Following internal communication reviews and the impact of COVID-19, a new centralised email to all students was proposed at QUT. The brief was to build student connection, culture, and community using an enewsletter. I delivered the project and built the publication before sending it to all students.

Research & development

I conducted extensive research on EDM tools and provided a recommendation for the preferred vendor for this project. I also provided a thorough risk analysis including information security, budget considerations, and any potential points of failure.

Then I ensured the vendor's product could use existing mailing lists to contact all students. Moving into the testing phase, I confirmed the tool produced an accessible email that was responsive on both desktop and mobile devices.

Aesthetics were extremely important, so I used the approved design provided by the university's Brand and Creative Studio. I also tested and troubleshot the EDM tool integration with Office 365 because Outlook is known for its extensive email rendering issues.

Approval

I drafted all internal documents for approval, including the initial proposal signed off by the Executive Director of Marketing & Communication, University Registrar, and Vice-Chancellor.

Content

Each month I drafted content, sourced images, links, and ensured messages met best practice for format to optimise engagement.

Transition to business as usual

• Wrote process documents for the internal communications team, including instructions for drafting and sending the EDM, a live schedule, and reporting
• Built templates including Photoshop files to export images in the correct style and size each issue
• Created and published pages for the staff intranet including how to submit content and the process for approval
• Published links to all previous issues of the EDM
• Created monthly report templates including statistics, click-through rate, and the 3 most popular stories