Using Email to Send News to the Community

This arrived in my council email a few minutes ago from a company that helps cities send out customized news feeds to citizens:

I am pleased to announce that the City of Kirkland, WA has launched their email subscription system with GovDelivery. They join the ranks with Bellevue, Lake Forest Park and Vancouver in offering free government to citizen email communication. Because communication is a top priority to them, they were able to get GovDelivery up and running in 6 days! They currently offer 39 subscription items, but intend to add more subscription items and features in the near future. Visit their website and sign up for email updates to see what a great job they did. http://www.ci.kirkland.wa.us/E-Bulletins.htm

I love that reference to 'free,' because it is sure hard to imagine charging anyone for this service! Heck, newspapers can't get people to pay for online content. Anyway, I recommend calling up that link to take a look. What I like about this is that people can request email about specific issues. I was sending out an email bulletin for awhile, and I found folks often care most about one or two items in each bulletin. And of course, which item the person would care about would depend entirely on the person.

You can't assume someone will call up a lengthy email if they do not know for sure there will be a topic of interest to them within. With personalized news, you can be assured at least the topic is of interest, even if the development is not. At least the citizen is more likely to read the information.

So it's great to hear of customized news. Here is the text from the Renton list:

The city of Kirkland has recently replaced its e-mail bulletin software and we are in the process of moving all lists over to the new software. We are pleased to offer notices and subscriptions on the following topics at this time.

* Annexation Updates
* City Council Agendas
* Downtown Strategic Plan Update
* Neighborhood News
* Shoreline Master Program Update
* Touchstone (Park Place), Orni and Altom PARs
* NE 85th Street Corridor Improvements Project
* Kirkland Wireless Project
* Totem Lake Mall Development Update
* Kirkland Developers Partnership Forum
* Kirkland Events Guide
* Kirkland Green E-Updates

How it all works may be self-evident, but there's a description on the Bellevue site.