this past spring. E-mail alerts were sent to city subscribers informing them of severe weather and warning non-locals to avoid the area to prevent interference with first responders. Continuous posts were made to the city’s social media channels, such as Facebook. In addition, since the city has a subscriber system that allows residents to identify their zip codes to receive specific update that focus on their precinct, the city was able to quickly tailor alerts to areas that needed information, including directly informing citizens in the affected areas about local rescue and relief efforts.

In another part of the country, Kitsap County, Wash., has turned to Twitter and other digital communication outlets to reach residents. In January, Seattle was faced with a major two-day ice storm that grounded planes and left many roads dangerous to travel. A Kitsap County official was stranded in the Sea-Tac airport, which had lost its Internet service. However, the official was able to use his smartphone to access digital communications tools, including social media, and was able to continue sending out timely messages about road closures and other pertinent information. Messages were sent simultaneously to subscribers who had indicated interest in topics such as road reports, inclement weather, front-page news and emergency management, thereby increasing the reach of the message. The salient messages also were posted to Facebook and Twitter, further magnifying the reach of the updates by further spreading to followers’ friends and social groups.

As a result of this proactive “pushing out” of the message, county officials reported that their call center—which generally receives up to 1,800 calls a day during inclement weather—recorded only 310 calls the first day, and 420 the second. After the storm subsided, the county reported a significant increase in both subscribers and social media followers.

The importance of using social media and digital communication tools resonated deeply with Steve Ressler, found of GovLoop and resident of Tampa, Fla. After a recent severe weather situation, Steve wrote a blog post about his experiences with a tornado that touched down near his home. {Link to He and his wife had spent a stormy day watching television at their home as rain poured outside. While they were watching local broadcasts, storm alerts scrolled across the bottom of the screen, but when the two popped in a DVD to watch a different program, they no longer saw those updates.

Instead, he and his wife’s first warning about the tornado in their area came from a text messaging system that the University of South Florida offers for emergency alerts. The couple and their pets took shelter in a bathroom inside the house, and Steve noted that they continued to track the tornado’s progress from there via Twitter. They also found out when the tornado had passed via Twitter. (Hillsborough County, where Tampa is located, offers both an e-mail and text-based emergency alert service for which subscribers can sign up.)

Finally, when a “hurricane-level” storm struck the Washington D.C. area, social media and other tools definitely proved their worth. A local news reporter collected information from citizens via both Facebook and Twitter, and then used that information to help report the story. Local Facebook posts from citizens announced their willingness to help others who had lost power during the event. The local power company also provided continuous updates on the process of restoring electricity to affected areas. And finally, a local couple reached out to an area news station via Twitter to say that they had lost power and were in trouble because the loss complicated a pre-existing medical issue. The station re-tweeted the information, and local Stafford County officials responded directly to the couple via Twitter to offer assistance.

It’s clear that the public has come to rely on digital communications, especially social media, to connect and share information. Government communicators should be prepared to leverage these tools to effectively communicate with stakeholders. Although it’s only one component of an effective emergency notification solution (ENS), social media is quickly becoming a critical channel to distribute information to the public.

In addition to the public’s growing tendency to gravitate toward social media in times of crisis, social media channels address some key challenges to effective communication, including enabling mass distribution of messages and, with the proliferation of mobile devices, facilitating communication without the need for power.

Reaching the public through fundamental digital communication tools, like email, and through newer channels, like text messages and social media, is now indispensable in managing times of crisis and in protecting citizens during severe weather and other dangerous situations.

If your government organization would like more advice on overcoming the key barriers to managing an effective ENS and tips for avoiding the pitfalls of putting a solution in place, download this recent white paper titled, “Breaking Down Barriers to Effective Emergency Notifications.”

communications, content, Gov 2.0, government, government services, social media

4 Ways Your Organization Can Use Facebook’s New Page Features

August 14th, 2012 | Posted by GovDelivery in E-Government | Government 2.0 | Social Media - (0 Comments)

This summer, Facebook has released several new features for Facebook Pages that allow organizations more control over creating, releasing and managing content and messages. The newest features include scheduled page posts, unpublished page posts, and page admin permissions for third-party apps.

Scheduling posts is a feature previously available to Page administrators using third-party solutions, like HootSuite, to create a post and designate a date and time for publication. The new scheduling feature allows post scheduling to be centrally managed within Facebook.
“Unpublished Page Posts” are posts released on a limited basis to a target segment of the Page’s audience, such as a specific age demographic.
Page admin permissions allow your Page administrator to grant levels of access for managing the Page, which can now be applied to third-party apps.

For government agencies, these new features can be leveraged to connect with citizens on topics they are most interested in and reach them when they are most likely to be online. Here are four specific ways your government org can try out the new Pages features today.

Manage Posts Up to Six Months in Advance

Facebook’s scheduling tool allows you to create and schedule posts for future times between ten minutes from the time of creation up to six months in advance. These posts can later be rescheduled or deleted. Government organizations can take advantage of this feature by strategically creating “inventory” of content ahead of time. Writing and scheduling these posts can be a regular task outside of urgent projects, especially for organizations that work around a “busy season” or a seasonal increase in projects.

The scheduled content can be scheduled and re-scheduled to ensure timely and relevant content is consistently released to citizens, even during times when your communications staff may be strapped for time or content. For example, a post linking to summer safety tips could be created in advance and scheduled for the week after the Fourth of July, when you know most of your staff will be out on vacation. The post could then be rescheduled for another date if additional content becomes available.

Schedule Posts at Times that Maximize Reach of Your Organization’s Message

The ability to schedule Page posts allows you to release a post at the time when you expect the most citizens to be online and looking for the information you are providing. For example, perhaps you have noticed that more users “Like” and comment on your organization’s posts about weekend community events when they are shared on Thursday afternoons, but you usually have time to work on Facebook content on Mondays. You could create and schedule event-related Page posts during Monday mornings, and use Facebook’s features to reschedule or delete the posts as-needed as the weekend approaches.

Run Segmented Message Campaigns with Sponsored “Unpublished Page Posts”

Facebook’s new “Unpublished Page Posts” allow organizations to create posts that, instead of being shared widely and publicly, are shared via the sponsored post feature on Facebook that allows targeting of specific market segments. Organizations willing to pay Facebook’s fee for sponsored posts can now share information with citizens that is tailored to their specific interests, making the organization more approachable to the target audience. For example, your organization could sponsor a post on your area’s fall-time tourist information campaign and “advertise” to individuals who do not live in the area.

Create Roles and Permissions for Page Admins

Roles and permissions for Page admins are more of a “behind the scenes” feature than those previously mentioned. They allow you to share the responsibility of your agency’s Facebook Page for better engagement and improved content. Given the resources, your organization could enlist resources to manage certain aspects of your Page. For example, an intern could take on the responsibility of managing comments and reporting on insights, while another member of your communications department focuses on creating and scheduling content in order to maximize interaction with the public based on the intern’s feedback. Third-party apps can also be granted limited permissions in order to gain monitoring or content management without giving up too much access.

The new Facebook Page features give government agencies powerful tools for reaching the public and starting meaningful conversations. Has your organization tried out scheduling posts, creating segmented message campaigns, or adding Page Admin roles? We would love to hear all about your experience in the comments!

communications, content, digital, Facebook, Gov 2.0, government, outreach, responsiveness, social media, technology

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