Creating your ezine

When creating your ezine please keep in mind that it will be sent to a number of different email accounts and should look professional in as many of these as possible. While there are no guarantees, you can maximise the quality of your product.

You can outsource the ezine creation or create it yourself. Outsourcing is definitely the best option for you if there is nobody familiar enough with HTML in your area to create it in-house. Either way you will need to allow approximately two weeks from the inception of the ezine to the distribution.

Whether you outsource or create the ezine yourself there are two things you need to do:

Identify the need and ezine format that suits your purpose
Determine the content and design of your email.

Then follow the steps to outsource OR create yourself.

Outsource

Have a look at the Ezine production flowchart (PDF 21kb - download Adobe Acrobat) - to see an outline of the process you must follow if you are outsourcing.

MDU recommends Corporate Profile as a reliable external source to create ezines. You will need to refer them to the guidelines outlined under Style elements and guidelines and Authoring your ezine and obtain a quote prior to the commencement of your job. Allow approximately two weeks for completion of the ezine, prior to the testing and distribution that ISTS E-Business Solutions team do.

Web author/Marketing and Alumni Officer’s role

Information you need to outsource the ezine

If you go ahead with Corporate Profile's quote you will need to fill in the Ezine Production Brief (Word doc) and send it to Corporate Profile. To fill in the Production Brief you need to:

Create a URL for the ezine in advance. The URL should correspond to the folder/subfolder address you create in FrontPage to store the ezine files the external supplier sends you. This is so that Corporate Profile can code the ezine for viewing the webpage on the production web server and means you won't need to change any code.
You will need to think about who will distribute or send out the ezine. ISTS E-Business Solutions team can send the ezine out for you and they require information to do so. Further information is contained in Distributing your ezine.
The other details are fairly self-explanatory within the Production Brief.
Once you have filled it in, email it to unisaezine@corprofile.com.au along with accompanying JPG images, the headline and body copy, and cobrand logo (if needed).

Requesting data from the Alumni and Development Office at MDU

If you need to request the recipient list of email addresses from the Alumni and Development office for distribution, fill out the relevant online form. Once the Alumni and Development office create this list they will forward it to ISTS directly as per the Ezine production flowchart (PDF 21kb - download Adobe Acrobat).

Requesting ezine statistics (only needs to be done once)

If this is the first ezine you have created you can request access to the ezine.unisa.edu.au domain in the LiveStats website so that you can get statistics on your ezine.

Create yourself

If you create the ezine yourself, you will need to know HTML, as creating an ezine is different from authoring in the corporate web environment, where you use the templates and styles designed in house, and work in the Design view of FrontPage. Instead you will be working in the HTML view, creating your own styles using HTML.

For a full sense of what this means see the technical guidelines outlined under Authoring your ezine. It can be a tedious process and it is important that you get it right (see Design for the user).

If you want the ISTS to send the ezine out, you will need to read the Distributing your ezine section.