While our newsletter open rates had been holding at the industry average of 25%, we saw through wildly fluctuating click rates that actual user engagement depended heavily on the kinds of stories we included. So after analyzing engagement data, we concluded that the highest-performing emails and stories were institutional or alumni stories.
With this in mind, my colleague and I took a content-driven approach to redesigning the newsletter. Historically, it featured a letter from the president and summaries of recent news items with photos. For the redesign, she wrote an alumni profile that linked to a new page on our website. The newsletter also had 2-3 institutional stories that related to the alumni feature. Focusing on a mobile-friendly and accessible design, I leveraged the recent rebrand to create a clean, cohesive user experience from inbox to landing page. Emma's newly launched drag-and-drop editor gave me more control over the design.
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These efforts, combined with updating our standard subject line and writing compelling pre-header text, have resulted in open rates consistently averaging 39%.
