Cutting Through the Noise
Redeemer Rewires Communication with Pathify
Institutions face a constant communication challenge — ensuring students stay informed without overwhelming them. As digital communication expands, many institutions struggle to strike the right balance, with excessive notifications leading to disengagement.
Redeemer University, located in Hamilton, Ontario, serves just under 1,100 students and prides itself on fostering a tight-knit academic community. Before transitioning to Pathify, the university relied on a traditional link farm portal and communicated with students through ListServ emails — increasingly inefficient methods, particularly when streamlined communication mattered most.
Just before the 2020 pandemic, Redeemer implemented Pathify to streamline communication. By adopting an omnichannel strategy, they established best practices, keeping students engaged and informed — without information overload.
With students and staff previously accustomed to a single channel for updates, Communications Director Shannon McBride recognized introducing a new tool (with expanded communication options) might overwhelm the campus community. Pathify’s granular User Roles, Communities and extensibility ensured McBride and her team made it through the pandemic with an informed and engaged campus body.
Redeemer University, located in Hamilton, Ontario, serves just under 1,100 students and prides itself on fostering a tight-knit academic community.
Right Solution, Right Amount of Communication
The more messages and notifications students receive, the more likely they are to tune out or unsubscribe. With students receiving over 200 notifications daily, prioritizing relevant messages becomes essential.
Redeemer’s new portal, powered by Pathify’s centralized, unified Engagement Hub, enabled the university to significantly reduce email volume and pare down irrelevant, non-personalized information. McBride and her team adopted a “communication pyramid” approach — using push notifications sparingly and only for essential, time-sensitive information.
Thoughtful use of push notifications maintained engagement while preventing information overload, ensuring students receive critical updates when needed.
Developing clear guidelines — or what to communicate and when — became crucial. Said McBride, “We figured out what type of information worked for announcements versus emails, alerts or Group posts.” She also developed a summary with examples for the various stakeholders (like faculty and staff) to use when sending portal notifications.
McBride’s goal included reducing daily announcements to two or fewer. For example, during the pandemic, the university sent a daily push notification prompting students to complete COVID-19 health check forms.
“Roles ensured the right people had access to send the right messages at the right time.”
– Shannon McBride, Communications Manager
Redeemer Best Practices
To prevent information overload and disengagement, Redeemer University refined its communication strategy, ensuring messages remained clear, timely and effective. “Information overload presents a real challenge, especially during rapid transitions such as a shift to virtual learning,” McBride noted.
The following best practices highlight how Redeemer streamlined communication to keep students informed — without overwhelming.
Establish Clear Admin Roles
McBride and her team configured specific Roles and permissions within Pathify to send notifications — including comments, posts, messages, notifications, announcements and alerts. Some staff only received access to send notifications while others moderated posts or created announcements and alerts. “Roles ensured the right people had access to send the right messages at the right time,” she explained.
Internal Communication Matters
Keeping faculty and staff informed matters just as much as keeping students informed. McBride’s team created specific roles for key staff members to ensure access and monitoring of student communication. “Staff also needed to see communications. Creating staff-specific roles keeps them informed and engaged, too,” she said.
Create a Communications Guideline
To avoid confusion, McBride developed a detailed procedural doc to outline communication types and when to use them. The document also included a reference sheet with top-ten scenarios to guide staff in selecting the appropriate communication channel for various situations.
Form a Collaborative Community
McBride created an Admin-specific Group to streamline communication and minimize redundant administrative work. “Groups allow me to answer questions publicly, ensuring everyone accesses the same resources, FAQs… while developing a sense of community.”
Keep Communication on Track
To prevent notification overload, McBride used Pathify to create a communications calendar, helping teams coordinate messages more effectively. This strategy reduced excessive notifications while improving awareness among senders.
“We created a simple spreadsheet with publish dates, announcement subjects, audiences, and delivery channels. This lets us see when announcements get scheduled and when we need to adjust. Within weeks, the number of daily announcements drastically dropped,” McBride explained.
The tool also helped McBride’s team better understand their messaging impact. “I’m not the only one sending announcements anymore. Now, we see how messages fit within the bigger picture.”
Listen to Student Voices
Collecting student feedback via surveys or focus groups ensured a careful balance between communication and avoiding overwhelm. While Pathify Analytics provided valuable user behavior insights, direct student feedback offered Redeemer essential context and anecdotal insights for refining their approach.
Student feedback also helped ensure the communications sent out didn’t drive students to ignore the notices. End-user feedback played a crucial role in guaranteeing communications reached their fullest potential.
