This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 11:36 am and is filed under E-Newsletters, Nonprofit Communications, Print Newsletters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Good Newsletters Help Readers Solve Problems
To get the folks on your mailing list to read your newsletters, you need to provide them with something of value. Just updating them on what you’ve been doing isn’t enough. One way to do that is to help them solve problems they face. You can do that with several different types of newsletters articles:
How-to articles. Explain how your readers can do something that helps you accomplish your mission.
- “How to Talk to Your Friends and Family About HIV/AIDS”
- “Seven Qualities of a Great Volunteer”
- “How to Baby-Proof Your Home”
Advice columns. These can be serious or funny. You can ask readers to send in questions (put up a simple form on your website) or you can make up questions that allow you to provide answers that contain the information you want to get out to your readers that month.
FAQs. What questions do you get over the phone and via email? Chances are that other people have those same questions. Periodically, pull them all together for a newsletter article.
First-person anecdotes. Have someone related to your organization write a first-person account of how they solved a problem related to your mission.
- “How I Cut My Family’s Energy Bill in Half”
- “How I Helped My Child Deal with the Loss of a Pet”
- “How I Convinced My Husband to Get a Check-up”
Success stories. These articles can be similar to the first-person anecdote examples, but they are written in the third-person instead.
Try including at least one of these types of articles in each edition of your email or print newsletter. Your readers will thank you.
