Dear Faculty and Staff Colleagues,
We are excited to announce a transition from our current event broadcast email system to a twice-weekly (Sunday and Wednesday) event digest newsletter called This Week@Georgetown that we believe will improve readership and event engagement, and address some of the significant email fatigue that has been expressed by our faculty, staff and students.
Reasons for the Transition
As your inbox is well aware, the number of individual event broadcast emails continues to grow as we’ve both returned to an in-person environment and seen a growth in the number of virtual/hybrid events. As a result, we have received an increasing number of regular concerns from faculty, students and staff from across the university about the volume of event communications and requests for an event digest.
Our overall metrics on email open rates and click rates (to register for an event) have been declining, with the average click rate now at 0.5% of email recipients. Individual event broadcast emails are no longer proving effective and appear to be harming the performance of other important event and university announcements. Meanwhile, university digest newsletters such as Blue & Gray sent to faculty and staff, and Grad Gazette, sent to graduate students, continue to perform well and offer a readable, engaging format for sharing university information.
Transition to This Week@Georgetown Newsletter
After consulting with the Office of the Provost, Office of the President, Council of Deans, Office of Protocol & Events and the communications leads for our Georgetown University campuses and schools to receive feedback and approval, we plan to re-introduce a This Week@Georgetown event digest newsletter that the university previously used, which will be sent bi-weekly on Sunday evening and Wednesday afternoon. You can see a mock example of a This Week@Georgetown edition here for context.
This new newsletter format will go into effect in January 2023, with submissions due Thursday, January 5 for the first This Week@Georgetown edition on Sunday, January 8.
We have included key details for your consideration below, and additional information is available on the “This Week@Georgetown” page:
- Submission dates/times: Thursdays by 5 p.m. for Sunday evening newsletter edition; Mondays by 5 p.m. for Wednesday afternoon newsletter editions.
- Event Submission Guidelines: Each newsletter edition will include all events taking place over the following eight (8) days. That means that your event can be included in multiple newsletter editions for greater awareness if submitted early. (For example, you submit an event occuring Tuesday, Nov. 15 by the Thursday, Nov. 3 deadline – this event will appear in the Nov. 6, Nov. 9, and Nov. 13 editions).
- Submission: You may submit your event for inclusion using the Submission Form. Information requested includes event date/time; event title; event host(s); brief event description (50 words or less – recommended focus on description of key speakers and topic); hyperlink to your event on the Georgetown events calendar.
- Content Reviews: You will receive a draft of your event section for review upon submission and approval, and will be asked to approve no later than Fridays by 5 p.m. (for Sunday editions) and 5 p.m. Tuesday (for Wednesday editions).
- Audience: This Week@Georgetown is sent to the same audience as previous event broadcasts – students, faculty and staff on the Main and Medical campuses, and University Services. Event promotion for the School of Continuing Studies and Law Center should be coordinated with those communications offices.
Resources for Event Promotion
Events are at the heart of the university’ mission to promote dialogue and engagement on campus, in DC, and around the world. In addition to This Week@Georgetown, there are a range of more audience-specific channels available to you for promoting your event to a relevant and engaged audience. Please review the “How to Promote Your Event at Georgetown” toolkit for more information. If you have specific questions about promoting an event, you are always welcome to reach out to Kevin Sullivan (kds58@georgetown.edu) and Audrey Lee (al1485@georgetown.edu), the Internal Communications team.
Thank you for your support in helping to improve our communications to our community, and for all of your work to advance the university’s mission through events. Please don’t hesitate to be in touch with questions.
P.S. A friendly reminder that, as an annual policy, we do not accept event broadcast requests for emails to be sent during the university final exam period, December 7 – 19.