Newsletters

Overview

For both the synchronous and asynchronous aspects of Sun Camp to work, I'd need a way to communicate regularly with participants. Though I regularly updated the program website, I wanted something more direct to reach out to participants and remind them of developments. The obvious solution was to create a newsletter. I decided to send the newsletter on Friday afternoons so that participants could purchase materials over the weekend if they did not receive a kit.

I developed a template in MailChimp. Each week's newsletter featured the week's illustration, which was also used for the Q&A and the activities to help visually connect all the materials for each week of Camp. There was a bulleted list of important topics and a short letter summarizing the week. Then there was a picture of the week's activity with a description, a materials list, and a link to the project or experiment. The third block featured information about the presenters and the topic for the Q&A as well as the Zoom link to access the session. At the bottom, was a "Little Extra Sunshine" section with an additional activity link that coordinated with the week's topic. This was intended as a "bonus" for those the registered. Starting in the second week, we also had a gallery of photos featuring participants with their projects.

Once the template was developed, I added my registrants. If I were to do this all over again, I think I would have built my registration form in MailChimp directly so that the list would automatically update. Since we kept registration open for the entire length of the program (5 weeks), I had to manually update the list in MailChimp before every email. Though it wasn't a big job, it was a hassle that used up precious time.

The nice thing about using MailChimp (as opposed to sending a traditional email) was that I had access to advanced formatting options, which made the newsletter easy to navigate, and reports that let me know how many people opened the email and what they clicked on. These aspects made it possible to refine the newsletter over the course of the program and improve participation. It also gave me a sense of how effective the newsletter was.

One of the most important functions of the newsletter was to send the weekly link to participants so they could access the Zoom. I discovered two things very quickly: 1) I needed to send a reminder on the day of the Q&A because people couldn't find the Sun Camp email from the previous week, and 2) I needed to make the link much more prominent in the newsletter because people couldn't find it. To solve the first problem, I created a simplified reminder email that went out on Wednesday mornings with the Zoom information. To solve the second problem, I created a button and placed it right at the top of the email. I replicated the button further down, next to the newsletter sections that introduced our guests.

The open rates for the newsletters showed consistently high interest and engagement. Overall the newsletter sent 5,159 emails. It had an 86% open rate and 15.2% click rate. Only 0.1% of participants unsubscribed. The first newsletter had a 72% open rate, with a 37% click rate. The last week there was a 60% open rate. However, the click rate dropped to just 6%.

It looks like two things were happening. In general, participation dropped as the program went on and we got closer to the Thanksgiving holiday. that was expected. However looking at what links participants clicked on and comparing it to traffic on the website, it was clear that participants had become used to simply going to the main page for the project links. They only used the email for the Zoom link.

This was our hope. We designed the content of the email to make it easy for the audience to access the information on the website to familiarize the audience with other materials offered on the Science Friday website. The goal was to introduce them to the SciFri Educate page, the radio broadcast, the podcast, and our events. The analytics show that about 6% of those who visited the Sun Camp page then traveled to the Educate page to discover more activities. Additional visits went to the Science Friday main page and video page.

All those who registered for Sun Camp were also added to the Science Friday Education monthly newsletter as well (this was clearly noted on the registration page). The goal again was to encourage Sun Camp participants to become part of the wider Science Friday audience. 90% of the Sun Camp participants that were added to the Education newsletter continue to receive the monthly newsletter even though the Sun Camp program has ended.

Newsletter Samples

Below are links to each of the five main newsletters that went to participants and a sample of the reminder email.