The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing

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The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing CRAFTING ENGAGING EMAILS THAT GET CLICKED WITH FINALSITE MESSAGES Introduction With social media, video marketing, live video, chat bots, mobile apps, and dozens of other communications tools — one of the questions we frequently get is: “Is the email newsletter dead?” And in short, the answer is “no, of course not!” Email is still one of the most popular and effective ways to communicate with prospective and current families, as well as alumni and donors. Checking email, in many cases, is a secondary habit. People do it while watching TV, sitting at their child’s soccer game, waiting for an appointment, and yes...even sometimes while sitting in traffic. Because of its simplicity and habitual nature, all generations depend on email for communications — and there’s plenty of stats to back that up, including:

73% of millennials identify email as their preferred means of business communication.

For every $1 spent on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $32

Despite the rise of social media, Forrester research revealed that people are twice as likely to sign up for an email list than interact with your Facebook page

61% of consumers enjoy receiving weekly emails, and 38% would like emails to come even more frequently

88% of smartphone users actively check email on their phones

So, even though email marketing is not dead, it is important to note that the types of emails your community expects has changed. For example, the old email newsletter you used to send likely contained some PDFs, followed a multi- column format, and had content for everyone, and was not personalized for each constituent base. You did it this way because you didn’t have the time, resources or tools to segment and change content.

But, this type of email marketing strategy isn’t effective — and it’s likely showing in your data. (Maybe making you feel like your email newsletter is dead?!) But with a few simple changes, you can breathe new life into your school or district’s email marketing strategy.

Throughout this guide you will learn modern best practices for creating email newsletters and email campaigns that engage and excite your recipients, and how to execute these best practices using the Finalsite Messages Module.

Before you can get to the fun part of building and sending emails, you need to start with a strong base, which is your list (or lists for that matter). List segmentation is a fundamental piece of building this strong base.

WHAT IS LIST SEGMENTATION?

List segmentation is the process by which you categorize (or segment) recipients based on their interests and/or constituent group.

WHY DOES LIST SEGMENTATION MATTER?

Segmenting email lists and content by constituent groups is the easiest way to make sure the right content is getting to the right people, which is proven to increase email engagement. In a digital world of noise, it is important that your community only receives messages relevant to them in order to build trust and increase their likelihood of opening and clicking an email. As a matter of fact, in one study by MailChimp, segmented campaigns performed much better than non-segmented campaigns — including a 14.3% higher open rate and 100.95% higher click- through rates.

HOW SHOULD WE SEGMENT OUR LISTS?

The easiest way to segment content is by constituent group and school. For example, an independent school with an upper, middle, and lower school will want to segment lists by school, but also constituents within the school, such as parents, students, faculty, volunteers, and then of course alumni. Similarly, a district would want to segment lists by schools and then constituent group. You also may want to create lists based on the sports students play, the clubs they’re a part of, or even how much they donated in a previous annual fund (if at all).

In many cases, a single person may be on multiple mailing lists, which is why it is important to follow the rules of engagement, which we cover later in this eBook.

Creating targeted lists in Finalsite Messages can be done in just a few simple steps. First, you’ll want to navigate to the “Lists” tab within the module, and select “+Mailing List.”

You’ll be prompted to click the “+Subscriber” button in the top right hand corner. From here, you can individually add subscribers one by one for a small list segment, or import contacts based on their group membership in Consistent Manager. When the “Add as dynamic subscription” box is checked, your contacts in Messages will automatically update based on changes to your Group — meaning as individuals are added or removed, or contact information is updated, those changes will automatically be reflected in your mailing list as well.

Keep in mind that because lists are managed by Constituent Manager, proper segmentation and data begins in your Student Information System and/or Constituent Manager — not in Messages. As an added benefit, if you integrate your SIS with Finalsite, data will automatically flow from your SIS into Constituent Manager, and then into Messages, ensuring data is up to date everywhere.

For individuals not segmented by Constituent Manager, Messages also includes an “upload” option to import a list.

While your data and list is the foundation of a successful email campaign, the look and feel of your email is what will drive those clicks that you’re looking for.

Most schools are now opting for a panel design newsletter, which resembles the look and feel of most modern web designs. Rather than working in multiple col- umns, it is a best practice to work in multiple rows — also known as panels.

If you need a point of reference, let’s compare Avon Old Farm’s alumni newsletter from 2006 to their alumni newsletter from 2018.

NON-PANEL LAYOUT PANEL LAYOUT

We clearly see an evolved brand, but we also see a distinct difference between the approach to email — as AOF moved away from the dual-column, magazine-style email, to a more modern, panel style design, focused on compelling images and big headlines.

How can your school transform your email newsletters to something more sleek and modern? We’ll share a variety of ideas and best practices in this section, followed by how to execute them in Finalsite Messages.

Like web design, content needs to follow a visual hierarchy in order to be easy to scan. You can think of your email visual hierarchy the same way you would think about your website’s visual hierarchy.

Image Headers: Almost every email you send will have some type of image header — even if it is just your school’s logo. An image header is important because it immediately establishes your brand, and gives you an opportunity to visually engage email recipients with important content.

Text Headers: Beneath an image header, you will likely have a text header with some additional details. For example, an image header may simply say “Homecoming 2018,” whereas your text header may say “Join us for a weekend of fun and community!” Adding a text header to each section that is about 20-30% larger than your body text will make emails easy to scan.

Content: Keep content short and to the point. If you can talk about the upcoming fundraiser in 25 words instead of 75 words, do so. You can always link to your school calendar, or a page on your site with more information. We recommend using lists, bold words, and smaller headers to make content easy to scan, especially on mobile.

Buttons: When it comes to extended content like a blog post, you’ll see better results if you use a “Read More” button that allows users to read more when its convenient for them.

As you can see here on the right, Stuart Country Day School creates a beautiful visual hierarchy by incorporating:

p A branded logo

p Header image

p Header text

p Short text

p Calls to action

Templates in Messages are the key to maintaining your school’s brand, while enabling multiple contributors to build quality, responsive emails.

USING TEMPLATES, YOU CAN STANDARDIZE THE FOLLOWING EMAIL COMPONENTS:

p Layout and structure

p Background color

p Text sizes and styles

p Link and text color

p Images

p Calls-to-Action

When building emails, those email components will be locked in and ready to go. Because templates will quickly become the foundation of simple, daily emails, as well as monthly, complex newsletters, it is important to take numerous best practices into consideration.

In this section, we’ll explain how to standardize your email templates.

This is the width of the email body itself. Set your email width to 600px to ensure an optimal viewing experience for desktop-based, web-based, and mobile-based users.

BACKGROUND COLOR:

This is the color of the background behind your email body — meaning it will only display when the content area width does not fill the entire window or screen. This is most common in desktop-based and web- based email clients. Make this color white, or a very light shade of gray for a slight contrast, or a fun brand color.

CONTENT AREA BACKGROUND COLOR:

This is the color of your email body. We recommend always using white (#ffffff) for this area for optimum readability.

DEFAULT FONT:

When you select a default font for your email, the font will be applied to your entire email. You can still edit font size and face within the email itself for customization. Select the font that is closest to your school’s branded font from the font selection tool.

LINK COLOR:

Setting up link color will apply your chosen style to each link in your email. Use the same color for email links as you do on your website.

© Finalsite 2018 9 Building Your Structure In Messages, you can drag and drop a variety of structural elements to construct an email template. Because the majority of emails are opened on mobile devices, your goal is to build for the mobile user in mind when you design your email— meaning, you should follow the best practices of panel design. This means avoiding text- wrapping around images, and constructing emails to scroll vertically, rather than placing an array of content horizontally.

Before building your structure, map out the content you’d like to include in a particular type of email. For example, in an Alumni Newsletter, you may typically include a header image, alumni spotlight, and CTA to donate to the annual fund. Use this as the foundation for how you want to arrange your structure. Because all emails are inherently responsive, consider every piece of content as a separate structural element.

In Messages, you’re provided with five different types of structural elements to make this possible. Here is a best practice use for each one:

1. SINGLE CONTENT BLOCK

p Header images

p Dividers

p Paragraph(s) of text

In the example on the right from Zurich International School, a single content block is used for the header image and main body text. Emails like this one can be built in minutes using Finalsite Messages.

p Adding side-by-side images

p Putting a description next to a photo to avoid text-wrapping p Great for student spotlights and promoting events

3. DUAL UNEVEN CONTENT BLOCK (RIGHT) p Headshot and signature combination p A smaller photo that requires more text p Newsletter templates

p Available with smaller content block on the left and right

4 & 5. TRIPLE AND QUADRUPLE CONTENT BLOCK (BELOW)

p Adding multiple images or calls-to-action in a row

p Creating a fun infographic

p Not recommended to use for three panels of text, as it will make it difficult to read on desktop and mobile

Jon Smith Matt Hertz Jane Baker Joe Major Director of Admission Assistant Director Director of Director of of Admission Student Life Athletics

A few important best practices to keep in mind:

p Create custom headers for each type of newsletter you send — i.e. Athletics, Alumni, Weekly Wrap-Ups, etc. This way, each email is branded with a particular header image, and recipients know it is for them. p Put your most important information at the top and the least important at the bottom.

p Visually divide your calls to action — meaning, if you want to add a CTA to purchase tickets for homecoming and to donate to the annual fund, make sure they are structurally far enough apart in the email to avoid confusion. The more important CTA should always come first. p Build your email like a website. Think header image, then content, then divider, then content, divider, content, call-to-action, and so on. This sets your email newsletter up like a story, rather than an email — increasing engagement and click-through rates.

AN EXAMPLE FROM THE TEMPLATE EDITOR As you can see, this email has a few key elements:

p Branded header image p Welcome text p Dividers p Dynamic content generated from Finalsite modules p Panel design p Calls-to-action p Social buttons in footer Note the importance of adding social media buttons to the footer, as these are a secondary call-to- action. Placing them at the top of the email distracts from the intended message.

Sometimes a simple email design is the most effective. The standard panel design email, featured on the right, follows a repeating pattern of image, text, call-to-action.

This makes the email visually engaging, and easy- to-scan — especially for mobile users. But what if users don’t make it all the way to the bottom of the email? Chances are, they won’t — which is a good thing, because it means they’ve engaged with the content above it!

Because we know that attention spans are short, it’s important to place the most important information at the top of the email, with less-important stories at the bottom. We recommend keeping this style email to ten or less “stories,” which would be a total of 20 panels. We recommend sending newsletters on a weekly and monthly basis in order to keep the length of your email appropriate.

BUILDING A STANDARD PANEL DESIGN EMAIL IN MESSAGES

Building this template in Messages is easy due to its repetitive nature. Using Message’s drag-and-drop email-building interface, simply drag an image block, a text block, a button block, and a horizontal rule to create your first story section. Then, repeat that action for each section of the template.

Before saving your Template to be available for customization, you’ll want to be sure that your padding and spacing creates plenty of room for whitespace, ensuring readability.

From the Structure panel, you can adjust the text height and padding for each content block.

Add anywhere from 10-15px of padding around content to ensure readability.

Keep in mind that when building your templates, these are locked-in standards for a set of emails. Only include images and calls-to-action you want in every single new email that leverages the template. All other changes should be made when creating a new email.

Now is a good time to look at previous emails to determine the kinds of emails you typically send. Then, decide how many headers you will need, and which kinds of standard templates make the most sense for your school.

Consider sticking to a standard naming convention in your template section to avoid confusion. For example, place the type of email in brackets, followed by the constituent group who receives it: [Monthly Newsletter] Parents.

ADDING IN AN UNSUBSCRIBE LINK

Before any email can be sent, an “unsubscribe” link must be added to all emails to be in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act. To add your unsubscribe link, add a structural content block to your template, and then add a text block. Within your text box, select “special links” and then “unsubscribe link.” This way, you can customize the look and feel of your unsubscribe link to match your email.

An unstyled “unsubscribe” link will automatically be added to emails that don’t have one. © Finalsite 2018 14 Part 3: Master Your Subject Line

A subject line is going to be the first thing that determines whether or not your email gets opened, and all the content you worked so hard to create and style may not get seen if your subject line is too abstract or boring.

NEWSLETTER SUBJECT LINES

Newsletter subject lines aren’t a place to get extremely creative. Newsletters are a predictable, scheduled piece of content that your community looks foward to, and testing out obscure or overly clever subject lines may hurt open rates.

For your newsletter, it is best to remain consistent. You can simply use the newsletter’s name and month, or also include one compelling highlight.

For example: p “June Alumni Newsletter” p “Parent Newsletter: Forms You’ll Need, Upcoming Events, and More” p “Student Weekly Digest: What’s For Lunch, Athletic Updates, And More” p “What’s Up This Month: Our Parent Newsletter”

To make your subject lines visually appealing, toss in an emjoi or two! Cary Academy uses the lightning bolt, while Immaculate High School uses the horse. It instantly makes a subject line more interesting that may otherwise feel “boring.”

Emails with personalized subject lines generate 50% higher open rates, and with the Messages module, you can take advantage of this! Messages allows you to personalize email subject lines with a constituent’s first name and/or last name.

How can you use personalization in your subject line? Here are some examples: p “Your weekly newsletter, Mia.” p “Lauren, we need your help.” p “Are you free on Saturday, Stephanie?” p “Hey Alex! Did you see this year’s Annual Report?”

PERSONALIZING SUBJECT LINES IN MESSAGES

Personalizing your subject line in Messages is as easy as a single click! When you write your subject line, simply click on the %FirstName% or %LastName% button directly below the subject line content. Keep in mind that this data pulls from Constituent Manager, so you’ll want to be sure your data is accurate.

Take note of the helpful “character count” note at the end of your subject line, to keep your content within 50-60 characters. If you’d like to add an emoji, simply copy and paste from your computer, or a website like Emojipedia. Emojipedia is helpful because it also shows you how your emoji will look in different email platforms.

© Finalsite 2018 16 ADDITIONAL SUBJECT LINE BEST PRACTICES p Keep it short and sweet — under 50 characters works best! Otherwise, they get truncated in certain email clients. p Create a sense of urgency — such as “today only” or “ticket sales end tomorrow” p Offer a benefit — what will recipients learn or gain from the email? p Ask a question like “Do you know what’s happening on campus this Friday?” p Start it with a number — such as “5 Back-to-School Tips from our Head of School” p Make them feel special by saying something like “For our favorite parents…” p Don’t overuse capital letters p Use the word “video” increases open rates p Use emojis increases open rates (and is fun!) p Avoid the word “donate.” Open rates decrease by 50% when the word “donate” is used in the subject line.

© Finalsite 2018 17 Part 4: Optimize Your Emails Back in 2010 Apple released the iPhone 4, which featured the Retina display. Apple’s Retina display was one of the first high-PPI (pixels per inch) displays mass-produced for consumers — and it fit in the palm of your hand.

On device screens, PPI refers to the number of pixels that fit into an inch of screen. The higher the PPI, the more detailed and clear images and text on that screen appear.

And it completely changed the way we consume media. Quickly, users began to expect higher quality content on-the-go. And of course, as marketers, our job is to always present our brand at its best — emails included. While subject lines, copy, sender, timing, etc, play an important role in a successful email, visuals are what truly draw recipients in. After opening an email, recipients’ eyes move to the design images before reading any content.

So, if you’re not accounting for high-PPI displays, you run the risk of looking less professional to subscribers. Because of the way high-PPI displays work, non- optimized images end up looking blurry and pixelated on retina screens.

Here’s an example:

NOT OPTIMIZED OPTIMIZED

The answer is simple.

Since high-PPI displays have twice as many pixels per inch than traditional displays, all you need to do is double the size of the intended image before putting it in your email.

In other words, if your email is 600px wide, you’ll want to create a 1200px wide header, and scale it down once it is already in the email.

The same goes for all images used in your emails. For example, if you want to add an image that is only intended to span half the email (roughly 300px) then the image should be exported at 600px, and edited in Messages.

Of course, larger images do run the risk of slower email load times — especially on mobile. Running the image through a compression tool at its full size before bringing it into Messages will lessen image size without rendering a lower quality image.

OUR FAVORITES INCLUDE:

p ImageOptim

Only available for Macs, this program compresses images without distorting quality. It also saves over the old file, so you’re not dealing with numerous different versions.

p JPEGmini + TinyPNG

These web-based programs also compress images without distorying quality, but are web based, and will save a new image.

It is also important to note that not all email browsers automatically display images. It is a good rule of thumb to avoid putting any essential information in your images. Additionally, we recommend adding ALT text to all of your images in your emails so that users can still receive information about the image without needing to load it.

© Finalsite 2018 19 Part 5: Tracking Emails with Google Analytics Using UTM parameters (tags that you add to any URL to track site traffic and engagement), you can track website traffic from a particular call- to-action based on its location on your school’s website. It provides you with important intel on which calls- to-action on your website generate the most clicks and which ones are virtually being ignored.

BUILDING YOUR TRACKING URLS:

Google Analytics has created an extremely simple UTM tracking URL tool that you can find on their website.

The page also provides some helpful information on how to use each parameter in the URL. Here is some additional information to make it specific to a school website:

Campaign Source (utm_source): Required. Use utm_source to identify which type of email it is, such as an athletics newsletter, admissions event, etc. Example: utm_source=admissionsnewsletter

Campaign Medium (utm_medium): Also required. In external campaigns, you would use utm_medium to identify a medium — which in this case, is email. Example: utm_medium=email

Campaign Name (utm_campaign): Again, this is also required when building your URL. This is used for keyword analysis. Use utm_campaign to identify a specific strategic campaign. Example: utm_campaign=2016openhouses

Campaign Term and Campaign Content are not required fields when building your tracking URL, and you won’t need them for internal website traffic tracking, but you can read more about them here.

UTM parameters are case sensitive, which means if you use the term alumni for some utm_campaign tags and Alumni for other utm_campaign tags, they will show up as separate campaigns in your Google Analytics.

UTM parameters will be shown in the browser’s address bar, so be sure you’re not using any tags that you would want to remain unseen.

VIEWING CAMPAIGN TRAFFIC

The URLs you create will automatically be tracked by Google Analytics as they’re clicked. Google (and other analytics software) will record all the parameters from each link and present it to you in a report.

Keep in mind that sometimes it can take up to 24 hours for Google to receive and record data, so if you don’t see clicks showing up right away, don’t fret.

To view the information on how your campaigns are preforming, login to your Google Analytics account and on the left hand menu, click on Acquisition reports:

Then, click on Campaigns. Here, you’ll see any campaigns you are tracking.

Note: Campaigns will only show up in your Google Analytics Campaign reports if the links are clicked on.

© Finalsite 2018 21 Part 6: Tracking Email Engagement in Messages Your team likely wants to track actual email engagement — which is easier than ever with Finalsite Messages. Within Messages, you can track a single constituent’s email history, the open rate and click-through rate of every email, as well as the engagement of each email recipient.

A rule of thumb for interpreting email analytics: If you have a low open rate, your issue likely has to do with the send date/time, subject line, or sender. If your email as a low click-through rate, your issue likely lies in the email content, structure, design, and call-to-action. By closely monitoring both of these numbers and making improvement over time, you can also gradually increase your email engagement.

To access the data of an email you sent with Messages, simply select the email you’d like to analyze, and click the “View Report” button to reveal the email’s data:

Deliverability is the term used to describe the rate at which your email was delivered. You should always strive for 100% deliverability, because that means your data is accurate. Engagement monitors unique opens, also known as your open rate. Conversions monitors your click-through rates. Lost contacts monitors your unsubscribes.

From the report screen, you can toggle the “activity log” to get a user-friendly view of the engaged users’ activity:

© Finalsite 2018 22 If you’d like to track the history of a particular constituent, you can do so from the “Find Recipient” panel. From this panel, simply enter the email address of the recipient you’d like to view, to see a history of their email engagement.

This feature comes particularly helpful when you have a constituent who complains about not receiving emails, or not having the necessary information for an event. From this screen, you’ll be able to see whether they received, opened, or clicked that email — which helps you keep the story straight.

© Finalsite 2018 23 Part 7: Privacy & Subscriptions More than ever before, the focus worldwide on email isn’t the content or the subject line (or all the things we just spent 20 pages talking about!). The focus is on privacy.

Ensuring you only contact individuals who have opted into your emails not only helps with email engagement (because they’re expecting to hear from you), but is also a requirement in Europe.

PRIVACY & FINALSITE MESSAGES

Finalsite made a number of product changes in preparation for GDPR, including Messages. The different requirements for sending “marketing” emails for EU citizens helped shape our new user preferences area, which provides a great experience for all users, wherever they reside.

Schools want their constituents to read the messages that they send, and it can be difficult to compete for your users’ attention (especially with the average person receiving more than 120 emails per day). Schools stand a greater chance of success when they send emails with content that users are actually interested in.

The new Messages user preferences area allows users to indicate how and what they are interested in receiving communications about.

OPERATIONAL VS. MARKETING EMAILS

One of the new features schools will notice in Messages is the email types “operational” and “marketing.” Operational emails are “required to fulfill a contract” and will ignore global unsubscribes, and will also not contain an unsubscribe link. Critical emails that all parents MUST see would qualify as “operational,” such as a deadline for re-enrollment, or a school closing. Newsletters — while they main contain very important information — or fundraising please are considered “marketing” emails, and schools MUST legally respect users’ rights not to receive such email should they so choose.

© Finalsite 2018 24 Part 8: Lead Nurturing with Workflows Private schools have historically spent much of their time focusing on getting inquiries and applicants via the same processes: print ads, mass email, snail mail, etc.

However, in the past decade, marketing has changed — and private schools in particular have seemed to be the latest adopters of some of these changes. Because today’s consumer (especially the millennial generation) spends much more time researching before making a decision, waiting for a family to visit your website and immediately inquiry is no longer a strategy. Competition is steeper than ever, and consistently selling the value of your school’s education is more important than ever. This is where lead nurturing with workflows becomes critical.

Lead nurturing has the power to take someone from the “need/research” stage of the inbound funnel (pictured above) all the way through enrollment and retention.

WHAT IS LEAD NURTURING?

To “nurture” a prospective family or donor means to gently nudge them down the funnel from awareness, to engagement, to commitment. Typically “nurturing” (also known as “lead nurturing”) begins once a prospective family fills out some type of form on your site, whether it be for a piece of content, an inquiry form, viewbook, or open house visit. Based on the type of conversion, you would nurture that prospect differently.

For example, someone who downloads a viewbook about your school is likely in the research/consideration stage of the funnel, and therefore should be treated differently than someone who fills out an inquiry form, as that person is clearly in the “consideration” phase.

WHAT ARE EMAIL WORKFLOWS?

Email workflows are a series of automated emails that get sent to a particular constituent (or constituent group) based on a particular workflow trigger. For those in admissions, a trigger might be a viewbook download, an inquiry submission, or open house RSVP. For those in marketing, it might be a certain grade level, or interest in a certain activity. And for those in advancement, it might be a particular donation amount (or even, lack-thereof).

Email workflows are built to “nurture” an individual through n the funnel, keeping your school top-of-mind during their time applying to, attending, and graduating from your school.

WORKFLOWS & FINALSITE MESSAGES

Finalsite’s product team is currently building out the school industry’s first email workflow platform. The platform will allow you to enroll constituents, automate emails, and analyze their success. Workflows will work seamlessly with Messages, Constituent Manager, OpenApply and Ravenna to make your lead nurturing efforts easy and effective.

The first version of Workflows will be available in early 2019, and we will continue to build out robust features throughout the year.

© Finalsite 2018 26 Part 9: Dynamic Content Weekly and monthly newsletters can take up a lot of your time, which may lead you to do them less frequently. However, because users’ attention spans are short, when you pack everything into one long monthly newsletter (because that’s all you had time for), some of your content likely isn’t being seen.

But there is a happy medium.

Dynamic content = increased frequency + decreased time investment.

If you’re worried about the time investment, using a tool like Finalsite Messages can save you countless hours through the use of templates and dynamic content. Using a template, you can set up an email newsletter for each school in your district with their branding, logos, and color. Then, using dynamic content you can automatically popular news, calendar and athletics content into the email without having to add it manually.

For example, Elmbrook Schools sends out a daily announcement email for each of the ten schools in its district — a feat that sounds near impossible to most small districts. However, through the use of Messages templates and dynamic content, the email can be sent daily in just a couple of clicks by relying on automatically populated content.

For details on how to add dynamic content to your emails in Messages, please review this Knowledgebase Article.

Poor email engagement is every marketer’s biggest fear. There’s nothing worse than spending hours crafting the perfect subject line, creating images, and tweaking text content to see lower-than-expected email open rates and click through rates.

The key to successful emails is to test, test, and test again. Try different subject lines, double check that it looks good on every device, that your links are going to the right places, and that it works well in all email clients.

There are some proven email best practices and strategies that will help you to increase open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, including:

p Scheduled Sending

p Personalization

p Videos

p Engaging Content

p ALT Text

EMAIL FREQUENCY While some emails will be spur-of-the-moment or one-offs, newsletters are the most common emails sent at schools, and should always be timely. Sending out one newsletter per semester isn’t an effective way to keep constituents up-to- date. Most newsletters are sent on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. You’ll need to choose a frequency that works for each constituent group. Alumni don’t need emails as often as students and parents. For example, you may choose to send an Alumni newsletter once a quarter, a parent newsletter bi-weekly, and a student newsletter on a weekly basis.

Sending emails on a more frequent basis will allow you to cut back on content, and provide a constant basis of communication with your constituents, so they’ll learn what to expect and when to expect it. That way, they’ll be more likely to open your newsletters, and engage with the content inside.

Pro Tip: Keep a publishing calendar. Make a plan to write, design, and send your newsletters regularly so that you can plan content — such as news stories, photos, dynamic content, etc — for each newsletter. You’ll feel more organized to prepare each newsletter.

USE PERSONALIZATION TOKENS Your constituents want an email newsletter that’s personal and familiar. Make sure it’s sent from a name or email address they’ll recognize. Never send an email from a “DONOTREPLY” email address, and try to use names when possible. For example, if your newsletter comes [email protected], you can still make it so that the email comes from, and routes to, a specific individual. Also be sure to use a friendly “Reply-To” address, so recipients can reply with questions and comments.

Within the email, personalize as much as possible! Your students don’t want to feel like they’re just a number, so using personalization fields to turn “Dear Student” into “Dear Sarah” is going to make your student feel much more at home.

© Finalsite 2018 30 INCORPORATE VIDEO We are frequently asked the question, “is it possible to embed videos in Messages messages?” While that would be amazing, no email platform allows you embed videos right in your email. However, you can make it look like there’s a video in your email, which will prompt subscribers to click it to “play.”

As a matter of fact, using the word VIDEO in an email subject line boosts open rates by 18% and increases click-through rates by 65%.

You can use an animated GIF, or simply overlay a play button on the still image you’ve selected to represent your video.

St. Anne’s-Belfield School launched an Alumni Fund video series in the fall of 2015 and promoted it in their newsletters using this strategy. With a click-through rate above the industry average, we’d say this strategy works pretty well for them. Since they put the video at the top of the email, it’s also more visually appealing and compelling than beginning the email with text. There’s also an added bonus when you have an image that links to a video too: you’re bringing more traffic to your website. And that’s the goal of all your marketing efforts, right?

Consistency has a few meanings for email marketing, and all are equally as important for your marketing and communications efforts:

Consistent branding: Keeping the branding of your emails consistent with the branding of each school in your district will simplify the user experience and strengthen your brand

Consistent templates: Like the user experience on your website, using the same template for all the schools in your district, but changing the content, simplifies the user experience for parents when they are trying to find information relevant to a particular child.

Consistent subject lines: While it is fun to get creative on email subject lines when promoting upcoming events, when it comes to email newsletters, sticking to a standard subject line template will help increase click-through rates, as your subscribers know what they’re getting and what to expect.

ALWAYS INCLUDE ALT TEXT (AND GET CREATIVE WITH IT!)

Alt text, the text displayed when an image doesn’t load, is a commonly forgotten but extremely important piece of your newsletter.

Many email clients load images automatically — like the Apple iPhone client, the top email client today — but many do not. For example, Gmail — which is currently the second most popular email client — automatically downloads images, but won’t display them unless you’ve selected to do so. What does that mean?

About 43% of Gmail users read their emails without ever enabling the images, so it’s going to look like the image on the right:

Keeping recipients informed about what they should be seeing in your email, provides the opportunity to get creative, informative, and even a little witty. Most importantly, it will convince them to download the images to understand the core of your messaging.

When it comes to emails, it is easy to want to get creative. But it is important to always stick to your brand guidelines — meaning:

p Don’t change the colors of your paragraph text, headers, or links

p Maintain a consistent voice

p Create streamlined branding across all emails

With a variety of website browsers and email clients, you’ll want to be sure you always use ALT text.

IMAGES BLOCKED EMAIL CLIENT RENDERS ALT TEXT RENDERS STYLED ALT TEXT BY DEFAULT

AOL Mail (Chrome & Firefox) p p p

AOL Mail (IE) p p X Gmail (Chome & Firefox) X p p Gmail (IE) X p X G Suite (Chrome) X p p

Outlook.com (Chrome & Firefox) Sometimes p p

Outlook.com (IE) Sometimes p X Office 365 (Chrome) Sometimes p X

Yahoo! Mail (Chrome & Firefox) p p p

Yahoo! Mail (IE) p p X

GMX (Chrome) X X ** X **

Web.de (Chrome) X X ** X **

Freenet.de (Chrome) X p* p*

Mail.ru (Chrome) X p* p* Orange.fr (Chrome) X p p SER.fr (Chrome) X p p

*Images are enabled by default, but were manually disabled for testing purposes.

**Images are enabled by default and cannot be disabled.

Mobile clients have great support for ALT text and styled ALT text, which is great news for designers!

IMAGES BLOCKED EMAIL CLIENT RENDERS ALT TEXT RENDERS STYLED ALT TEXT BY DEFAULT

Android 4.x (Native email client) p p p

AOL Alto Mail app p p p

AOL Mail (Android browser) p p p

AOL Mail (iPhone browser) p p p

BlackBerry OS7 p p p

BlackBerry Z10 p p p

Gmail (Android browser) X p* p*

Gmail (iPhone browser) X p* p*

Gmail app (Android) X p* p*

Gmail app (iOS) X p* p*

Inbox by Gmail (Android 6.0) X p* p*

Inbox by Gmail (iOS) X X * X *

iOS 11.x (Native Email Client) X p* p*

Outlook.com (iPhone browser) Sometimes p p

Outlook.com (Andoid Browser) Sometimes p p

Windows Mobile 7.5 p X X Windows Phone 8 p X X Yahoo! app (Android) p X X

Yahoo! app (iOS) p p p

Yahoo! Mail (Android browser) p Sort Of Sort Of

Yahoo! Mail (iPhone browser) X X ** X **

*Images are enabled by default, but were manually disabled for testing purposes.

**Images are enabled by default and cannot be disabled.

IMAGES BLOCKED EMAIL CLIENT RENDERS ALT TEXT RENDERS STYLED ALT TEXT BY DEFAULT

Apple Mail X p* p* Lotus Notes 8.5 p p X Outlook 2000-2003 p p X Outlook 2007/2010/2013/2016 p p X Outlook 2016 (Windows) p p X Windows 10 Mail X X X

Outlook 2011 (Mac) p p p

Thunderbird X p* p*

Outlook 2016 (OS X) p p p

*Images are enabled by default, but were manually disabled for testing purposes.

**Images are enabled by default and cannot be disabled.

© Finalsite 2018 37 Finalsite’s new bulk email tool, Messages is the replacement (and upgrade!) for eNotify. Schools that use Composer and eNotify will be able to use this new module for no additional charge. Switching to a new email tool mid-year might sound like a daunting proposition, so we created this guide to help ease the migration of your content and strategies.

ARE THERE ANY PREREQUISITES?

Yes! Your school must use Composer, AND have the Resources module enabled.

IS FINALSITE GOING TO TURN OFF ENOTIFY?!

Don’t worry, eNotify IS NOT GOING AWAY! Schools can move to Messages in their own timeframe, when they are ready.

IS IT WORTH RELEARNING A WHOLE NEW SYSTEM?

Yes! In terms of learning curve, Messages uses the same great editor as eNotify, so it will feel familiar to your users. We’ve retained other well-used features, but presented them in a more visually appealing, intuitive manner. Additionally, Messages has lots of fantastic new features that eNotify does NOT, including an integration with the new Resources module. Check out our recent blog post, “10 Cool Things You Can Do With Messages That You Couldn’t Do With eNotify.”

I HAVE A LOT OF TEMPLATES BUILT IN ENOTIFY -- WILL I HAVE TO REBUILD THOSE?

Unfortunately, yes. But here’s why:

1. The new Messages module will use Resources as the file system, instead of the editor file system that is currently used in eNotify.

2. The Posts dynamic elements will have additional features such as the ability to pull posts from Boards AND Collections, as well as to filter Posts by Tag, and to wrap text around the thumbnail image.

3. Athletics Manager is getting its own dynamic element, so schools have greater ability to format and style athletic events.

4. We will end support for the News Manager dynamic content.

But don’t worry! We recently hosted an Messages session in which we challenged one of our staff members to rebuild a complex template he had never seen before, and he was able to do so in 15 minutes! As a bit if incentive -- schools will now be able to apply permissions to templates, limiting which templates your Messages users can choose from.

For now, yes, though we are considering adding a migration tool to facilitate this. Switching to a new module is a good time for schools to rethink how they’ve created mailing lists. Mailing lists should be topic based, and not based on who a user is (e.g., parents of students in grade 5). Users unsubscribe from mailing lists. If schools send a message to parents that they would prefer not to receive, it may cause parents to unsubscribe from the list, preventing them from receiving future emails. Instead of an “All Parents” list, consider creating lists that clearly define the type of communication users can expect to receive: All School Newsletter, Upper School athletics updates, News from the Arts and Music Dept.

ONCE I START USING MESSAGES, CAN I STILL USE ENOTIFY?

The short answer is, yes. The slightly longer answer is: that is not a good long-term solution. It is perfectly fine to get your feet wet with Messages, and send out emails to a few groups of people to get a feel for how it all works. The main reason not to use both modules long-term (especially with overlapping mailing lists) is to ensure you’re respecting your recipients’ wishes. If a school sends a newsletter to a mailing list in eNotify, and a user unsubscribes, and later the school sends a newsletter to a similar mailing list in Messages, that eNotify unsubscribe will NOT be respected. Not only does this put the school at risk for being marked a spammer, it also isn’t an appropriate way to treat your constituents. Our advice: test out Messages on a few small groups, and once you’re ready to make the switch, remove access to eNotify for all but a few admins (as perhaps you want a few users to retain access to view historical emails).

OKAY, I WANT TO DO IT! HOW DO I GET STARTED?

1. Enable the Messages module yourself (this will be available beginning December 15, 2018)

2. Assign module permissions

3. Create a mailing list and assign permissions

4. Create a template and assign permissions

5. Write a message and send!

Once you’re ready to switch from eNotify, adjust permissions in eNotify to prevent your admins from sending from both modules.

For more detailed information on the new Messages module, visit our Support Help Center > Messages.

This Best Practice Guide was researched and written by Mia Major, Finalsite’s Content Marketing Manager.

As Finalsite’s Content Marketing Manager since 2013, Mia plans and executes a variety of inbound marketing and digital content strategies. As a former TV and news reporter, freelance cinematographer and certified inbound marketer, Mia specializes in helping schools find new ways to share their stories online through web design, social media, copywriting, photography and videography.

ABOUT FINALSITE

Founded in 1998, Finalsite is a global leader in SaaS web solutions and digital marketing for the education industry, serving over 2000 schools in more than 70 countries. Finalsite is recognized for its award-winning design, inbound marketing tools, best-in-class web software, strategic marketing services, and integration with third-party data providers. Finalsite is based in Glastonbury, CT and is a portfolio company of Bridge Growth Partners.

To discover why more schools are turning to Finalsite visit: www.finalsite.com.