Organizations need a way to connect with donors, volunteers and their constituents through nonprofit newsletters. But newsletters abound with information that doesn’t convey the organization’s impact, purpose and needs. In this blog, we’ll discuss how nonprofits can retool their newsletters to engage their audience, drive traffic and ultimately influence change.
1. Define Your Objectives
It’s very important to clarify the goal you’re hoping to accomplish with your newsletter before you devote time and energy in creating and designing your newsletter content. What is the purpose? Get more donors involved, recruiting new volunteers, announcing events, or publicizing a theme? If you know your objective, you can produce content to attain that objective, making your newsletter a powerful enterprise resource for your business.
You might, for example, want to drive more donor engagement by sharing first-person accounts of people your organization has helped, appreciating donors or sharing the outcomes of a project. With clear goals in mind, your newsletter will be not just an easy way to share news, but a tool that draws readers and inspires them to act.
2. Know Your Audience
Understanding your audience is the key to writing a newsletter that hits their heart strings. Who are these people who are backing you up? What do they enjoy, what issues are they experiencing, and what motivates them? Invest in surveys, make the connections from information that is already out there, and engage with your communities. This knowledge will allow you to optimize content, tone and style in a way that resonates with your readers, generating more engagement.
For example, if many of your readers are young professionals who are passionate about environmental issues, you might incorporate volunteering opportunities, environmentally friendly living tips, or even highlighted youth led projects in your posts. The more similar your newsletter looks to your audience’s values and interests, the more likely they are to support your cause.
3. Keep it Simple and Focused
Transparency reigns in the digital era, and attention spans are limited. Try to keep your design and your content simple and concise. You want to put at least one or two key points into every issue, don’t overburden your readers. HEADINGS, bullet points, and short paragraphs organize text into scannable chunks. You want a minimalistic structure that guides your reader through the information and data you wish to communicate, and structure is important.
You can complement your words with images and infographics. This also gives your newsletter more appeal; the complicated data might look simple to read. Remember, again, that you want to make sure you’re speaking in the best possible way and not distracting your reader.
4. Use Visuals to Enhance Engagement
Visualizing your nonprofit newsletter will make it more compelling and catching. Good photos, infographics, charts and graphs can express really complex things in a much more clear and compelling manner. Images not only break up long blocks of text, they also make your information easier to recall and visualize.
Take photos of recent events, volunteer events, or project images. These get your viewers to read more deeply and tell your company’s story. Imagine opening an e-newsletter and seeing a vibrant photo of volunteers sorting food donations-it could tug at their heart strings and make them take action. Images that present your organization’s accomplishments or events can efficiently share and pass on important data.
5. Make It Personal
Personalization can give your newsletter a whole new level of impact. By calling them out, readers are more connected to the newsletter, it draws them in, and it personalizes it. Filter your lists by audience demographics, donations or volunteering histories, to name a few. It will let you create a piece of content that appeals to all the diverse communities.
The most personal and meaningful ways to engage can come from sharing personal stories of your organization’s impact on others. : Incorporate testimonials from donors to humanize your cause and bring them to your readers. By providing time to write personalized messages, you’ll not only retain them, but you’ll also motivate your donor to get engaged with your nonprofit organization.
6. Include a Clear Call-to-Action
Every newsletter should contain a strong, clear call to action. When you want your audience to give, volunteer, sign up for an event or share content, be sure that CTA is huge and visible. : Use action words to get people to take action, and direct links to help make it easy to connect with the organization.
An effective call to action can transform what were once passive readers into participants for your message. For instance, instead of saying, “Think about donating today,” try “Let’s all make a difference today, give now!” Intuition can take it a step further and compel your followers to act. The more specific your question, and the more compelling your call to action, the better your readers will respond.
Measure and Analyze
When your redesigned newsletter goes out there, you have to measure its success. Analyze analytics tools to monitor open rates, click-through rates and interactions. Ask your followers for suggestions on what they love and what isn’t. Checking in on these metrics every few months will allow you to constantly tune your strategy and make sure that your newsletter is still getting the results you’re after and bringing in your readers.
Conclusion:
Redesigning your nonprofit newsletter may be intimidating, but if you use these steps you can design a newsletter that resonates with your readership, increases engagement and results in action. Remember to set the intention, know your audience, keep it short and sweet, visual, personalized, have an adverbial call to action, and track and analyze your performance. If you can follow these steps, you can turn your nonprofit newsletter into an engaging and impactful platform.
