Tips for creating an emergency announcement template

When creating templates for an emergency situation such as a water main break or you are expecting severe or inclement weather at your community, there are a few things to keep in mind when creating your message:

1. Who is the message going to be from? For example, if it is an email, make sure to enter the correct email address in the Sender's Display Name field, (see article How do I send an email with attachments?) and the signatory at the bottom of the email, (ie: the Executive Director). You should also be mindful of what you put in the subject line of your email, you want to grab the reader's attention to alert them of the situation at hand, however you do not want to cause people to panic or worry. Lastly, make sure to put the correct email address in the Reply-to field of your email so people can respond back to the correct individual, if needed.

2. Next, it is important to remember who is going to be receiving the message. Is it going to be sent to residents, staff, families or a combination of all three? You might want to send a text message to staff members about inclement weather and a phone call to families and residents. Make sure you label your templates accordingly as you you may want to have separate templates for each group of individuals with the same message just varying slightly depending on who it is being sent to.

3. How is the message being sent out and when should you send the message out? You can decide based on the severity of the situation if you are going to send a telephone reminder, email, text or a combination of these. If there is an emergency situation such as a water main break that happens suddenly, you would probably want to sent a telephone message and text out immediately whereas if there is a big storm coming in a few days, you might want to start letting people know ahead of time to start preparing.

A few other things to note: due to size limits, telephone reminders should be under a minute long if possible, never more than two minutes and texts can be up to 600 characters maximum.

Please do not hesitate to call the VoiceFriend Support Line for assistance: 781-996-3123 x 2