GovDelivery a communications provider for all levels of government has released what it calls a new benchmarking report for government communications. The report provides best practices as well as a general framework to give communicators in the public sector a guide for improving the reach of their information.
In the report, GovDelivery analyzed 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.
Not much in this report is an eye opener for anyone who has ever tried to do outreach, but the ideas could serve as a good reminder for part-time communicators or those that are new to the field. Notably, the government seems to have a higher open rate than other communications. According to the report, 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.
Pop-ups asking users to subscribe to future emails and notifications have also been a successful tool for government communicators. Data shows that Overlays increased subscribers by 174 percent demonstrating the critical nature of overlays in driving greater reach.
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.
The full text of the report is available here.
