In April, we sent a survey to all GovDelivery clients and the response was astounding. We asked about customer service, how you use our products, and what we can do to improve our offerings. The insight we gained was invaluable, and we’ve started translating that insight into action. Your feedback helped drive some of the improvements and new features in our most recent release, so read on to find out what’s new.
Audience Insight
One of the most impactful new features we’ve released in 2014 is the new GovDelivery overlay. You can read about the overlay or see them in action on the Department of Labor website and Georgia Department of Natural Resources website. An overlay is a sign-up method that prompts your site visitors to enter their contact information to receive updates. This allows you to connect with your website visitors later and encourage them to visit a park, learn about a policy, download a report, or register for an event.
Overlays typically drive an average of 300-500% audience growth. That’s a boat load of new people signing up for your updates. Now, we’ve made it easier for you to see the boost in performance.
The Account Performance Report and Subscriber Activity Report now show “Overlay” as a source for subscribers. This allows you to see how fast your audience is growing from the addition of an overlay to your website and most heavily trafficked pages. Account Level Administrators can access this information in the Account Performance Report, while Topic Level, Group Level, and Report Viewer Administrators can find this information in the Subscriber Activity Report.
New Creation Tools in the Advanced Bulletin Editor
The Advanced Bulletin Editor allows you to create sleek, professional bulletins than contain stylized text and graphics. Designed specifically for the public sector, the Advanced Bulletin Editor does not require any external software, nor do you need extensive HTML or CSS skills to create custom newsletters, invitations, or press releases.
The survey results showed that bulletin authors in the Advanced Bulletin Editor have a strong need to copy and reuse templates, especially for departments or groups with strict branding standards. Bulletin authors can now copy an Advanced Bulletin template to save time when creating a template with similar branding and styles.
Bulletin authors can also add captions to photos in the Image content block. After uploading or selecting an image, the new caption option will display in the lower left corner. Clicking the caption button opens a new window where authors can insert caption text. By default, the caption will be a smaller, italicized version of the paragraph font for that block and will carry the same alignment as the image. Images can also be centered within the Image content blocks.
Image + Text content blocks in the Advanced Bulletin Editor will also now offer the ability to indent and center text with the click of a button.
Image Tool Improvements in the Standard Bulletin Editor
We also improved the image search in the Standard Bulletin Editor. In the editor, you can now search for existing images directly from the editor page. Just click the new shortcut to access the bulletin images library.
To see all of the updates in this release, simply log into your account and check out the What’s New page. We will continue to review the survey feedback throughout the year for additional enhancement requests and as always we are working to make the way you communicate online faster and easier!