The CSEI Newsletter Community
A roundup of our most engaged communication asset
In 2021, CSEI consolidated its position as a community builder engaging with early adopters to scale science-backed solutions. One of the best tools we have right now in our communications toolset is the monthly newsletter. With open rates of 40% and climbing, CSEI’s newsletter community is our most engaged communication asset. In this context, we share a roundup of all the newsletters we put out this year and what we learned from each of them. If you would like to receive our newsletter in the new year, join the mailing list!
With the newsletter, the idea was to provide a deep dive into one of our three initiatives every month. That would allow us to share initiative-specific and centre-wide work a couple of times a year. Every month we tweaked the newsletter, learning from our mistakes and doubling down on what worked.
This was our first newsletter where the intention was just to send out a ‘large email’ to everyone we have engaged with. All it said was ‘take 4 minutes to improve lake governance’ and linked to a video! We have come a long way since then.
Here, we captured the essence of what the newsletter would become — a deep dive into the work done by an initiative, in this case Invasive Species. Since the blog was not yet actively documenting work, this newsletter became a hold all.
In May and June we pitched in for Covid relief work in Chamarajanagar, Karnataka, where ATREE has its field stations. This was the first time we took time to design the newsletter and added buttons to lead the audience to the blog. We also began adding an editorial by the Director which shared the organisation’s point of view. However, we did not pay attention to the subject line of the email.
The focus in August was on the Food Futures initiative and the Jaltol tool development. This was the month we moved to our communication team’s mailchimp account from a personal account. We began paying attention to our titles and including a preview text that we were missing up until now.
We showcased the Green Cities initiative in September and the reams of work they had done. This made the newsletter very long. Though it was being sent out from the communications email address, the newsletter was ‘From’ The CSEI Newsletter, which did not fare well with the audience. But this was the month we began adding impact numbers which helped the team take a step back to look at the big picture.
- October: CSEI Turns 2!
This was a first for us, an anniversary newsletter that highlighted the achievements and aspirations of the team. It made us pause and appreciate how far we’ve come in the two years since the Centre began. In an attempt to shine light on all of our work, this too became a really long newsletter.
Coming on the heels of two long newsletters, bursting at the seams with information, we were keen to keep this one as short as possible. We were relatively successful. This was the first time we curated a newsletter around a topical event — the recently concluded COP26. The theme helped us bring together our initiatives cohesively.
- December: Upcoming!
The December newsletter will celebrate the incredible year that was 2021 through counter intuitive learnings. The big wins for us have been getting the entire team to write, taking a step towards being media friendly and identifying building communities as our superpower.
In 2022, the focus of the newsletter will be on interactive outputs, speaking up about the work we do and ‘listening in’ to grow an engaged audience. To receive these updates, join our mailing list!
