Nonprofits usually produce newsletters for one of two reasons:
- They use the newsletter to provide a service, including education. This is especially true for membership organizations or groups that serve professionals in a field.
- They use the newsletter to build support, financial and otherwise. The newsletter is seen primarily as a marketing or fundraising tool.
While your newsletter can certainly do both, it's best to know which reason is primary and which is secondary. In either case, the success of the newsletter depends on your ability to create value in the eyes of your readers.
Your goal is to produce a newsletter so good that your readers anticipate its arrival and notice when it doesn't arrive. When it arrives in their email mail box, you want them to go right to it, thinking to themselves, "This is going to be good!" While having a good subject line certainly helps, creating value is what really gets your newsletters read.
Creating that kind of loyalty isn't easy, but it's definitely possible. You cripple your chances, however, if you create each edition of your newsletter on the fly. Instead, you need to think strategically and over several issues at a time, about what you want to put before your readers. Using an editorial calendar helps immensely. Here's a sample.
When trying to figure out what to include in your newsletter, I find it helpful to start with the ultimate goal - the action that you want the reader to take. What is it that we want people to do after reading our newsletter, whether one particular issue or over the course of the year?
For an educational or service-oriented newsletter, what do you want people to do with the information you are sharing? Learn more about it? Share it with a colleague? Discuss it with others? Make a change in their own behavior? Help some else do something?
Once you know the action you want someone to take, you can start to work backward from there by creating more specific calls to action. For example, learn more by downloading a report, share it with a colleague using the "Share This" buttons at the bottom of the email, discuss it on our Facebook page, share your story about how you are making this change in your life.
Now that you have your call to action, what's going to motivate the reader to actually do these things? This is where you get to the actual content for your newsletter article. What kinds of articles and what types of content will answer questions such as "How is this going to make my life better or make my job easier?" or "Why is this important to my company, my family, my career, my community?" or "What problem or challenge does this solve for me?"
For marketing or fundraising newsletters, your calls to action will likely be more like "Donate Now" or "Volunteer Now" or "Call Your Congressman Now." The questions your articles are trying to answer are more like "Why should I do this NOW?" and "What difference will I make?"
For fundraising newsletters, it's also essential that you mix in different types of articles along with the direct asks for support. Include in your editorial calendar articles that (1) show progress or success so donors know their previous gifts are working and (2) demonstrate your gratitude for your supporters.
Give your newsletter a purpose, and you'll create value for your readers. That's what will make them open your newsletter every time.
About the Author
Kivi Leroux Miller is president of Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com where she teaches a weekly webinar series for small nonprofits on communications and marketing. She also writes a leading blog on nonprofit communications. Her first book, also called "The Nonprofit Marketing Guide," will be available from Jossey-Bass in June 2010.
