Contact Management Tasks (200908-1120).pdf

CONTACT MANAGEMENT

The contractor shall provide a reliable, existing web-based solution with contact management capabilities that integrates essential external affairs functions into one browser-based, database-driven software suite.

The database must be current to reflect accurate contact information for all journalists and reporters.

The solution must allow FEMA to filter by name, job titles, subject focuses, states of origin, and contact information.

All contact information must be updated at minimum of every two weeks and include work email address and phone number(s).

Creating targeted/flexible lists to include domestic news media, ethnic and tribal media

(including the language they are published in) for print, broadcast, cable, magazines, and blogs.

The platform shall allow frequently used distribution lists to be created and saved for repeated use.

The contractor shall populate and update the database every two weeks with media contact information that can be searched and filtered by FEMA staff. FEMA should have the ability to add additional contacts to the database. On occasion, FEMA staff will identify additional contacts to be added to the database.

While the responsibility of managing and updating media contact information lies with the vendor, the platform should allow FEMA users the ability to update contacts in the database.

Integration with Microsoft Outlook, Excel and SharePoint are desirable.

The contractor shall provide the ability to target distribution to subject and/or beat reporter lists from the general contact database. This includes the ability to filter or target by factors such as geographic location (city, county, and state) outlet type (newspaper, radio, broadcast, web, magazines, etc.), circulation, editorial interest or beat, and primary language spoken, including but not limited to English and Spanish.

The ability to send distribution/emails to non-media stakeholders such as FEMA, DHS, or White

House staff and contacts within the platform. The vendor will not be responsible for tracking or updating non-media stakeholder lists. FEMA COMM will customize and add non-media stakeholders to designated distribution list(s).

TRACKING AND INQUIRY MANAGEMENT

Providing press inquiry management capability for entering, tracking and reporting on inquiries with media and stakeholders.

Providing the capability to track media inquiry deadlines. This function will allow FEMA

COMM to appropriately prioritize inquiries and ensure strong stakeholder relationships.

Using automation to record history, the system will provide abilities to manually enter or log interactions that take place outside of the system, such as phone calls, in-person meetings, or press event attendance.

Providing the capability to take notes of conversations and schedule follow-up activities for contacts within the system.

Viewing key information pertinent to a contact on one webpage with the ability to then access more detailed information including job title, company or news organization of affiliation, address of employment, email address, phone number, social media accounts, summary on professional background and previous employment.

Creating reports showing pertinent information. This includes but not limited to reporter name, affiliation, open inquiries, closed inquiries and inquiries by outlet/region.

DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

The vendor shall provide a web-based solution to send documents and messages to a list of targeted contacts via email distribution. The vendor shall verify and mitigate any concerns regarding documents or messages not arriving in the user’s mail inbox software.

The distribution system shall integrate and build from the contact management portion of the solution and be able to support the following:

Distribution of press releases, media advisories, fact sheets, attachments, and any other external affairs campaign related documents via email and/or wire services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The system should be able to distribute emails up to 10,000 contacts.

Distribution of up to 20,000 pages per month (estimated monthly distribution averages 350 documents of 2 pages to 1,000 contacts). The system must be able to accommodate multiple attachments/documents, links/hyperlinks ranging in length from 1-50 pages.

The solution must have the capacity for FEMA staff to review or share a preview template of a news release with the FEMA Office of External Affairs logo before disseminating to stakeholders.

The solution must have the capacity to include FEMA branding before disseminating to stakeholders.

FEMA’s primary colors are blue, gray, dark grey and white; and secondary colors are red, light blue and green.

FEMA’s typography includes Times New Roman, Joanna MT, Franklin Gothic and Arial.

House Style Guidelines are available online.

The vendor must provide the ability to send group and individual emails, included in those emails up to 10 attachments in formats including but not limited to PDF, PNG, or JPEG, and/or publicly visible URL links to multiple attachments.

Due to the essential role FEMA COMMS needs in disseminating life-saving preparedness, disaster response and preparedness information to the media, there shall be no maximum amount of distribution lists or number of media contacts per distribution list.

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT METRICS

FEMA COMM should have the ability to see which email recipients received and opened distribution emails.

The platform must have a capability that allows FEMA users to download data for analytics purposes (Microsoft Word, Excel and PDF required) and generate reports on demand, using criteria such as date of inquiry received, outlet, reporter name, medium, and inquiry category/subject.

Reporting capability that includes the ability to identify successful and unsuccessful delivery to designated contacts direct to the user initiating the distribution. Reports shall include success delivery rate, and other pertinent metrics/information that can be delineated by activities and tasks. This function should be completed after each distribution.

A confirmation email with the pertinent metrics should be sent directly to the user who initiated the distribution immediately.

The vendor shall provide FEMA COMM with easily accessible, statistical tracking capability to determine how many and which recipients successfully received, and opened email messages, what documents or links were accessed in the email messages and summarized campaign results to assess program effectiveness. FEMA prefers visual graphics that allow the agency to compare different statistical tracking for two or more media products for assessment and action.

FEMA users will download this data for analytical purposes to generate reports on demand.

The vendor shall provide a service that enables FEMA COMM to organize and track progress on communications projects/campaigns including pitching opportunities, press releases, media interviews, speaking engagements and press/media events. This will enable FEMA COMM to look for efficiencies in our messaging and reach out to appropriate stakeholders at the best time.

https://connect.uscis.dhs.gov/org/OCOMM/BRND/Documents/opa_branding_house_guide.pdf

END USER SUPPORT

As directed by the FEMA Contracting Officer Representative (COR), the vendor will give rights to certain individuals who will have access as system administrators and enable permission to standard platform users. The system administrators shall have the ability to manually create and update user accounts for access.

The platform shall provide:

A minimum of 50 concurrent users to access the system on a regular basis and shall not restrict the total number of users with access accounts.

FEMA anticipates that no more than 400 active accounts will exist at any given point. These users will consist of staff located in FEMA's headquarters, regional offices, joint field offices, long-term recovery offices and transitional recovery offices or any other location where FEMA is conducting information dissemination activities.

The contractor shall provide 24/7 Help Desk Support. This support will help FEMA COMM with technical questions such as formatting news releases, recalling distributions and account/user management.

The contractor shall provide FEMA with a minimum of six (6) FEMA-specific interactive training sessions annually. In the first year, an additional three shall be provided to assist with training all pertinent staff using the new solution. Webinars or virtual training sessions are preferred provided that the platform can effectively be used for these formats. Pre-recoded, on-demand trainings may also be provided in addition to the six interactive ones.

In addition to the training, the contractor shall provide additional training as needed to facilitate use of the system's full capabilities.

The vendor must use or have an existing online, web accessible platform or infrastructure

(including accessibility within the FEMA/DHS-secured network) for Mozilla Firefox 78 or newer and/or Microsoft Edge 83 or newer.

TRANSITION PLAN

The transition plan shall include integration of legacy communication between FEMA COMM and media stakeholders to manage the lifecycle of relationships with journalists across the country and U.S. territories.

Transition account users and safeguard FEMA employees contact information such as email addresses.

Data conversion of existing contact lists and contact management data. Currently, there are approximately 5,000 media contacts. Contact lists are saved in Microsoft Word, Excel and/or

PDF formats.

Transition media inquiries up to 100,000 activities.

Transition news releases and distributions from FEMA's headquarters, regional offices, joint field offices, long-term recovery offices and transitional recovery offices.