In the most recent review of analytics, the percentage of students opening their Lafayette Today email was 81% in August and 83% in September. The faculty/staff open rate was 69% in August and 67% in September. This compares to an average open rate of 34% for institutional internal emails in higher education.
Why is the open rate much higher for students?
We believe it’s primarily because the faculty/staff list includes part-time employees and some retirees, who naturally are less engaged with announcements from the College.
Why is Lafayette’s open rate much higher than average?
We think a major reason is the College’s approach of having one centralized email digest for the day’s announcements and news rather than many emails from different sources.
How have the open rates looked more recently?
We haven’t run an analysis, but broadly speaking, each edition of Lafayette Today since Nov. 15 has been opened by at least 70% of students and at least 60% of faculty and staff.
What else have you learned about the readership?
Many readers decide whether to open their Lafayette Today email based on their interest in what’s in the subject line/preview text.
We’ve had open rates as high as 92% for students, suggesting that the vast majority are at least seeing if each day’s edition of Lafayette Today has something of interest to them. We believe the same is true for faculty and staff, but again, their email list includes others besides full-time current employees.
Why are you sharing this information?
We want students, staff, and faculty to be confident that when they submit an announcement, event, or news to Lafayette Today, it’s going to seen by a large portion of the campus community.