With the stroke of midnight on December 31, we entered our 20th year at Finalsite. And as I sit at my desk at our growing headquarters and hear the hum of construction nearby that’s expanding our office space, I am incredibly grateful and thankful as 2018 was our best year ever in history at Finalsite.

From growing our products to growing our team, I’m thankful that we’re the leading provider of software and services to schools worldwide, and that you’ve trusted us to help you grow as a professional, engage and retain families, alumni and staff, manage your day-to-day, and be your partner for success.

And while it’s a challenge to choose from all of this year’s highlights, here are just a few updates with a focus around our Marketing and Communications Platform.

New Products & Services

We launched our inbound marketing platform with personalization, the first of its kind in the industry created just for schools, developed our new Payments module to simplify payment and donation acceptance and reporting, released Messages for a better email marketing experience, and continued to improve Composer and its modules based on your feedback. Our partnership with AudioEye continues to broaden website access to all regardless of their disability, and protects schools from OCR complaints, with dozens of districts and schools like Tulsa Public Schools, Avon Grove School District, Taft, Bolles, and Salisbury adding this functionality to their sites.

Finalsite Advantage brought consulting services to schools from Bulgaria and Texas to California and Maine, giving tailored coaching, marketing and branding advice to schools ranging from small special needs primaries to large, international boarding programs.

Expanded Training and Networking Opportunities

We hosted incredible training and networking events in 45+ cities with over 1000 attendees around the world, brought FinalsiteU to London and Washington, D.C., and held our first digital marketing event with our partners at Google for Education at their awesome HQ in California. We held more than 100 webinars for 7,000 people, welcomed nearly 200 professionals to the HQ for Finalsite Prep events, and held Social Media workshops for hundreds in cities coast to coast.

We racked up the frequent flier miles, attending more than 75 conferences and events and presented sessions with partners on social media, marketing trends, accessibility, software integration, GDPR and more! 

A Talented Team and Growing Office Space

Your schools' websites won nearly 40 more prestigious design awards for our work this year alone, bringing our total to more than 100 awards for sites like Hotchkiss, Gilman School, Wingate University, and Westminster. And we even scored an award for Finalsite’s own redesigned site that launched this year.

We grew our awesome team to more than 200 strong around the world, with both our headquarters in Glastonbury and office in London expanding to fit our new colleagues, and welcomed staff in Philadelphia, Detroit, Phoenix, Hong Kong, and many more cities across the US and Europe. 

Our amazing Support team moved our NPS scores with clients that interact with them to over 50, keeping our satisfaction ratings at 98% again this year!

The busy Client Success team held more than 2800 client check-ins, ensuring they spoke to every client at least three times in 2018! 

What's Next for 2019? • New features to take inbound marketing to the next level

• Enhanced training and networking events from coast to coast
• New locations in Chicago for FinalsiteU (Registration coming soon!) and in Vietnam on January 24! 
• New website hosting opportunities in the cloud
• Expanded partnerships with Google and SIS providers
• A completely revamped app for Android and iOS
• Lots of great updates in response to district requests
• And much more!   With you as our partner, 2019 is going to be an even better year than the last. I’m grateful for your trust in Finalsite to help further your school’s mission and reach your goals. As always, I am here for you, so reach out and let’s talk about how we can make this year a success.

Finally - thanks to the Finalsite Team for making 2018 our best year on record!

Best wishes to you and your family for a healthy and happy new year.

Jon Moser

Founder and CEO