Mass Email Best Practices

1. Mass Email Best Practices

2. Includes: • Invitations

3. Newsletters

4. Alerts

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

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

7. A Shared Relationship • University’s reputation confers respect on your organization. • What you do, in turn, reflects back on the Universityand shapes its image. • Your communication is the University’s communication.

8. With this in Mind…

9. Resist the Impulse to be Creative With Logos

10. Don’t Mix it Up with New Colors.

11. Familiar message becomes confusing

12. Changing the brand dilutes the message.

14. Be brief.Take a hard look at the wordsin your message.

15. 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)

16. Most newsletters go unread. (It’s down to 19% today.)

17. The clock is ticking as soon as the newsletter is opened…. Users spendan averageof only 51 seconds reading.

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

19. Here’s an 818-word newsletter. It starts here.

20. And goeson…

21. Andon …

22. And finally ends here.

23. How Much of That is Read?

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

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

26. Easy to Scan The Link Office of Development and Alumni Relations

27. Another one Comet Families Student Affairs

28. Designed with same principles in mind

29. Technical Proficiency Ensure That Your Message Arrives Intact

30. Mass Email Best Practices Intended Message

32. 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!

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

34. Mass Email Best Practices Different Platforms

35. Mass Email Best Practices What Year Is It?

36. 1997 Wants Its HTML Back!

37. 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

38. Mass Email Best Practices Tools • HTML email • List servers • UT Dallas has two • Constant Contact, Emma, etc. • DON’T USE desktop email to send mass emails

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

40. 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