The last few months has been a time of learning for many of us. Not only did we launch Bludot Open to help cities promote local businesses in response to the pandemic (read more here), we have also significantly expanded our Business Retention & Expansion (BR&E) tool to continue to power cities' Economic Development initiatives. We are proud to see our platform used in various ways to engage and support local businesses (check out tips shared by our city partners in the knowledge hub); and we have learned tremendous insights from our city partners' feedback which has been key to help us make Bludot better. Excited to share with you our latest feature roundup:
1. Communication Analytics and Tracking
Data is core to Bludot and we strive to provide as much data-driven capabilities as possible to all cities's economic development practices. Being able to track the open rates and analytics for each message the city sends to business owners is key to understand the effectiveness of the communications.
On each business's interaction wall, there is now an easily recognizable double-checkmark symbol that highlights whether each message has been received and seen by this business. This tracks both seeing the message by opening the notification email or by logging into the platform. This insight is especially useful if at any time you come in contact with this business 1:1, for example if they are asking a question or requesting a service, you would immediately know which past communications have they seen or missed and you can adjust your response accordingly.
In each business's details profile, there is also a chart that shows the overall message open rates by this business. This score is an important indicator of how much this business is engaged and informed.
In each group post, we also provide aggregated analytics that track the open rates by time, by labels and categories, and by geographic location. These analytics are critical to understand which businesses saw your communications, when and where; as well as who did not.
2. Email Consolidation Automation
When businesses email your city's dedicated @mail.bludot.io address, those emails are automatically captured by Bludot. Now, if Bludot recognizes the sender's email address to a business on file, that email will be automatically matched to that business's interaction wall. No more manually keeping track of who sent what or having emails lost in your inbox. This new automation reduces hassle on your end and ensures that all touch points with a business are collected in one central place, a place that all your staff members can access.
What's next?
We are making improvements to the messaging user experience, enhanced functionality in Advanced Search, as well as some major features coming up including Surveys and Inter-Business Partnerships. Stay tuned for more updates from us in the coming weeks!