Do you have something to say to students?

The Student News is a weekly publication for UNSW students to find out what’s on.

UNSW Student News is a weekly all-student newsletter, sent on Mondays during term-time. It has a readership of approximately 35,000 students per week and has become the main source of information for students after O-Week. It’s a perfect way for you to communicate your seminar, event, competition, focus group, workshop and more to our students.

The newsletter format is structured depending on the call to action. Generally we would include a top or hero story, followed by these sections: things you should do, things you might want to do, things we can help you do, things your faculty is doing, and things Arc is doing. It ends with a broad awareness message, usually around social or cultural awareness, and some helpful links.

The hero feature or the ‘top spot’ in the newsletter always gets the best readership, but if you want it, you’ll need to get your completed request in as early as possible to have a chance of securing that coveted spot.

Insight CRM functionality also allows us to filter the information so that students only receive the features that are relevant to them. Segmenting examples include but are not limited to: undergraduate students, postgraduate students, research students, commencing students, students in their final year(s), international or local students, primary and secondary faculty (dual-degree) students, students in a particular degree program(s) – as well as an intersection of one or more of the above filters.

This functionality has allowed the team to retire the monthly faculty newsletters and replace them with this weekly newsletter that includes filtered, faculty-specific content. See some examples here.

The Student Information & Communications team also send a weekly newsletter to all international students on a Thursday during term-time.

Top tips to have your features included in the newsletter – and clicked on by students!

1. Have a clear and concise message – features hold up to 30 words of copy and the team can develop a neat little nib from your copy, though it helps to have this in mind when you are requesting.
2. A strong call to action – including your dates and deadlines for when the opportunity will expire or when your registrations close for your event.
3. Powerful, beautiful imagery – images of students and illustrations/creative are preferable; stock imagery is less desirable; all images should have minimal to zero text overlaid to meet accessibility requirements.

Additional specifications: images should be in landscape, 900 pixels wide by 600 pixels high and, where possible, under 500KB in size.

If you have news, events, programs or opportunities perfect for all – or a subset of the student population – then send a request.

The term-time publishing schedule sets out edition dates and all past editions are archived online. See the most recent edition here or join the UNSW Student News mailing list.