Email Lists - Newsletters

[Scott Watkins]

I've been talking with our Director of Communications, Bill Moakley, and we've been kicking around ideas for a while of starting a monthly or bi-monthly online newsletter for our constituencies. We've even purchased a license to an email marketing software with tracking capabilities.

Bill will create the content for each newsletter. I'll add graphics, turn it into an XHTML page, create a multi-part email and get it ready to send to our subscribers.

I have two quick questions regarding this.

First, has anyone been sending newsletters already and have any best practice advice, so we can get the best CTR on our messages? I've used email marketing in the business sector, but never in an educational environment. In my business marketing, I can say, 'FREE' and get my emails opened and clicked; but it's a different story here.

Secondly, we're planning on extending this application to use across various communications with our students, faculty and staff. For example, we could have a single email list for all active graduate students in 'X Program'. When we have communication to send to those graduate students, we could use the marketing software to track email opens, link clicks, etc. My question here is: is this worth the work and effort to change? Currently, we just use Outlook and send the email to a list. If they open it, great! We never know. So, is anyone already using this kind of communication with their students? ... And, if so, what kind of success are you getting?

[Laura Gibbs]

Hi Scott, my impression from students (undergraduates, at least) is that email is increasingly less important for them as a mode of communication. Partly it is just that they are using other technologies, and partly just that they are doing a poor job of managing their email - multiple address, way too much spam, etc.

One thing I do is use an "opt-in" email list through Feedburner, so students who want to get emails from me can do so; here's my four-way mode for my daily class announcements:
1) a blog - but no one reads the blog directly; it basically exists to supply the RSS!
2) Feed2JS automatically displays the RSS at the course website AND at Desire2Learn
3) my students use Bloglines as their feed reader, so they can subscribe via RSS if they want
4) Feedburner email subscription option lets students get a daily email if they want; about half do

This has worked really well for me - my goal is to reduce the time it takes me to an absolute minimum (and this system has worked very well for me - it just takes a few minutes to post in the blog each day; everything else is automatic), while making the announcements as easily available to the students as possible.

You've got real staff time and resources to devote to this project it sounds like, but for a faculty member or a student group leader who just wants a quick way to communicate both online and via email subscription, this RSS-driven system is free, and can be up and running in less than 5 minutes, with no overhead for maintenance or upkeep at all.

I also run a Feedburner email subscription service for my Latin blog (personal hobby), and it's got about 500 subscribers now, which is very cool - they all signed up on their own, with absolutely zero effort on my part; the thing just runs itself. I love these automatic things where I don't have to do anything more than just set the thing up, and then it just takes care of itself. Whoo-hoo! I really need the email option for that blog because the target audience (Latin teachers) is not very sophisticated by and large with technology; email is still profoundly their preferred mode of communication, unlike with my students.

[Scott Watkins]

Thanks Laura. I'm a big believer in RSS. I personally have over 30 feeds to which I subscribe (can't say I read them all, but they're in my inbox). And I'll definitely offer this as an option to our subscribers (it'll pull from the same database as the email, so not much extra effort on my part); but for some of our audiences, even email may be a bit sophisticated. I know when I was developing the RSS feeds for our site, very few people in our College were familiar with RSS. After a bit of education, we've been able to make them a bit more effective.

Of course, we understand that multiple contact points is best, so email has to be an option. I don't want to go with feedburner for this project because I'd like to use the tracking features of the email software.

By the way, 500 subscribers for a personal blog is great! ...must have some great content on that one!

[Laura Gibbs]

Ha ha, I think I'm glad I don't have tracking for the Feedburner email thing, because who knows of all those hundreds of people read the thing! But like I said, it's just a hobby I do for my own amusement... and if it ends up being amusing for others, that's a nice extra. I collect Aesop's fables in Latin and Latin proverbs - I have literally thousands of Aesop's fables in Latin, and thousands upon thousand of proverbs, so finding stuff to blog about is easy... the trick is just finding the time!

It's called Bestiaria Latina, because of all the beasts and birds in Aesop (and my preferred proverbs usually have animals, too...) - bestlatin.blogspot.com :-)