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Yes, we run several social media channels: the official school page, an alumni page, and then separate sport and performing arts Insta pages. The last two have only been added in the last six months and have proved really popular among our families, as they allow more showcasing of a wider range of co-curricular activities e.g. lower level sport teams, smaller bands and rehearsals etc. These pages are run by the teacher in charge of those departments and assisted by the student leaders with those portfolios. The Head of Marketing is an admin on these pages and only allows the designated staff to post.
The official school and alumni pages are run by marketing staff and promote a wider variety of curated events and campaigns.
We do also have some private closed groups, such as a boarding page, which is only open to current boarding families and includes more casual posts of students after hours etc.Hi Jonas. We were finding it unmanageable to require parents to resubmit their permissions each year (lots of time spent chasing parents up). So now this is part of their enrolment form and at the end of each year they are sent a link to check and update their information for the following year. They can change the photo permission if they like, but they never do. We’ve found this system much easier for everyone involved.
We use Mailchimp and generally find it easy to use and with its own analytics, although the recent updates have caused some confusion. The newsletter is contained in the body of the email so our open rate is based on who opens the email.
We keep our notices/articles brief with timely updates and reminders and all contained in the body of the newsletter, with no links to ‘read more’ as this tends to lose people (and we use other publications to cover more lengthy topics). We only provide links to extra info e.g. videos, websites, forms, attachments.
I think the important thing is knowing the purpose of your newsletter and not replicating other comms. Readership stats will give an indication of engagement and whether the content is hitting the mark. Depending on your comms mix, a newsletter may or may not be important.
Wow, 82% is excellent! Ours is about 50%, which I’m fine with as it is sent to all parents, students (senior school only) and staff, and complements our other comms, including an app, social media etc. We now send our newsletter two or three times a term, down on fortnightly since we introduced the app a couple of years ago. We also changed the content once the app was introduced to focus more on thought pieces rather than notices.
Yes, we still do two magazines a year, which are printed and mailed out and also sent digitally. International alumni now automatically receive digital only due to the high cost of mailing overseas, and we provide the option for all readers to go digital only. Certainly more are taking this option, but it’s still a minority.
Going digital only for all readers is not something we would consider at this stage. The main reason is that we have a lot of older alumni who really enjoy reading the magazine and would not necessarily be connecting with the School on other platforms. Also, it is so easy for emails to get lost in an inbox or for people to think they will go back to it later but never do. Receiving something in the mail these days is special; allows you to read at your own pace, and is also a good ‘coffee table’ publication to share with others.
While it’s a big expense, we feel it’s worth it for maintaining that connection with alumni, promoting ourselves to prospective families, and giving a targeted overview to current families.
Of course it depends on your school and audience. I can see how digital publications for newer/younger schools could make sense.
