In the spring of 2024, Kenyon introduced a new designated email distribution list for event promotion in an effort to improve communications about campus events while also giving people more flexibility in managing their inboxes. To make it easier for readers to differentiate between event promotion and other important announcements, all students, faculty and staff now automatically receive a single email digest of event-related announcements once every weekday at 5 p.m. Employee-info, student-info and faculty-info are reserved for other College business. Initial results for the pilot process have shown a substantial decrease in email.
An analysis of email data from the same six week period in 2023 and 2024 shows the volume of email to college-administered lists has dropped significantly since the pilot's inception. The volume of individual emails sent through employee-info and student-info decreased by 72% and 73% respectively compared to the same period in 2023. Students averaged 23 student-info emails per day in 2023 compared to 6 per day during the pilot. A total of 388 event emails were released through the events-digest abridged summary with a daily average of 12.9 announcements. An archive of the messages can be found via the conversations view on Google Groups.
| 2023 (6 weeks) | 2023 Daily Average | 2024 (6 weeks) | 2024 Daily Average | Percent Change | |
| Student-info | 683 | 22.9 | 181 | 6 | -73% |
| Employee-info | 326 | 10.9 | 92 | 3.1 | -72% |
| Faculty-info | 122 | 4.1 | 81 | 2.7 | -33% |
In addition to collecting data, an equally important part of the pilot process will be gathering feedback from the campus community to have a fuller understanding of what’s working and what could use improvement. Please be on the lookout this summer for a survey requesting your questions, comments and concerns (anonymously, if so desired) to help further strengthen the efficacy of this vital campus communication tool.
The positive impact this pilot process has had on decreasing email volume is encouraging. The College will continue the process next academic year, making improvements as needed toward a better user experience for both event promoters and the audiences they want to reach.