Clearinghouse Outreach Through Email Solutions
Almost every Federal agency has at least one clearinghouse and, based on their mission, most agencies have several clearninghouses for providing information to the public. For example most of the institutes within NIH have their own clearinghouses. Among them are the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse, the National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse, etc. Other government agencies with their own clearinghouses include:
- Justice Department: National Criminal Justice Reference Service
- Housing and Urban Development (HUD): Public Housing Environmental & Conservation Clearinghouse and the Mulitfamily Housing Clearinghouse
- CDC: The National Prevention Information Network, the SAFETI Clearinghouse and the HIV/AIDS Resource
- FCC: PSHSB clearinghouse.
These clearinghouses are mechanisms for public distribution of the latest news, publications, regulations and guidelines, best practices, etc. on a specific subject. They play an important role to the professionals in the specific field and the public that has specific interests in the subject matter.
Both the public and professionals know that all of the information has been researched and vetted, represents factual content and is trustworthy. In other words, there is a basic trust between the consumer public and the government.
It is easy to sign up for a general clearinghouse newsletter that may be emailed once a month, but that won’t satisfy most consumers who are usually looking for immediate answers, specific information and real-time communications updates, especially during a time of crisis. A government agency cannot expect citizens to search its clearinghouse website every day. People want timely communications.People want to feel like they can continue that basic level of trust. But if agencies don't deliver messages at the most important time, communication with the public might be percieved as an afterthought. And that wouldn't be good.
Sophisticated email automation with dynamic content and database segmentation will allow the individuals to clearly tell government agencies exactly what content they want. At time of sign-up, the person can opt-in to allow automated email alerts via email and RSS feeds as soon as new information on the topics become available.
With sophisticated email tools such as one-click alerts (which allow the campaign to be preloaded and executed from a mobile device), and action-based messaging (such as emails triggered by someone clicking or not clicking a link for more information), clearinghouse communications can efficiently deliver the right message to the right person at the right time using the right medium.
The bottom line: Time is a commodity. Consumers depend on focused email alerts to keep up to date on the latest information essential to their needs. The right email campaign software will allow government agencies to not only save their own time, but save the public's time by focusing on the immediacy of email alerts.