Ville de Laval Increases Citizen Engagement through Personalized Newsletters

As part of the newsletter redesign project, the main objective for Ville de Laval was to offer its citizens and employees much more personalized content based on subscribers' interests and preferences.

The goal was to go far beyond simply adding the subscriber's name at the beginning of the newsletter. Consideration of readership profiles, analysis of email open statistics, subscription paths, and online traffic were all scrutinized.

Findings indicated the need to optimize content. Maximizing the use of Dialog Insight’s platform features and implementing more segmented content editing processes allowed this goal to be achieved quickly and cost-effectively. This approach was readily endorsed.

In 2024, Ville de Laval is expanding, serving a population of over 450,000. Citizen engagement is driven by effective, relevant, and targeted communications. For several years, the city has used newsletters as a key channel to communicate with its subscribers (citizens, businesses, partners, etc.) weekly. Over time, it has built an enviable community of subscribers.

Ville de Laval favors two newsletter formats. First, the citizen newsletter provides the general population with direct access to key information without requiring them to search for it. It aims to provide details about relevant services and new offerings. Second, the employee newsletter is sent to municipal staff across various divisions to inform them of both general news and updates specific to their sector, as well as operational information.

With the expertise of its teams and the Dialog Insight solution, Ville de Laval successfully implemented targeted communications based on user interests. A comprehensive audit was conducted to understand subscribers' needs, areas of interest, and favored municipal services. Traffic statistics and open rates for each section were thoroughly analyzed. Special attention was paid to conversion tunnels, illustrating newsletter readers’ journeys, which often extended to the city’s website.

This allowed the team to establish a list of topics and content worth highlighting, balancing the city’s key messages with those reflecting subscribers' interests. Content prioritization and organization within the newsletters became possible, ensuring optimal representation of all interests. Tags and categories were created, such as Practical Life, Culture, Animals, Sustainable Development, Sports and Recreation, Civic Life, Prevention, and None.

Our processes were adjusted accordingly: categorization is now done systematically when creating new content. A rigorous follow-up ensures that content volume is managed according to these categories and subscriber requests.

We also revamped the content presentation. Instead of relying on more textual content, we opted for a format featuring a title, an image, and a call-to-action (CTA) for each content block.

These steps allowed subscribers to receive newsletters more focused on their preferred topics.

Ville de Laval can now personalize its communications according to its citizens' interests while delivering ordered content in the newsletter based on reading preferences.

Ville de Laval’s communications team, responsible for the project, is proud of this redesign and appreciates the enthusiastic feedback from all newsletter recipients.

Additionally, the city views its collaboration with Dialog Insight positively. The support provided and the efficiency of the underlying operations underscored their expertise. The coordinators involved showed great openness throughout the project.