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A Simple Guide to Creating Your Own Email Blast: Step-by-Step Instructions

This guide outlines the basics of creating an email blast, including strategies for building subscriber lists and designing eye-catching newsletters. It emphasizes the ease and cost-effectiveness of email marketing, especially following budget cuts affecting print circulation. You’ll learn about utilizing HTML templates, choosing an email service provider like MailChimp, and analyzing the success of your campaigns through metrics such as open rates and click-throughs. Perfect for those new to email marketing looking to engage alumni and other targeted audiences.

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A Simple Guide to Creating Your Own Email Blast: Step-by-Step Instructions

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  1. Creating your own email blast: a (very) basic how-to

  2. Take-home messages: It’s pretty easy. It can be fairly inexpensive.

  3. Some background: • Budget cuts: we stopped printing Endeavors in January 2012. • Circulation was 40,000. • 30,000+ were to lifetime members of the alumni association. • Rest went to campus, other targeted audiences (media, legislators, etc.)

  4. Keep some of that audience? One tactic: a monthly HTML newsletter containing a roundup of stories, videos, and slideshows we’d posted to our site, along with few other things from other UNC units (news releases, etc.). Newsletter also has links to our Facebook, Twitter pages.

  5. Disclaimer: We’re new at this and muddling our way through it. Only sent 3 newsletters so far.

  6. Audiences: • We built lists of email addresses: • 30,000 alumni. • Alumni Association creates for us • Potential to add 30,000 more • Campus: faculty, research staff, professional staff, and people working for our parent division. • Human Resources creates for us. • Others: legislators, media, colleagues at other universities, etc. • We created by hand.

  7. Building the newsletter: • Simple HTML page. • Literally emailing people an old-school web page (built with tables and other old-timey markup). • But playing field is not so simple. • Variation in the way different email programs display web pages. Your design has to be tested and shown to work across all.

  8. Templates: • Several companies sell them. • Lots of different layouts, color schemes, etc. • Know HTML? Can customize your own. • Email service providers also offer. • Instead of spending days or weeks developing and testing a design, we bought one. • For $15.00.

  9. Creating a newsletter: • Can do HTML? • Can easily add/edit content • Can’t do HTML? • Email service provider templates are idiot-proof • Ready to mail?

  10. Find an email service provider. • 2011 Groundwire Email Service Provider report: • http://tinyurl.com/d4cc2md • We picked MailChimp. • Easy, intuitive. • Cheap: cost based on recipients, frequency of mailing. • Costs us about $2,800/year to send monthly to 33,000.

  11. Next… • Upload your list of subscribers. • Excel file. • MailChimp removes duplicates, tracks unsubscribes, bounces, etc. • Use their template or copy/paste your own. • Test it. • MailChimp has built-in tools. • Mail it.

  12. Metrics. • MailChimp gives you boatloads: • Open rates • % of recipients that opened your email. • Total clicks • Times forwarded • Who clicked what • Recipients who liked on Facebook • ..and so on.

  13. Evaluating? • It’s early yet. Only 3 newsletters. But: • Open rates average about 25%. • “Most-clicked” stories average about 900 clicks. • Last blast (June 1): • 31,338 recipients • 50 unsubscribes so far

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