iContact

Part of my job involves running the "Faculty Resource Center" on campus. This is supposed to be a place where faculty can come to get help with their ideas on teaching and learning with technology. Problem is, we have a hard time getting them in the door. We offer a monthly calendar of training events, discussion rountables, and other events designed to broaden their exposure to us, and see as more than just 'tech help.' However, we seem to just see the same small cast of characters at any of these events. I have often wished I could have a way of tracking who is reading the announcement emails I send out. In addition, as we're revamping the FRC website, it would be good to know who is accessing it, and for what.

So, I'm a bit intrigued bya product called iContact. It allows you to create, publish, and track content in a variety of forms (email, RSS feeds, surveys, web pages). There is a free, 15 day trial period, so I'm going to give iContact a run and see if it would work for us. If it does, the product seems pretty reasonably priced (looks like the most basic features are available for $9.95 a month), so I think I could get iContact included in our budget for this next academic year.