Mass Email
Best Practices
Includes:
• Invitations
• Newsletters
• Alerts
Mass Email Best Practices
Overview
• Branding makes your message trusted.
• Brevity gets your message read.
• Technical proficiency assures your
message arrives intact.
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 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)
Most newsletters go unread.
Average:
23% readership 4 Years ago
23%
Readers
Non-Readers
77%
(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?
How much
was read?
Average
Stopping
Point Is on
the first
page.
“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 Email Best Practices
Intended
Message
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!
Mass Email Best Practices
Different Platforms
• Are you looking at anything besides
Outlook?
From CampaignMonitor.com statistics compiled June 2011
Mass Email Best Practices
Different Platforms
Share Email 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 Email Best Practices
What Year Is It?
1997 Wants Its HTML Back!
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
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
Mass Email Best Practices
New Process
• utdallas.edu/evites/checklist
• Send it to
webdeveloper@utdallas.edu
• Communications needs three business
days quality testing time
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