Tefters Posted November 12, 2019 Posted November 12, 2019 Morning all, School currently uses SIMS Intouch *shudders* for sending email home to parents regarding newsletters etc... but is awful and just sends an attachment. They want to be able to do a nice weekly newletter like you see from Ebuyer etc... which autoscales on mobiles/tablets etc... What do you guys use? (Secondary school or above).
TechMonkey Posted November 12, 2019 Posted November 12, 2019 One option is Adobe Spark. It wouldn't be in the email, you would still have to email out a link, but it does produce very nice end result. I'm pretty sure it is free for Education as well, you just have to sign up.
mavhc Posted November 12, 2019 Posted November 12, 2019 What's that problem, sending bulk email? Designing a html email that works? I'd just email a link to the newsletter as a blog post on the school website. Along with a reminder to never click links in emails as no one's made it easy and free to do S/MIME. Then remind them the school website has OneSignal installed so they can subscribe to notifications.
Tefters Posted November 12, 2019 Author Posted November 12, 2019 What's that problem, sending bulk email? Designing a html email that works? I'd just email a link to the newsletter as a blog post on the school website. Along with a reminder to never click links in emails as no one's made it easy and free to do S/MIME. Then remind them the school website has OneSignal installed so they can subscribe to notifications. Tried suggeting this as we also have a facebook news feed on the website etc... but they still want to do a HTML based newsletter.
TechMonkey Posted November 12, 2019 Posted November 12, 2019 What's that problem, sending bulk email? Designing a html email that works? I'd just email a link to the newsletter as a blog post on the school website. Along with a reminder to never click links in emails as no one's made it easy and free to do S/MIME. Then remind them the school website has OneSignal installed so they can subscribe to notifications. Never had a problem with bulk email as long as it is done correctly and never had an issue with designing an HTML email that works. What do you do for parents that don't want to be bombarded with notifications but just want a weekly digest of what has happened and what is upcoming for next week?
TwistedHelixis Posted November 12, 2019 Posted November 12, 2019 We use New Google Sites, which auto adjusts and then just dump our current newsletter on that, sometimes its a Word doc, sometimes G Doc.
mavhc Posted November 12, 2019 Posted November 12, 2019 Never had a problem with bulk email as long as it is done correctly and never had an issue with designing an HTML email that works. What do you do for parents that don't want to be bombarded with notifications but just want a weekly digest of what has happened and what is upcoming for next week? How do you do bulk email correctly? Different notification channels I guess Upcoming stuff should be on the calendar feed they can sync to their phone, although in a large school you'd need one for pupils starting in 2018, one for starting 2019 etc, or create custom feeds with data from each parent's kids.
Tefters Posted November 14, 2019 Author Posted November 14, 2019 (edited) So did a little investigation over a few beers and came across https://beefree.io/ Ticked the right boxes for designing simple yet professional looking HTML emails (similar to squarespace... Love Squarespace...) after a quick play and was free but lacked a save function if you wanted to do your own templates unless you subscribe for the pro version at $10 a month (which is quite reasonable). Contacted them to see if they did nonprofit education discount and they did one better and gave me their whole platform for free! [TABLE=width: 600, align: center] [TABLE=width: 100%, align: left] Your request (35996) has been updated. To add more comments, please reply to this message. [TABLE=width: 100%] [TABLE=width: 100%] Max D'Ambrosio (BEE) Nov 13, 3:04 PM PST Hi Andy, I've applied the non profit discount and upgraded your account to the Team version. If you have any questions please feel free to reply to this email. Cheers, Max D'Ambrosio | Customer Success [TABLE=width: 100%] [TABLE=width: 100%] Andy Smith Nov 13, 10:20 AM PST Willow, WOW! That's brilliant! I have just created an account under the email [email protected]. In terms of evidence for nonprofit status, here is our link to the UK government school registry listingshttps://www.get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/110532. Regards, Andy Smith Regards, Andy Smith IT Manager The Radcliffe School 01908 682218 [TABLE=width: 100%] [TABLE=width: 100%] Willow Elliott (BEE) Nov 13, 9:16 AM PST Hi Andy, Thank you for reaching out! I'm happy to let you know that BEE Pro is free of charge for nonprofit organizations. To qualify please complete the following steps: · Provide the evidence of your nonprofit status, such as a registration number in public registry/database of nonprofit organizations or a copy of an equivalent tax document. · Create an account and start a 15-day trial using an email account under the organization's domain name. Once you are approved we will fully cover the monthly fees for the following: · One Freelancer plan or Team plan per organization. · Upgrading from the Freelancer plan to the Team plan at any time. · Additional Freelancer and Team plan users (more about using multiple users in BEE Pro) · CDN data transfers (more about hosted image delivery in BEE Pro) The nonprofit discount assigned to your subscription does not cover: · Agency plan (more about Agency plan features) · Additional Agency users If you are a larger nonprofit organization you probably would benefit from the Agency features - which are designed for larger organizations - we offer a discount that allows nonprofits to receive a 50% discount on the "Agency" subscription. Let us know if you have any questions! Best Regards, Willow | BEE [TABLE=width: 100%] [TABLE=width: 100%] Andy Smith Nov 13, 12:47 AM PST Good morning, My name is Andy Smith and I am an IT manager for a K12 school in the UK that is wanting to create responsive HTML newsletter to be sent out via outlook to parents. Having tested your product i think it meets the needs perfectly for the end user that will be using it (non IT literate!) and they can simply send a test email to themselves and then forward it to the parents as we have no need for an ESP due to the material just being a school newsletter to parents. The free version pretty much covers everything already however the PRO version giving the ability to save is what I feel would be crucial. In short - Can you offer anything in the way of education discount as this will be used for non-profit. We would be looking to sign-up 1 user on a yearly subscription. BEEFree.io | Helping people create beautiful emails a: MailUp, Inc. | 450 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 w: beefree.io e: [email protected] Should mention that the above covers the design portion of my solution. The delivery of emails to parents will be done via creating contact in AD for parents with email addresses based on communication preference thanks to SalamanderSoft scripting and these contacts will be hidden from GAL and then placed into a mail-enabled distribution group, also hidden from GAL. The end user will then just email the distribution group via BCC for security purposes. Edited November 14, 2019 by Tefters
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