Chapter 2: Raise Awareness and Begin Outreach

Build your community’s trust by providing fact-based communications and keeping them informed throughout the process.

 
 
 
 
Preparedness only gets your organization so far. Even if you have an ample supply of vaccines, if your potential recipients don’t have all the information they need to get immunized, you won’t get the traction necessary to succeed. To get your community on board, you need to earn their trust. How? Give them facts about the vaccine and have staff ready with the answers to their questions. Share information about how you’re managing and distributing vaccine resources so your community better understands the “how” and the “why.” Meet people where they are – on their preferred communication channels. This will allow your team members to drive more public awareness about vaccine availability and related services so the community can learn how to participate in your vaccine programs.

Keep accessibility and ethical use in mind.

While meeting the urgency of the moment, be sure to consider existing disparities and avoid creating new ones. Your outreach program should meet accessibility standards and be offered in multiple languages in order to reach all candidates.

The rollout of COVID-19 vaccination efforts highlights the importance of ethical use of technology. When it comes to individual and community safety, the concern goes beyond ensuring adequate supply or appropriate scheduling tools. We now have to look at how to enable wider access to technology to schedule vaccination appointments as well as how to ensure equitable distribution of the vaccine to underserved communities. Review Salesforce’s lessons from the field as you consider rolling out your own vaccine management program.

Engage on any channel.

Once you’ve established your process and have your technology platform up and running, you’ll need to get the word out to your candidates about vaccine availability and distribution. To reach as many people as possible, you should devise a multichannel communications strategy.

But don’t expect those communications to be one-sided. Be prepared to engage with the public across digital channels. They will have many questions, and in order to build trust, it’s critical that you answer their concerns. Responding quickly to specific individuals or broadcasting messages to large audiences can all be done easily with a single platform that can deliver across multiple engagement channels, such as social media, email, your website, and SMS.

Your platform should also be able to automate bespoke journeys for each individual, offering the right message at the right time on the right channel at scale. Digital knowledge portals and chatbots acting as digital assistants can help reduce call center volumes by quickly providing answers to common questions before routing recipients to service representatives. Of course, not everyone has access to digital channels, so it’s important to amplify your message using traditional media that includes print, radio, and television.

Communicate new information as it arises.

Vaccine management will require organizations to move quickly because changes will happen. Share new information or modifications to processes quickly to demonstrate your commitment to safety. It will go a long way toward building trust. Making the process easy to understand through effective communications across various channels will decrease barriers to your execution plan.

Trust amplifies vaccine demand.

Lake County Health Department in northern Illinois implemented its AllVax portal, an online vaccine registration and orchestration system, in just eight weeks. Built on the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform for Government, it guides individuals through the vaccination process step by step.

People seeking the vaccine create a profile in the system and can get answers to frequently asked questions. When they are eligible for the vaccines, Marketing Cloud enables alerts, and they can log back in to schedule an appointment. They can also opt in to receive important communications at various checkpoints throughout their vaccination journey. The platform connects to state and federal systems to report information such as adverse events. The health department team can also monitor metrics such as the percentage of the community that is vaccinated and equitable distribution goals.

Lake County has more than 700,000 residents and regularly welcomes many more commuters and tourists. When AllVax launched, more than 200,000 people quickly registered. “We see that as a sign that people feel safe and trust our ability to handle the logistics,” said Jefferson McMillan-Wilhoit, Director of Health Informatics and Technology at the health department.

 
 
 

Next: Chapter 3: Administer Vaccines

Manage your vaccine supply and streamline program administration.
 
See how to:
  • Track inventory to effectively administer vaccination program
  • Schedule vaccination appointments with ease
  • Manage outreach to coordinate follow-up visits
 
 

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