Personalizing Emergency Mass Notifications and Community Communications

Why do individuals prefer personalized experiences? According to a study from the University of Texas, it comes down to two key factors: desire for control and information overload. With this in mind, public safety communicators should leverage tools and build strategies that enable residents to personalize the types of communications they receive from their local government. From selecting the medium of the message to the notifications they’d like to receive, personalization is key with community communications.

Emergency Mass Notifications

Ensure your residents receive important notifications during a crisis with an emergency mass notification solution. Choose a technology that allows your residents to customize what alerts they receive and how they’re sent. When you provide the means for your residents to personalize their notifications, the messages you send are engaged with and received, not automatically deleted or looked over.

CivicReady^®, our emergency mass notification software, helps you keep your community informed and safe. Residents control the types of alerts they receive, preventing information overload. When users opt-in to receive CivicReady notifications, they can subscribe to the types of alerts they want to receive, like updates on opening and closings of the town pool, weather alerts, traffic delays, or construction projects. The opt-in also includes preferred communication channels like text/SMS, email, or mobile app notification. Most importantly, we designed CivicReady with diverse communities in mind. Residents can select their preferred language for their alerts. Our platform automatically translates and sends messages in up to 100 different languages.

Website Updates

Content is constantly being updated and added to local government websites. It can be time-consuming for residents to sift through the same information each time they view department pages, community calendars, and the latest news. With personalized alerts, your community is notified when a new council meeting agenda is available, an event is added to the calendar, or when a news item is published.

Notify Me^®, a feature with our CivicEnage^® websites, allows residents to subscribe to receive multi-channel notifications on only those topics that matter most to them while providing the option to choose to be notified by email or text message. Notify Me works in tandem with your CivicEngage alerts, sending out a notification when posting an alert on your website.

Changes to Your Code of Ordinances

Municode, now powered by CivicPlus^®, is the nation’s leading codifier. With over 200,000 local government ordinances hosted by Municode, it’s safe to say local governments are frequently amending and adding to their code of ordinances. It can be difficult for your residents to stay informed about changes to their local code. They can either call into city hall and ask, or painstakingly search through the codebook to find amendments.

eNotify, designed for Municode’s online code-hosting platform, is an email notification service that keeps your community up-to date-on changes made to the whole code, sections of the code, or if new ordinances have been enacted. Whether it’s a business wanting to stay in the know about local regulations, contractors keeping updated on code enforcement, or a local dog owner curious about pet ordinances, your community never has to worry about not knowing updates to their code.

Resident Portals

Personalizing how your community engages with its local government creates an increase in positive civic experiences. Each resident engages differently with their local governing body. One might be a lawyer interested in the local ordinances, another could be a contractor in charge of obtaining permits, or a parent staying up-to-date with the parks and recreation offerings. Resident portals are a revolutionary way for local governments and its communities to engage in more personalized interactions.

The CivicPlus Portal^® offers people a centralized online hub to obtain information, resources and interact with any participating local government. Users control their personalized dashboard that provides link cards to the services they use most frequently and other community opportunities, eliminating information overload. From paying utilities to registering a pet, from signing up for recreation leagues to watching a recording of a recent public meeting, the CivicPlus Portal streamlines and personalizes the online civic experience.

Leveraging solutions that increase personalized communication between residents and their local government reduces missed information and decreases phone calls, walk-ins, or emails into city hall. If what we outlined above inspired you to take a look at your mass communication offerings, contact one of our experts to learn how CivicPlus can create positive civic experiences in your community.