Organizations write newsletters to inform and build membership. Companies have newsletters to inform and sell products. If you are a hobby blogger why might a newsletter be important to you?
My email inbox is flooded with newsletters. Is yours? How many of them do you honestly read? Are you a regular reader of any of them?
Newsletters Provide Relevant Information
Recently, I’ve read Jon Morrow’s and Buffer’s newsletters because I’ve spent some time developing and building the Kiwanis Facebook presence and beefing up my Always Write page as well. Their headline which appealed to my passing interest in the topic grabbed my attention.
To be honest, my Always Write newsletter writing has been uninspired and basically a flop. The reason for that is that I have no purpose in writing it.
It’s All About The Reader
The Kiwanis newsletter is worth writing. First, Kiwanis activities and volunteer work appeals to various groups. So the goal is to target them. It’s easy to add people who participate in our events or work parties to the email list when they sign in at the event and include their email address. People open newsletters when it shows pictures or information about themselves. One featured reader opened nineteen times, another seven, another only three. A newspaper editor quoted in the newsletter opened it seventeen times.
The News is Visual
Next, use a lot of pictures and videos that honor people’s work or feature people who attend our large events. Trust me, these don’t have to be masterpieces. I get hundreds, even thousands of hits on some of the poorest videos because people know and love the people.
Key Club students learning to prune roses talk about their experience.
What’s Happening Includes the Future
Third, I list all the upcoming events. If I can get pictures from our speakers then I can design a FB page in Canva and email or message them a copy of the event as well as use it in the newsletter. Then I can email or message them the link to the newsletter. They never get mad about getting too many emails from me, and they pass on the information.
You Get to Know Readers Personally
Newsletters have to go both ways. Getting to know those who read your letters is just as important as getting them the information or publicity. Last month I started interviewing some of our Facebook followers. It was so rewarding. One of them is speaking to our group in two weeks. Good outcome!
Has it worked? Has our membership skyrocketed? Good question.
Speakers now come to me to schedule them to speak at our meetings. The club members are energized when their work is honored. Members of other organizations share our messages and thank us for honoring them as well.
“Kiwanis is everywhere,” one Rotarian told me when I asked to meet with him and his boss about supporting Kiwanis membership in his company.
Did We Reach Our Goal?
Have we increased in membership from the newsletter effort?
Frankly, not our membership goal – YET! That’s long range and requires a lot of commitment. After five months of newsletters, our membership is solid, but I feel encouraged and energized whenever I get an email thanking me for the newsletter. People know what Kiwanis is doing and volunteer to help us even if they haven’t joined yet.
Ask and Receive
Eventually, you have to ask for what you want, even if it’s an intermediary goal, not just blast them with newsletter after newsletter. That was my Facebook post on January 20. By that day we had one more like and as of Feb. 5 we have 359 Likes. The growth isn’t huge, but it’s steady. Sometimes all you have to do is ask. By the way, yellow’s a good color for that.
What is happening with your newsletters? Are they worth the enormous time it takes to create them in addition to writing blog posts, keeping up on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram? What are your secrets and why are newsletters important to you?
And here’s my goal for this post. Would you press like when you read this? I’d love to have 50 likes. 🙂
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Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
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