Case Study: Laguna Madre Water District achieves 260% increase in customer reach for emergency notifications with Vertexone's WaterSmart Group Messenger

Simplifying Crisis Communications

Laguna Madre Water District faced a communications gap: a geographically dispersed service area and a low opt-in emergency email list left residents and visitors—particularly on tourism-heavy South Padre Island—uninformed during a main water line break and state-mandated boil notice. Their existing customer system could not send outbound communications or geographically target specific neighborhoods, making timely, localized alerts difficult.

Vertexone’s Group Messenger module within the WaterSmart platform enabled staff to draw a polygon to target affected accounts and send personalized email, SMS, and voice messages. The utility reached about 1,300 accounts (a 260% increase over the opt-in list), sent 3,000 messages with a 93% delivery success rate and a 59% email open rate (versus a 15% industry average), and has adopted new procedures and training to rely on Group Messenger for future events.

Laguna Madre Water District

Eduardo Salazar

Director Of Finance