1. Newsletters!

2. What is the purpose of your newsletter?? Function –What is the purpose of your newsletter? What are your goals? Design –What is the best way to present your information in an easily digestible way? –How interactive will it be? Schedule –How often can you come up with new content? Relationship between newsletter content and your website content –Will you be directing people to action alerts, fundraising, conservation activities?

3. Function Connections –How will your newsletter be connected to your Chapter? The Insider connects to Sierra Club Books, Radio, blogs…. Information –How can you give people information in an engaging way? The Green Life uses short, often funny passages which then link externally to the whole story, part of Keeping it Short! At the end of each Plugged In, there is a summary of news articles Events –Get people to attend your events The first item in every Dallas News newsletter is information about their general meetings. For more formal events where you want people to RSVP, the Events function in Convio is useful Action Alerts –Engage your audience to take action! Fundraising –Text asks vs. banner or tile ad

4. Design

5. Promoting your newsletter How are you going to grow your newsletter? –Make it very easy for people to sign up for your newsletter. Create content that has a pass along value –Make it easy for people to Tell a Friend about content in your newsletter

6. Some tips…. Know your audience, ask what they want, and deliver it. Send on a consistent schedule -- if you have good content. Make it personal. Make the next step as easy as possible. Put an unmistakable name in the From field. Like: Cara Longpre, Sierra Club Use a specific, benefit-laden Subject line. Our most popular one this year What to do about $4 a gallon. Design a simple, clean newsletter thats mostly text – and not too much text!! Your draft should generally not be longer than 2 pages in Word! Write and design for the preview pane. Appeal to skimmers: Use lots of headlines, subheadings, and short chunks of text. »Source: Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com

7. What do you think? Share: –Ideas on something you want to try in your own newsletter? –Timeline for newsletter launch?