Communication with new families

Tiffany Portis

This is a big issue for us right now. There is communication that needs to happen with new families that returning families don't necessarily need to receive, but now that the current school year has changed those status updates on candidates changes to student instead of incoming student. This throws off the distribution groups we created for communication. We currently have templates in pushpage that are formatted at newsletters to give all the information, but it's now not getting to all of our new families.

If anyone has any other ideas for how to make communication with our new families easier please let me know!

Nancy Kierstead

@Tiffany Portis
We manage this in a couple of different ways.

To pull these folks into a pushpage distribution list, we build advanced lists based on enrollment date and pull students with an enroll date on or after June 8th, 2024. We have the Incoming Students set to enroll July 1, so this captures all students who are new for the 24-25 school year. The way we have it set up, it works for contracted candidates, incoming students, and any parents of students with an enroll date on or after June 8. This list can then be pulled into a pushpage distribution group. You could also set up a basic list that looks like the logic in the screenshot below. As long as you are aware and use it on or after July 1 (or the date your Incoming Students change to Students), it should work.

Additionally, we set up Community Groups Rosters based on “Smart lists”. We use the logic in the screenshot below for the Smart list rosters. Once July 1 hits, only the new students show up in the community groups. People with access to these groups can send email communications from the rosters (we don't use messaging, only email).

Tiffany Portis

@Nancy Kierstead I'm very confused. Lol. It is my experience that setting the enroll date in the future doesn't change anything with the status, and I don't see a difference in anything with students who I have set the enroll date for today or in the future. Is the purpose of those dates just to be able to pull records? I don't see it making a difference in anything else.

I will work on building a list like what you're recommending for the future. Unfortunately we have already accepted and “enrolled” too many students to make this work for us this year.

I wish there was a setting that I could set parameters for when those status changes occurred. The way it is now doesn't make sense for us.

Brian Gray

@Tiffany Portis - I have a list similar to the one @Nancy Kierstead describes. On the Filters tab, I set a filter to include only records with an enrollment date after some day in March of the preceding academic year. (For the 2024-25 academic year, new students are those who were enrolled after March 2024.)

Morgan Kunze

@Tiffany Portis hi! we also use a custom advanced list for this, and ours is based on last year's enrollment status. If you select the “parents of registered students” topic, you can query on enrolled this year AND not enrolled last year (see screenshot). That way we're only capturing new families and it's an evergreen list, doesn't need to be refreshed by enrollment date.

Tiffany Portis

@Morgan Kunze I really like this option best so far! Thanks for this suggestion.