Dear Municipal Staff

If you have been contacted we so far have over 50% of town resident’s permission granted email addresses, with full names, and postal address. Within the first couple of weeks from when we start emailing, the resident saturation will be over 80%.  

We will soon start emailing timely and targeted email updates to the residents by their selected interests, however based upon your decision, or no decision, will dictate which business model we will use. Under the first business model we sell municipalities control of our website accessible email service; pricing to follow. 

Under the second business model we freely provide the municipality email service and have a disclaimed link in the emails that directs residents to either a Town Business Directory or a sole sponsors website.

Our income would come from either A) a share of the Business Directory advertising from local professionals and contractors or B) A sole sponsor (that you approve) like the local Newspaper or Chamber of Commerce.

First Business Model Municipality Pays for Email Service
No Business Sponsor Link In Email Template

To follow is an example email template.
This town has no disclaimed link to Business Directory or Sole Sponsor.

All of its website links are embedded into their email template, to further drive traffic to its website. We would simply act as your email vendor providing a “private label” email service. 

We will provide more details on the ability to purchase the service later in this presentation. For now let’s look at the free second business model option:

Second Business Model: Free for the municipality to send a resident manager press releases as the email template disclaims any affiliation with the listing of businesses on the Business Directory Website or a Sole Sponsors website.

If the town does not want to purchase and control the email service or is willing to have it sole sponsored, a resident manager would gather the town contentabout in a similar fashion as a town newspaper reporter would and if the municipality wants the municipality can send the resident manager any press releases like it does the newspaper to forward to residents by their specified interests.

There is no contract or relationship under the second business model—similar to the municipality dealing with a town newspaper. The resident manager would receive income from local professionals and contractors that want to advertise in the Business Directory website.

Residents will visit the Business Directory website often because all local food merchants can change their daily food specials from their own computer; and the menus will be added. 

The following screenshot is of an existing Town Business Directory:

If the Town either purchased and controlled the email service or went with an approved sole sponsor there would not be any disclaimed link in the email template to the Business Directory.  There would not be any Business Directory at all. We just act as an email vendor for the municipality and the service is “private labeled“ so it appears as if you were running the email service. 

To follow is a sample email template which links to a Town Business Directory.

As you can see below the sponsor graphic “Member Directory” is not overbearing and flashy, blinking etc. It is a tasteful, and simple graphic link. 

 “Safety Alone” Makes This A Tremendous Municipal Service

Those towns that use “Reverse 911” phone recordings are finding many major holes.

What if you need to reach your children who are in day-care in a town that has the problem? The town that has the problem can access many parents via email at work. In most families today, both adults work outside of the home.  No one is there during the day when most emergencies or disasters occur!

An email can be sent to both the resident's home and business email addresses, PDA's, etc.

That's if the phone service is working or not busy as what happened during 9/11.  

The instructions can be in multiple languages, whereas the phone calls are in English. With Reverse 911 you need to have paper and pen available and you'd better know how to take shorthand when panicked!

Families with children know that most often it's their children who pick up the phone, not the adult resident!  By the time the children hand over the phone, the recorded message is over and the Reverse 911 phone system has erroneously accounted the call as a message delivered to an adult.

Consider Purchasing the Email Service

The municipality can purchase and control the email contentabout and this prevents unintended and inadvertent misinformation being disseminated to residents. A town resident manager attending a municipal council meeting would no doubt have different headlines, and rank the priority of municipal news differently than a municipal press release.

No Security, or Legal Concerns:

We do not collect any sensitive data (credit card info, social security numbers), nor do we collect the names of children. We are COPPA Compliant (Child Online Privacy Protection Act). Additionally, when the emails go out, no residents email addresses will show in the email header and the residents will not be able to “reply to all” residents.

 Decrease in Phone Calls to Town Hall and Reduction in Staff Time

Municipalities will realize that the emails actually free up productive staff time. No longer is the staff answering questions due to the enhanced communications. When the emails go out the email template can advise the residents that the email server does not accept reply emails; thus working as if the message was “US Postal Mailed” out—except now the municipality saves a bundle. Some municipalities are cutting out a one or more postal mailings and supplementing communications with unlimited emailing.

Choosing Another Email Vendor May Result in a Legal Problem

We specialize in municipal emailing, having filed 17 patent claims that are pending in the municipal niche market. The patents involve both technical innovations as well as our unique business method.

We strongly believe that many email vendors may have to cease and desist emailing for municipalities in the fashion they are doing so, once our patents are finalized. Municipalities which are using email vendors may eventually be found infringing on our patents and may be held contributory liable.

See laws on Contributory Infringement: http://ideas.repec.org/p/isu/genres/12268.html here:

The contributory infringement rule assesses liability to a third party that contributes to the infringement of a patent. Not only are firms that directly infringe liable, those who indirectly contribute are also liable. In the e-commerce world, this rule takes on an important dimension because of the network structure of the Internet.

It simply does not pay for any municipality to use another email vendor when most are technically inferior, don’t provide the email data, and there is a very good chance that the email vendor will have to cease and desist from providing email service for the municipality.

Try explaining to your residents that the town may end up spending tens of thousands in legal fees due to possible patent infringement, all because the town wants to use a competing inferior email service in which the town elected to pay more than Email Notices service, which can be either free or very low cost. 

Residents Love Email Notices Service Because it is Highly Targeted

The email service not only benefits the Town and School but the community leaders (Boy & Girl Scout, Historical Society, Garden Clubs, Library, PTA, Sports Associations, etc) that do not have the ability to bulk email and want our free email service. The ability to highly target email means that people know they will receive only what specifically interests them and therefore the email gets opened. 

Residents in general erroneously believe that the municipal staff does not work hard and are overpaid. Residents complain that there are no programs offered and no information is communicated; this is because most residents don't visit the municipal website on a regular basis nor stare at the Cable TV channel as it scrolls news. The email service changes residents' perspective to the municipality being cutting edge and the staff is really working hard.

The email service also allows attachments, like registration forms, alleviating the need to make trips to the municipal building prior to the typical municipality closing. The same press release that you send to the newspaper can attach to an email.

The municipality can create as many interest groups as it desires.  The email service allows for using multiple filters to target information. Example: The recreation department can email:

1) Parents of 2) Third grade and 3) Fourth grade 4) Girls  5) Who are interested in baseball  6) Who live in the American League side of Town!

Residents are only interested in information that pertains to their family. Senior citizens do not want information about babies swim programs and young families don’t want to hear about senior citizen events.

Municipalities which try to email all issues are drive their residents email crazy-- residents lose interest-- and don’t open the email. The following is a screenshot of a small part of a resident registration page;

If the Resident Misses an email the “History of Email Notices Sent” is Posted Online:

No Computer Issues

Because this a website accessible email service the municipality has the option to control it 24/7; however because it is website accessible there is no need to integrate software or hardware into your computer network. We "private label the service" --meaning that when the residents register online, and when the email goes out, and when residents change their interests, the municipality would appear to be running the service. We simply stay in the background and make you look great.

Over $200,000 has been spent just on software development to make the email service feature rich, but still making it user friendly! We have also spent years getting white-listed with Internet Service Providers (ISP's) to make sure the email gets delivered. People erroneously believe that just because they have opt-in email it automatically means that its email gets delivered--not so--you need to get white-listed to bulk large amounts of email. This means many applications and some ISP's charge an application fee to get white-listed—for example AOL charges about $300.

Because our servers are doing the emailing we strictly adhere to the Federal Can-Spam Laws and The Child Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA). All emails are opt-in but even if they were not, it would still comply with the Can-Spam Law as the municipality emailing press releases to its residents is exempt under the Federal Can-Spam Law as the municipality under Can-Spam has an existing relationship with its residents, its taxpayers.

It is So Simple to Use!

Email contentabout is pasted or typed into an editor, or you can simply attach a document that you already have. The following is a screenshot of the text editor:

After the contentabout is entered into the editor, it is saved and automatically flows into the email template of the emailing organization which was selected from the email template dropdown. The municipality as well as each community leader can have its own professionally designed email template customized with its own logo’s etc; however all community leader organizations work together to build one data base with security level access.

The Database Stays Up–To-Date

Subscriber data stays current as all emails contain an "update my profile" link that takes the resident to a private labeled webpage which allows residents to select or de-select from the list of interests. At the end of each school year parents advance their children's grade level. 

Targeting of EmailNotices- Select & Send an Email Notice

You can select a combination of as many interest groups as you like, including age and gender, or geographic area of the municipality and our system will remove duplicates if the subscriber is in more than one interest group, so the person does not get two of the same emails.

After you select your subscribers you have the option of attaching a document. You also have the ability of entering a test email and only the email address entered will receive it. You also can preview the email in your browser. Years of experience have led to the development of every possible practical request from municipalities without the service becoming too complicated that no one can understand it. Call our office and have a tour before you decide which business model to take. One of our staff will teach you step by step and we promise it will take you only 5 minutes to see how easy it is to use. 

There are great reports too!

The following screenshot shows how many subscribers chose which sub interest groups that were created. You can click on the interest group name and it will give you the list of email addresses registered for that interest group.

Email Notices Nominal Fee to Purchase Email Service

First of all the Town will own the email data; that is worth a tremendous amount of time and money. No bidding is needed for our unique feature rich email service because it is patent pending, and in most cases below the State bidding minimum. Additionally, there is huge discount if your town refers another town as each town will pay the discounted rate starting in the second year based upon the combined house-holds in each municipality under the following schedule:

Unlimited email service is based upon the number of house-holds in the municipality, so there can be multiple email registrations allowed per house-hold i.e. (home and business email addresses for both husband and wife and other adults in the house-hold.)

The cost is $950 per year if the house-holds in the municipality are below 1,000. Above 1,000 but fewer than 3,000 house-holds is $1,297 a year. Above 3,000 to 6,000 house-holds is $1,597 a year; Above 6,000 house-holds to 10,000 house-holds is $1,997 a year; Above 10,000 house-holds to 15,000 house-holds $2,497; Above 15,000 house-holds to 30,000 house-holds is $2,997 a year; Above 30,000 house-holds to 60,000 house-holds $3,500, Above 60,000 to 100,000 house-holds $4,597; Above 100,000 to 300,000 house-holds $6,597; Above 300,000 to 500,000 house-holds $7,997; Above contact us.

You can also use a free email template and insert your website links into the email contentabout each time you email or have us custom design an email template with your logo, pictures, etc., and integrate the email template into our email server for a one time cost of $200.

Email Notices is financially much better off if it does not sell your municipality control of the email service with no link in the email template to the Town Business Directory website. In a town of 5,000 homes, which is roughly 15,000 residents, it would be very easy to sell 100 professional and contractors a business listing for only $300 a year with our email saturation and the huge traffic we will generate to the Town Business Directory website. So we could easily generate $30,000 a year instead of the nominal fee schedule for a municipal purchase or obtaining a sole sponsor.

However, we believe the Town should dictate to us which business model it wants us to take.

Summary

Please let us know within a week if it is in your budget to purchase the email service. If we don't hear back from the municipality we will assume there is no interest to look into purchasing the email service and we will operate similar to a newspaper but via email.