Weekly digest

The highest-leverage thing most organisations can do is stop sending eleven separate announcements a week and send one good message instead. Fewer messages, more reading, less ban surface, happier members.

Why it works#

A digest changes the default. Instead of "can we send something about X?" the answer becomes "put it in Monday's digest" — which is faster for the person asking, invisible to everyone who doesn't care, and one message instead of four into the same year groups.

It also gives you a clean measurement: one message a week, same audience, same slot. If the click rate drops, that means something.

Set it up#

Create a campaign:

• Name — "Weekly digest". Named campaigns can be paused and show up in analytics as a unit.
• Type — recurring.
• Audience — the tags you want. everyone (your year groups) is usually right; keep alumni out of the weekly rhythm and give them a monthly one instead.
• Schedule — weekly. Monday between 08:00 and 10:00 works well for student audiences, but check best send time after a month and move it if your data disagrees.

A campaign rather than a bare repeat, specifically so you can pause it over the holidays and see its performance separately.

The shape#

Keep the structure identical every week. People learn to scan it.

*This week at [Association]* · 12–18 May

🎟 *Gala tickets* — 140 of 200 gone, closes Friday
https://yourassociation.nl/gala

⚽ *Football vs Tilburg* — Wednesday 19:00, come shout
Sportpark Noord, free entry

📋 *Committee applications* — deadline Sunday
https://yourassociation.nl/apply

That's it. See you Wednesday 🍻

The rules behind that:

• Three items, maximum. Four is a wall. If there are six things, two of them weren't important.
• One line of detail each. The link carries the rest.
• An emoji per item as a visual anchor, not decoration.
• A date range in the header so the message is obviously current.
• A sign-off. It's a message from people, not a bulletin.

More on the underlying principles: Writing messages that land.

Keeping it good#

• Cut ruthlessly. The digest dies the week it becomes six items nobody reads. If a committee wants something in and it doesn't earn a line, it goes next week or gets its own send.
• Skip a week with nothing to say. Pause the campaign. An empty digest teaches people to ignore the full one.
• Rotate the order. Put the genuinely most important item first, not the one from the loudest committee.
• Watch the click rate, not just delivery. A steady decline means the format has gone stale, and the fix is editing, not volume.

Interaction with everything else#

With a daily cap of 1 on year groups, the digest occupies Monday morning for those groups. An event slot scheduled for the same morning will be skipped — which is the system protecting your members, not a bug.

Two ways to handle it:

• Schedule the digest early (08:00) and event slots for the afternoon or later in the week.
• Or raise the year-group daily cap to 2 and accept that Monday can carry two messages. Don't go higher; see Staying unbanned.

Check the calendar on Fridays and you'll see the collisions before they happen.

Cost#

30 groups × 4 weeks ≈ 120 messages a month for the digest alone. That already exceeds Starter's 80, so a 30-group weekly digest needs Team before you promote a single event. Plans & billing.