Division of Outreach Earns Constant Contact Award

Unit recognized among top 10 percent of users driving powerful marketing

OXFORD, Miss. – Digital marketing is a highly competitive and valuable resource for corporations, organizations and universities around the globe. The University of Mississippi’s Division of Outreach and Continuing Education has been honored for its successful use of this medium to reach prospective students and program participants through targeted email campaigns.

This month, the marketing and communications department of the UM Division of Outreach and Continuing Education was named a 2018 All Star Award winner by Constant Contact, an Endurance International Group company that aids users in producing specialized emails. The annual award recognizes the most successful 10 percent of Constant Contact’s user base, based on their significant achievements using email marketing to engage their customer base and drive results for their organization during the previous year.

Email marketing is a valuable venue for reaching constituents to provide relevant, meaningful information quickly and efficiently, said Janey Ginn, director of the division’s marketing team.

“The Division of Outreach offers a number of diverse programs to diverse audiences, and email marketing has helped us develop real relationships with this wide variety of students, parents, and faculty and staff,” she said.

“This has led to genuine communication and engagement that has helped our programs and the university stay at the forefront of teaching and learning in our community, state, region and nation.”

The division was notified of the award earlier this month, as were a variety of small businesses and nonprofits. Criteria used to select this year’s All Stars included campaigns with the highest level of user engagement; open, bounce and click-through rates; use of social sharing features; and the use of mailing list sign-up and reporting tools.

Campaigns created by the All Star award-winners demonstrate that a business, regardless of its size, can accomplish its marketing goals, said Holli Scott, Constant Contact’s vice president of customer success.

Vanessa Cook, assistant director of the Division of Outreach and Continuing Education for digital strategy and analytics, cited the success of recent email campaigns as part of the integrated marketing strategy of getting to know your customer base and their needs.

“Email marketing, when done well, allows a business to communicate to a potential customer in a much more targeted manner than traditional print or organic social media,” Cook said.

“If you know your constituents well and craft your message to their tastes, email marketing can build an audience that will not only commit to your offering, but share it with their friends and family. For Outreach, email marketing has been a low-cost, high-return option that links these great UM programs to the right people that can benefit from them.”