I am trying a new way of communicating, and just clicked 'send' to the 1,241 high school email addresses in our Constant Contact database. My goal is to send this email every week, ideally Sunday evenings, to keep people informed on what is happening at Medway High. The email is really a set of links (including this blog) where important information would be posted. It is easier to send the links with updated information rather than cutting and pasting portions.
Please let me know how it works.
Update: 1/14/13
So it was sent again, and a few of the links at the top were dead. The ones at the bottom worked fine, though. Thank you to those that shared your thoughts- I did not publish them if you completed the form anonymously but included your name in the text.
I am going to try (again) to correct the links, and schedule it to be sent again on Sunday. I will see if it changes viewership. The recent email garnered 298 page views from the US (and 1 from Ireland).
I love the idea of a weekly communication directly from the High School.
ReplyDeleteThank you for putting your time into this effort!
I got the blog update, but not a separate e-mail from constant contact.
ReplyDeleteI guess it really comes down to which person you are wanting to make things easier for and if you want people to actually read the information. With the cut and paste emails, I always take the time to browse through the list to pick and choose the information that is relevant to our family. When I got the email with the links, I promptly deleted it when I didn't see any information posted thinking, "You want me to hop back and forth between this email and each link (weren't there at least 5 of them?) and then browse for information? No thanks." I am not going to take the time to click through multiple links and then sift through what is there to find what is important for our family, if there is anything that week.
ReplyDeleteBack a number of years, when our supposed parent information emails started, I felt like nobody took the time to send anything relevant. In more recent years, I was impressed with the information that started coming through, with everything from student award winners, to important school news and information from daily announcements. I would hate to see that style of messaging be abandoned and go back to nothing more than the "Check the school website for updates" way of the past. Even when it involves simply cutting and pasting information that is already available, it still seems more "personal" and important because someone has taken the time to send it to me directly and it makes it much easier for me to skim for what relates to our needs. I guess what I am really saying is that I believe the time is well-spent to cut and paste the parent information, but I realize that mine is just one opinion in a sea of 1,241.
I am curious to see which way this change goes. I may have to take a gamble on just being less informed like I am this week with the choice I made to just hit delete.