The City of Sandefjord boosts citizen engagement dramatically – at reduced cost
The City and municipality of Sandefjord (population 60,000) is a coastal city in Southern Norway, an hour and a half’s drive south of Oslo.
The challenge: Improve insufficient and ineffective citizen communication and engagement
Following a review, the city realized that current channels of resident communication, primarily city websites and social media, were insufficient and ineffective in providing residents with relevant local information and ensuring they received needed content.
The solution: Innocode’s mobile-centric and personalized City platform
Innocode’s citizen engagement platform, originally developed for local media companies, facilitates collaboration between city government, voluntary organizations, local businesses and residents. The platform ingests city information and includes local organizations’ content as well, creating engagement, relevance and hyperlocal information, all personalized for the individual user. This delivers a single source for local information functioning as a citywide mobile app and digital gateway.
The results: Dramatically increased adoption and usage, with cost savings of +$100,000
Penetration: One year after launch, 24,000 Sandefjord residents had downloaded the citizen app, 40 percent of total resident population.
Usage: Between 2,500 and 8,000 daily users, with more than 20,000 using the app on a monthly basis.
Engagement: 15%-30% open and response rates for targeted content such as push notifications.
Cost savings: Over $100,000 annual savings in advertising, citizen surveys, engagement and support for other digital products.
The dramatic results were driven primarily by personalization, users receiving content based on interests, neighborhoods, groups that matter to them, a single, comprehensive platform, targeted and relevant push notifications, and visualization of relevant smart sensor data such as swimming temperatures and snow plowing updates.
We have finally found a platform for the citizen dialogue we have dreamed of. We now offer a service that adapts to the individual’s immediate neighborhood and interests, with impressive engagement from users and organizations. The solution counteracts digital invisibility and once again provides our citizens with an overview of what is happening in their neighborhoods.
