Mass Best Practices

Includes: Invitations

Newsletters

Alerts

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

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

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

With this in Mind…

Resist the Impulse to be Creative With Logos

Don’t Mix it Up with New Colors.

Familiar message becomes confusing

Changing the brand dilutes the message.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And goes on…

And on …

And finally ends here.

How Much of That is Read?

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

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

Easy to Scan The Link Office of Development and Alumni Relations

Another one Comet Families Student Affairs

Designed with same principles in mind

Technical Proficiency Ensure That Your Message Arrives Intact

Mass Best Practices Intended Message

Mass 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!

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

Mass Best Practices Different Platforms Share 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

Mass Best Practices What Year Is It?

1997 Wants Its HTML Back!

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

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

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

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