ST. PAUL, Minn., July 18, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GovDelivery, the leading provider of cloud-based software solutions enhancing the citizen experience, announces availability of the first performance-based benchmarking report for public sector digital communications. The GovDelivery Benchmark Report, titled “Metrics that Matter in the Public Sector,” identifies proven metrics for measuring the success of digital communications within government and provides government-specific data that can be used to improve the citizen experience.

Each year, government agencies send billions of messages to serve millions of citizens, yet often have very different strategies for increasing engagement and enhancing opportunities to better leverage digital communications. In the report, GovDelivery analyzed the most important metrics based on data from approximately 1,800 government organizations that use digital communications to connect with more than 120 million individuals.

“Without benchmarking metrics specific to the public sector, many government organizations have previously used private sector digital marketing that fall short of guiding government digital outreach efforts as a template for public sector metrics,” said GovDelivery CEO Scott Burns. “With these new benchmarks, government organizations finally have the tools to assess and optimize outreach and engagement efforts.”

Snapshot of Findings:

• Reach: The total number of citizens who are connecting with the public sector directly through email and text message is the most critical metric for public sector communicators. Greater reach is the most critical metric in driving improved digital outreach results. While reach goals vary widely across the public sector, reaching 10,000 people is nearly always 10 times better than reaching 1,000 and provides 10 times the opportunity for targeted segmentation, improved engagement, and improved outcomes.
• Engagement Rate: For the metric that measures open rates and click rates over a period of time, 53 percent of users were engaged. Engagement rate is useful to see how users are interacting with an organization over time and offers a much clearer picture of which digital communications tactics are successful.
• Open and Click Rates: Open and click rates vary widely depending on the nature of digital communications for an organization which can range from regular “late bus” alerts to less frequent major public health announcements. Organizations should first focus on testing and optimizing within their own use case and should look to optimize the overall traffic generated to high priority web-based properties. The median open rate for the 1,800 governments reviewed was 21 percent, but there is a wide range of strong performance. Click rate median was 3 percent but overall click through traffic can be substantial as public sector communicators often focus on message timeliness and send far more messages per users than marketers.
• Overlay Impact: Overlays are a small window that webpage visitors will see to encourage sign ups for future emails. Overlays increased subscribers by 174 percent demonstrating the critical nature of overlays in driving greater reach. This metric highlights the true power of overlays and the impact they are having on increasing subscriber base for the nearly 1,800 government organizations.
• Subscriptions per Subscriber: The median subscription per subscriber for GovDelivery organizations is 2.5. In other words, most public sector organizations are seeing their subscribers sign up for multiple topics. This metric emphasizes the importance of broadening a topic base in order to segment audiences, which provides more opportunities to re-connect and re-engage externally.

The report also shows that engagement rates, click rates and open rates were lower for federal government organizations than for state, local and transit (SLT) organizations. This variance is a result of federal organizations sending more notices that do not require immediate action to a larger pool of subscribers. Conversely, subscribers opted to receive more topics from federal organizations than state, local and transit organizations.  

Agencies can also use the findings to identify metrics by unique public sector industry base (agriculture-, veteran-, or education-focused, for example) to compare and contrast metrics with organizations in various verticals.

In addition to these key findings, the report shares tips and best practices that government organizations can immediately implement to achieve mission goals and transform the citizen experience. GovDelivery shared this complimentary benchmark report to provide new clarification and insights that government communicators can apply toward making sustainable improvements to digital engagement programs.

“With more than 1,800 organizations sending billions of messages to millions of citizens, GovDelivery was uniquely positioned to gather and share valuable information on how government is engaging with the public as well as ways these organizations can use digital communications to reach more people, drive better outcomes and, ultimately, transform the citizen experience,” Burns added.

Methodology:
The data in the Public Sector Email Benchmark Report was measured from July 2015 to June 2016. GovDelivery used median figures because it is a more accurate representation of customer performance and is not affected by outliers. For accuracy purposes, GovDelivery only measured accounts that were live with each feature.

For a free copy of the GovDelivery Benchmark Report, download it here.

About GovDelivery
Over one thousand public sector organizations use GovDelivery’s highly-secure cloud solutions every day to enhance the citizen experience for more than 100 million people. GovDelivery offers leading solutions for managing government communications, internal and external learning, and open data. The GovDelivery Network offers a unique and impactful way for public sector organizations to work together to cross promote content and increase digital reach. Organizations using GovDelivery see higher utilization of citizen services and greater citizen engagement. GovDelivery is an Actua (Nasdaq:ACTA) company.

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