6 Ways to send eNewsletters for Primary Schools
Keeping in communication with parents/guardians has never been more important for primary schools, and many schools publish a regular newsletter to families to share important events, celebrations and information about future dates.
While schools could simply send an email, there are advantages to setting up a newsletter. They generally look good and they can be stored for future reading. For example, in my own school, we have our newsletters published on our website since the school opened in 2008 — it’s a nice way to chart the history of the school.
We’ve tried a few ideas and we’re thinking of changing again. Currently, we have a simple Google Site and I pop up the news and email everyone the link via our MIS (Management Information System) but, it strikes me that there are better ways. In this article, I’m going to list 6 different options to consider. As I try to make my decision, it might help you too!
Google Sites
Let’s start off with my current set up, which I’ve been using for over 7 years. Google Sites is a very simple way to make a reasonably attractive newsletter with very little effort. As our school uses Google’s Workspace tools, it is easy to embed documents from our Google Drive. I also like that one can copy/paste images from the Internet. In general I can get a decent newsletter produced in about 30 minutes.
The only downside is that I have to let people know that it is published and to do that, it requires an email to the parent group through our MIS, Aladdin. I also manually have to provide a link to it on our school website, which is another step.
Ultimately, this system has been working for me for a long time, as it’s quick to set up a nice quality newsletter but I’d love for it to be sent to all of our families once it’s published. At this point, I don’t know a way to do this.
Wordpress — use a newsletter plugin
If, like me, your school’s website is based on Wordpress, an option could be to add a newsletter plugin. A quick google search for Best Wordpress Newsletter Plugin will give you an overwhelming number of options.
Most of the results come from eNewsletter providers themselves, such as Brevo, Mailchimp, Mailerlite and others. Most of these services include a free Wordpress plugin to integrate with their (not free) service.
One option that might be worth looking at is the very simply named Newsletter plugin for Wordpress:
It’s free and it allows you to create a newsletter for your families to subscribe to. This means that when you create your newsletter, anyone that is subscribed to it receives the newsletter directly in their email. Each newsletter doubles up as a post on your website so you always have a record.
The downside, like many mailing lists, is that it has to be managed. It’s easy enough for anyone to subscribe to your newsletter and you may not wish for this to happen. In order for people to receive the emails, you have to get them to register for the mailing list and this is an extra task.
Mailchimp / Brevo
Mailchimp is probably the best known mailing list software in the world. For schools it has features you’ll never need but for smaller schools it might be a free option, as one can send up to 1,000 emails a month, which would probably be enough for most schools. Brevo allows up to 300 emails per day, which might be good for smaller schools that wish to email regularly.
Similarly to the Wordpress Plugin, there’s a bit of work in managing the email lists, and it’s one more job to do. Both platforms integrate with Wordpress so you can publish the newsletters as blog posts, which is useful.
Smore
Somebody somewhere must have recommended Smore to Irish schools because quite a few use it for their newsletter.
Pitched to schools, it offers an easy way for schools to publish updates to families using their tools. The free version doesn’t compete with Mailchimp or Brevo but because it’s so basic, it might suit schools. However, it is only free for schools where fewer than 200 emails are sent, which only might suit smaller schools. However, the price for bigger schools isn’t excessive at $99 per year.
The software integrates with two education MIS platforms, neither of which are available in Ireland. If it integrated with Aladdin, this could be a very good option.
Another downside is that, while it does integrate with Wordpress, it’s quite convoluted to get it working. I think I’d probably use Mailchimp or Brevo instead of this.
Aladdin
Aladdin is Ireland’s best known MIS for schools. Most Irish schools are signed up to it and it has transformed administration for school over the last decade or so.
Aladdin’s biggest advantage over everything so far is that because it is an MIS, it has all your families’ information stored. However, it doesn’t, as of this time, have a specific newsletter module.
However, Aladdin does have a feature called Noticeboard. Many schools use this feature already without knowing it! Every time a school sends a message to parents through Aladdin, if they are signed up to the app, it appears on their Dashboard. There is no reason why one can’t create a full newsletter on the noticeboard.
Aother option is to use their email module and create a basic newsletter here. While it might not be the most attractive thing in the world, it certainly serves most purposes, which is to keep people updated.
The only disadvantage I can see with Aladdin is that, while the admin of the school can view previously sent messages, nobody else can. Sometimes people like to see previous newsletters. In order to do that, an extra step is needed, and that’s to publish the newsletter elsewhere. In a way, it’s the opposite problem to Google Sites!
Wonde
Aladdin has recently integrated a service called Wonde which allows 3rd party products to access Aladdin’s database. For example, if you have Google Workspace, Wonde allows Google to take the names and details of the pupils and create Google Accounts for them, which is a fantastic service. However, it also integrates with other tools.
I searched school newsletter apps that might integrate with Wonde (and therefore Aladdin) and found Schoolzine.
Unfortunately the website doesn’t provide a huge amount of detail so I’m not sure how much it costs but I did find that it does integrate with Wonde, which means it should integrate with Aladdin.
To me, this could be the perfect solution if the price wasn’t excessive. Looking at the features, it certainly looks very impressive. It even has an integration to a school website where one can access newsletters.
Conclusion
It’s interesting to note that a school eNewsletter isn’t a completely straightforward thing. It’s not as simple as writing it and clicking send or publish. The biggest question is how do we ensure that families see the message? While all the solutions above get there, eventually, for me, I want a solution that offers everything in one package. Right now, Schoolzine could be the best solution if you have Aladdin. However, I hope the rest of the solutions give you some food for thought too.
