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Mass Email Best Practices

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Includes: Invitations

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Newsletters

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Alerts

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Mass Email Best Practices Branding makes your message trusted. Brevity gets your message read. Technical proficiency assures your message arrives intact. Overview

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Branding is a Matter of Trust. Difficult to establish. Important to defend.

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A Shared Relationship Universitys reputation confers respect on your organization. What you do, in turn, reflects back on the University and shapes its image. Your communication is the Universitys communication.

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With this in Mind

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Resist the Impulse to be Creative With Logos

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Dont Mix it Up with New Colors.

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Familiar message becomes confusing

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Changing the brand dilutes the message.

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Be brief. Take a hard look at the words in your message.

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Mass Email Best Practices Your clients are word weary. The number of new and unread messages was 300% higher in 2010 than it was in 2006. (Useit.com)

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Most newsletters go unread. (Its down to 19% today.)

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The clock is ticking as soon as the newsletter is opened. Users spend an average of only 51 seconds reading.

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How Does That Look in the Case of a Real Newsletter?

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Heres an 818-word newsletter. It starts here.

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And goes on

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And on

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And finally ends here.

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How Much of That is Read?

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Average Stopping Point Is on the first page. How much was read?

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Newsletters must be designed to facilitate scanning. - Nielsen Norman Group Report

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Easy to Scan The Link Office of Development and Alumni Relations

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Another one Comet Families Student Affairs

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Designed with same principles in mind

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Technical Proficiency Ensure That Your Message Arrives Intact

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Mass Email Best Practices Intended Message

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Mass Email Best Practices ISPs Block Images by Default Will your message survive? What happens when your message is forwarded? Big images slow to download on most mobile platforms Images are not searchable Plain text is not a bad thing!

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Mass Email Best Practices Different Platforms Are you looking at anything besides Outlook? From CampaignMonitor.com statistics compiled June 2011

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Mass Email Best Practices Different Platforms ShareEmail Client 28%Outlook 16%iOS Devices (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch) 12%Hotmail 11%Apple Mail 10%Yahoo! Mail 7%Gmail 2%Windows Mail 2%Android 1%AOL 1%Thunderbird

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Mass Email Best Practices What Year Is It?

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1997 Wants Its HTML Back!

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Mass Email Best Practices HTML for email vs. HTML for Web Old 1990s HTML Email is not friendly to images Narrower publication width Cannot change after distribution

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Mass Email Best Practices Tools HTML email List servers UT Dallas has two Constant Contact, Emma, etc. DONT USE desktop email to send mass emails

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Mass Email Best Practices New Process utdallas.edu/evites/checklist Send it to webdeveloper@utdallas.edu Communications needs three business days quality testing time

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Mass Email Best Practices In Summary Brand mass email UT Dallas Keep it brief Be careful with images Use a list server Involve Communications early