What do you do when there are too many communications going out to too many audiences? Too much overlap. Too many emails. Too many messages. You start from the beginning, look at your audiences and their needs, and create a new tool to replace older, less useful ones.

The Need

Create a communications mechanism to reach and serve Puget Sound alumni, parents, faculty, staff, students, and friends on a regular basis with important campus news and announcements, celebrating Logger achievements, and strengthening affinity with the college. Consolidate electronic communications, including:

  • Open Line had been an internal weekly newsletter for decades that included campus news and upcoming events. It had transitioned from a paper format to an online format over the years, and was sent to more than 450 faculty and staff members each week.
  • Arts & Lectures was a weekly e-newsletter that was sent to our campus community AND over 800 local community members noting upcoming events from our events calendar.
  • P.S. E-news was a quarterly e-newsletter that went out between Arches publications to nearly 30,000 alumni and parents, covering campus news and events.
Solution

The communications team worked diligently to figure out a new and more efficient way to communicate effectively with overlapping audiences. Now, instead of three regular publications, our team produces one carefully curated weekly e-newsletter.

View issues of The Hatchet Weekly

Solution Components
  • Content marketing
  • Community & relationship building
  • Increasing brand awareness
Results

The Hatchet serves a weekly audience of more than 25,000 Logger alumni, campus members, current parents, and neighbors, keeping them abreast of campus news without bombarding them with multiple communications. Feedback has been largely positive, with an average open rate growing from 22% to 35% since 2020.

Put It Into Practice

We produce The Hatchet using EMMA, an email platform that allows us to build reusable templates, test draft messages, maintain and update mailing lists, and track important engagement metrics. Our office manages an enterprise-level account, under which university offices, departments, and groups may form subaccounts for a minimal monthly cost.

Engage your audience with branded, beautiful messages—and use a tool much more intuitive and customizable than Outlook. Depending on your email needs and anticipated frequency, we are happy to work with you to establish a subaccount for your group or assist with sending infrequent messages under the main Puget Sound account.