A new look for the newsletter: updated template, guidelines and more!

This week, we are excited to share an update about upcoming changes to the Events and Announcements newsletter.

What is it?

The Events & Announcements newsletter is sent twice per week to all faculty and staff across SFU’s three campuses. The goal of the newsletter is to share content that supports faculty and staff with news they can use to help them do their work and to encourage stronger connections with the university’s people, programs and priorities.

The content includes timely updates ranging from institutional announcements and initiatives, event listings, SFU News stories and more.

Updated look and feel

Beginning next week, the template will be updated from both a content and a design perspective to align with changes to SFU’s brand. A new HTML template will also become available in your Campaigner template library next week for you to update your own newsletters.

Streamlined content submission

We’ve simplified the content submission to just one form, whether you’re submitting an event or an announcement.

Submission guidelines

Ensure your submissions are relevant to the broad SFU community

We want to ensure it is easy for our readers to find important information they need so we have limited submissions to content focused on strategic institutional initiatives and events. Before submitting your content, determine if it is related to a broad initiative or event and if it is relevant to faculty or staff members across all three campuses.

Faculty or department-specific announcements or special interest events are important. If you want to extend the reach of a special interest initiative or event, a great way to do that is post to the Slack channel for SFU communicators asking for help with amplification. If you want to reach students, submit your content to the Student Bulletin.

Make your content stand out

• Tailor your content to your audience - Take a minute to put yourself in the shoes of faculty and staff who read the newsletter. Write copy that highlights aspects of your event or story that is most valuable and engaging to them.
• Write action-oriented headlines that are accessible and engaging - Headlines should stand on their own without supporting copy. Be sure that they articulate your key message and how your audience stands to benefit. Learn more about writing headlines in Eliminate ‘to be’ (and other tips) to make your SFU News stories sing from the SFU Communicators Toolkit blog.

Don’t submit the same content twice

Based on our metrics, repeated content sees an average 60% drop off in click-through rate from one newsletter to the next. If an update is worth sharing again, re-write it to emphasize a different angle to draw in new interest.

Get familiar with the updated submission deadlines

• For inclusion in Tuesday's newsletter: Content must be submitted by 12 PM on the preceding Friday.
• For inclusion in Thursday's newsletter: Content must be submitted by 12 PM on the preceding Tuesday.

Ready to submit content?

Visit the Events & Announcements submission page to learn more about the newsletter and submit your content.

Questions or concerns?

Get in touch with Kevin Cherney at kcherney@sfu.ca.