Co-written by Anne Doucot and Mary Yang
In my last post, I talked about how reaching the maximum amount of people that you can during an emergency can be the difference in saving more lives. And if you’ve been following along in the last couple of posts and podcasts from this series so far, you’ve also heard me talk about how important it is to get subscribers in addition to the use of a single platform, multichannel system. But, I know what many of you are thinking, once you get subscribers, how do you keep their contact information up-to-date?
With a single platform system that’s used by both your organization’s emergency communications department and public affairs office.
If you’re lucky, as an organization, you may only need to activate emergency alerts once or twice a year. That means, if your current system allows citizens to sign up to receive emergency alerts, that data may be quite old by the time you need to rely on it.
The solution to keeping contact information up-to-date is by using a comprehensive system that allows for both regular government communications and emergency notifications. The system should allow citizens to sign up for a variety of topics. With this kind of system, citizens can choose to receive updates on topics of interest and choose the method of communication they prefer (email, SMS, social media, etc.) The system should also allow citizens easy access to their profiles to provide updated contact data if they want.
As the communications department provides regular messages, the system will recognize if email addresses are still in use or if text messages are delivered. For organizations that use the same platform for their government communications and emergency notifications, sending out regular communications can continually test and cleanse the contact data for their citizens.
Join us for the third podcast for more information on how easy it can be to keep citizen contact information up-to-date.
For more analysis on current emergency notifications technology, download this recent Analyst Brief from IDC Government Insights.