Town of Andover Drives Community Engagement With Subtext

Challenge

Local governments across the United States struggle to reach, inform, and engage their communities. Having historically relied on local media to disseminate important information, the decline in newsroom budgets and staff members have created new communication challenges. And while social media and email are somewhat effective, messages ultimately get lost in the clutter. The Andover Town Manager’s Office was challenged with finding new ways to connect with their 37,000 residents effectively. 

Solution

Subtext provided the Andover team with a community engagement tool that empowered them to meet residents where they were (their phones) and provided the municipality a direct line to their most engaged community members, in a private forum. 

The team launched “Andover Insider: Town Hall Text Line” which was described to the community as “a powerful new way for residents to stay informed about what's going on at Andover Town Offices and around the community.” The team sent weekly texts from the Town Manager and his team about projects, events, and programs in Andover, ensuring their insider text line was the first to know any big news.

Results

The Town of Andover saw an overwhelming response from residents who went out of their way to thank them for this service. Within the first month, they saw a subscriber growth rate of 124%. After just 3 months, they are already 75% of the way to their yearly subscriber goal with a less than 4% churn rate.

Andover employed the channel to drive resident participation in the Participatory Capital Budget program after receiving only 12 project proposals using their traditional communication channels. Once they texted a reminder, the team was blown away by their ability to activate residents, receiving over 20 additional submissions overnight immediately.