Three Things to Know About Effective Newsletters

Newsletters are a unique genre of professional writing and serve a variety of purposes. Written for inside audiences, newsletters cover a variety of topics in order to keep members of an organization in the know.

Newsletters borrow from newspaper formatting and can take shape in hard copy form or electronically through mediums such as email and PDF files. No matter the form, however, a newsletter must be effective to garner and maintain readers’ attention.

Below you will find three things you should know about creating and writing effective newsletters.

      1.    Knowing Your Audience 

Audience is the most important element to consider when creating a newsletter.

Who is your primary audience?  Depending on the organization or company, the primary audience of your newsletter will vary. Generally, the primary audience will be people directly involved within the organization—i.e., board members, donors, volunteers, staff, executives, etc.

Who is your secondary audience?  Determining the primary audience of your newsletter is key, but it is also important to consider secondary audience members who may stumble upon your newsletter. A potential secondary audience might be customers of the company’s products or services.

2.    Accomplishing Multiple Purposes

Newsletters are intended to have multiple purposes—to inform, to celebrate, to promote, to foster community, etc. In order to create a newsletter that accomplishes multiple purposes, it must also be comprised of multiple types of content.

There are several types of newsletter content, each of which accomplish something different:

Updates:  Comprise bulk of a newsletter and keep company insiders informed about the company’s current events, including information from specific departments, information on new initiatives or programs, progress reports, and personnel updates.

Profiles:  Focus on an interview with a specific company insider, offering both need-to-know and nice-to-know information about the featured person.

Human Interest Stories:  Present an emotion-based story, often offering an insider’s perspective from behind-the-scenes of a project, department, etc.

General Information:  Provides relevant information from outside the organization itself that pertains to current events, the area, the season, etc.

Editorials:  Written from a specific point of view that offers an opinion about something.

Leadership Notes:  Allow leaders or executives within the company to directly communicate with company insiders.

Incorporating a variety of content into a newsletter allows the document to be multi-purposeful, providing readers with a variety of valuable information as well as maintaining the appeal of your audience.

3.    Maintaining Visual Appeal

In addition to maintaining your audience’s attention by including a variety of content in your newsletter, it is also important to maintain your audience’s attention visually. Incorporating a controlled combination of formatting techniques for newsletter content creates a visually appealing document for readers.

There are several ways newsletter content can be formatted:

Articles:  Answer Who? What? When? Where? Why? in a fully fleshed out story.

Bio Boxes:  Provide mini-profiles often formatted as lists that provide information such as name, hometown, job title, etc.

Briefs:  Present information as a mini-article.

Calendars:  Graphically represent upcoming events.

Fact Sheets:  Offer brief data presentations, concisely covering key points of information.

Infographics:  Represent complex data or information in simple, “readable” visuals, including charts, graphs, maps, etc.

Lists:  Provide quick surveys of announcements, events, birthdays, personnel announcements, etc.

Q&As:  Present easily readable interview transcripts.

Sidebars:  Offer pieces of information relevant to the theme or context of main articles, though graphically separate from main articles.