Background: Dissemination of Cochrane evidence is a pivotal part in the Cochrane knowledge translation strategy. Cochrane Public Health Europe (CPHE), the European Satellite of the Cochrane Public Health (CPH) group, regularly sends out short summaries (called Infomail) of the latest CPH reviews to handpicked, review-specific stakeholders in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The overarching aim of the Infomails is to make potentially interested stakeholders aware of the newly available CPH evidence and facilitate its translation into decision- and policy-making processes.
Objectives: The primary goal was to develop a scalable and structured process for disseminating up-to-date CPH evidence via email enabling (i) target audience specific emails and (ii) continuous monitoring of how many people read and engage with the e-mails and the links to the CPH reviews.
Methods: We developed an Infomail-template to allow for a consistent and structured communication. This template consists of a personalized heading followed by a paragraph summarizing the main results and messages of the CPH review. The final segment of the Infomail provides links to the German translation of the plain language summary and the original review in English. We use an email marketing service as a medium to deliver the Infomails, allowing for the clicking behaviour of the audience to be tracked and subsequently analysed. For each CPH review dissemination, we assemble mailing lists with potentially interested stakeholders for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.
Results: Since 2017, we have sent out a total of 27 Infomails on the latest CPH evidence in German language, each 9 Infomails to stakeholders in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The mean number of recipients was 59 (range 15-214) with 97% successful deliveries on average (range 80-100%). The mean opening rate of the Infomails is 27% (range 7-53%) with 9 Infomails with an opening rate >30% and 6 Infomails with an opening rate