Tom is a communications director for a large organization. From clients, to employees, to board members, he has numerous stakeholders and different information that needs to be relayed to these different stakeholders. Ensuring that the right information goes to the right people can be time-consuming, and if Tom makes even a single mistake, information could be sent to the wrong person and it could cause problems for numerous facets of the organization.
The further you investigate the situation, the more manual tasks come up that take up Tom’s time. Before you know it, Tom has entire days’ worth of his work week taken up in the interaction process and sometimes he even forgets to send out the monthly or weekly newsletters. Some stakeholders have even complained about receiving reminders twice or receiving information that was not relevant to them. The more stakeholders that become a part of the system, the harder Tom and communication managers like him must work to keep track of all the moving pieces and still have time to perform the rest of their duties.
In this digital era, tools exist that could alleviate a lot of these problems, as well as eliminate some of the capacity for human error. Efficiency can be increased and Tom can be given more time to handle work that requires his complete attention. Rather than hiring more staff and increasing the likelihood that Tom's department could make mistakes or be overburdened with manual messaging, automating the stakeholder interaction process allows them to take a small part of the process off their plate and focus on the more complex or difficult tasks.
We have built an easy four-step process for building such a solution for you to try out.
Shall we begin?
Setting up an Automated Stakeholder Interaction Solution
Step 1: Build your stakeholder database
Without a database of stakeholders, none of your messages can be sent, much less personalized for each stakeholder. You must have information readily available in your stakeholder database to begin sending messages. Key pieces of information to include in the database are the stakeholder’s name, contact information, and role in the organization.
You can set up a web form for managing your stakeholder information and upload your existing stakeholder list as a file, or through the use of integrations. When you go to create personalized messages, they will pull relevant information from your database to personalize the messages and make it more likely that stakeholders will interact with them. This is the most crucial step in your process, as each subsequent step from this point on will build upon a correctly organized stakeholder database.
Step 2: Personalize message templates
Personalized messages have been shown to be opened more. So, it makes sense that you want all your messages personalized to maximize the chances that the stakeholder will open your messages and be up to date, right? Message templates should be set up in your solution and connected to the central database, so that they can include specific, role-related information and personal details. This minimizes the chances of your messages being ignored and provides a variable that makes it harder for scammers to replicate. The message can include a digital, downloadable copy of any resources that need distributing, as well as information on events, monthly updates, and so on. Your solution should include a low code, drag-and-drop editor that allows you to make changes that are visually enticing and consistent with your brand. It should also be scalable and allow you to create multiple templates that you can send to distinct groups of stakeholders. Not everyone in an organization gets the same updates.
Step 3: Send messages
Once the templates are built and the personalization rules are set, the solution will automatically reach out to the respective stakeholders, so make sure that your messages are edited and ready well in advance of the send date. You don’t want to be sending October’s newsletter in December, after all. The system will take care of message delivery and pull the information required for personalization from the central database.
Step 4: Reports
An ideal solution will not just be able to send messages, but also report information on stakeholder behavior. This will help you know who clicked which links, who isn’t reading their emails, and who you might have incorrect contact information for. This allows you to completely refine and retool your stakeholder interaction process until you can highlight areas that require human intervention.
This looks useful! What now?
This automated process is more than possible to build, but you might be worrying about the number of services you would have to pay for and set up to do all of this. Furthermore, if you were to build this solution yourself, it would take up a lot of time. Avoiding that and being more efficient with your time was the whole objective of looking into such a solution!
What can you do then, to achieve the benefits that the automated stakeholder interaction solution provides?
SimplyCast anticipated these issues and built a platform that incorporates all the tools you need to implement this solution in one place. With in-house technology, we streamlined all the tools you need and connected them together to provide an automated stakeholder interaction system that is versatile and scalable.
The best part is that since the tools are all connected, there is only a single monthly bill to worry about and will cost less than if you purchased each tool independently.
Our solution is 100 percent ready to go and fully customizable based on your needs. Depending on your business requirements, our consultants can help you design a perfect stakeholder interaction system using our automated solution.
Why wait? Speak to our experts today! Click the button below to request a demo of the solution!
