You can imagine my shock when I sat face-to-face with the Sabbs (read: the Kardashians of York) at a student media press conference and they tried to tell me 70% of students read the Sabbs in Short emails. I almost spat out my custard cream. I’m only joking. [They didn’t give us biscuits].
But they did approximate that 70% of students read the Sabbs in Short emails.
Humans are roughly 70% water. You’re telling me that there is the same proportion of water molecules in the human body as there are people who read the Sabbs in Short emails?
Coming from someone who makes it her business to know a lot about the University of York and the Students’ Union, I can’t remember the last time I read one.
So I asked other students if they read the Sabbs in Short emails.
“I feel like it’s not relevant to me”, said one student.
“I haven’t got the time to read those,” protested another.
As more and more people confessed to not reading the emails (a heinous crime, I know), my suspicions grew as to where this 70% estimated readership was coming from.
Still, I remained hopeful that York SU’s comms team would alleviate my concern.
They responded: “Typical unique open rate sits around 65%-70%. Last week’s (Wednesday 12th November), for example, was sent to 24,046 students and was opened by 16,426 of them.”
No doubt to make me feel even worse about not reading them, the comms team added: “16,426 is the unique open rate, where each person is only counted once, regardless of how many times they referred back to the email.
“The full open rate for last week’s email, which includes multiple opens by the same person, is counted at 29,030.” So not only is there a large group pf people who read the emails. But, apparently, a sizeable demographic of students read them, and then, presumably some hours later, think to themselves “that Sabbs in Short email was so good, I simply must read it again.”
What a way to make me feel uninformed.
Thankfully, the comms team confessed, the click rate was much lower, with a meagre 182 people clicking on the links featured in the email.
Yet the substantial discrepancy between the number of people allegedly ‘reading’ the emails and the number of people clicking on the links was still concerning to me.
In a way, the comms team’s ability to push past my negativity was admirable, displaying all the forced enthusiasm as a lecturer trying to get people to keep turning up to their Week 10 seminars.
I almost didn’t have the heart to tell them that some people open the emails just to clear their inbox. Or that the ‘mark all as read’ function is used and abused by students on a daily basis. As we all know, just because I open a book doesn’t mean that I will read that book.
So, congrats on anyone who does sincerely read the Sabbs in Short emails. No matter what the comms team says, I think it’s pretty clear to say that you’re part of a dying breed. And for the 29,030 people who are re-reading the Sabbs in Short emails, might I recommend looking for a new hobby?
I hear York Vision is always looking for new writers.