Eight Tips for Getting Your Education Audience to Read Your Newsletter
It can be a challenge to engage your audience, and to focus their attention on important announcements and updates. That’s why we’ve put together some tips and tricks for how to get your audience of parents, community members, and staff to not just glance at your emails, but to actually read through your emails and newsletters.
1. Write an Intriguing, To-The-Point Subject Line
It may seem obvious, but your subject line is the first thing that your audience sees.
- Keep it short, especially because it’s likely that your audience is opening the email on a phone or tablet.
- Make it tempting to open, so use catchy text, for example, “Next Week Will Be Exciting!” or “Here’s Why I’m Looking forward to April.”
- If you send out a weekly update, it’s good to vary your subject line, such that recipients have a bit diversity in their inbox.
Parents and staff are often pressed for time, and so it’s important to be direct about why you’re emailing them. Instead of using a subject line like “Field Trip,” it’s better to provide a bit more detailed information, like “Field Trip to Zoo Next Thursday.”
2. Use a Tempting Lead Sentence
It can be hard for school communications to compete with various other notifications that parents and staff get throughout the day. That’s why it’s important that the first few words of your email pack a punch. Try using questions like, “How is your fall semester going?” or statements like, “Last week’s color war was pretty amazing.”
Opening sentences like these induce curiosity and encourage the recipient to keep reading.
3. Keep It Short
Parents and staff have a lot going on, so it pays to keep your emails brief. Use bullet points to distill complex topics, and pictures and links to reduce the length of your email.
4. Use Bold, Colorful Text and Headers for Important Info
In order to make it clear what parts of your email are important, it’s useful to employ bold or colorful text and headers to make it obvious what segments of your email should be your audience’s focus.
5. Add Photos or Video — Especially if it’s of Their Kids
If the content of your email is conducive to adding media, we strongly encourage you to creatively add relevant content like videos or pictures. It’s incredibly easy to add links from sites like YouTube, Vimeo, or Viddler, and we’ve compiled a handy list of sources for free stock photos.
Media can be a good way to break up a block of text, and it’s especially meaningful to parents if their children are featured in a given picture or video. If a class works on a project, it’s often nice to have pictures of the finished project, as well as the young artists at work.
6. Use Buttons for Important Links
Do you have an important link you want to share in your newsletter? Buttons are the way to go! Email platforms like Smore make it easy to add prominent, noticeable buttons. Rather than just using a text hyperlink, buttons make it easy to draw your audience’s attention to an important resource, document, or form, and they can be hyperlinked anywhere. It’s a fast and foolproof way to ensure that your parents, community members, and fellow teachers can quickly determine and follow an important link.
7. Include a “CTA” Where Necessary
In the business world, the term CTA means “call to action” — it’s the objective you’d like a visitor to perform on your site. If you’re sending out an email about an upcoming class trip that requires RSVPs or waivers, it’s useful to include a noticeable CTA (“RSVP Now,” “Click here!,” and so on). Using bold or colorful text, or a button, makes it very obvious to your readers that you need their input or action on a certain goal.
8. Contact Info
If you’re a teacher or administrator, chances are, parents or other community members will want to be in touch with you. That’s why it’s particularly helpful to include contact info — like your phone number, office address, or links to relevant social media accounts — in your emails and newsletters. It’s an easy way to help parents get to know you and your school better, and it helps impart more of a personal touch in your communications.
Conclusion
It can certainly be a challenge to get parents, staff, and stakeholders to focus on the the emails you send. But if you use the above tips and tricks, you can be confident that you’ll see your community engage more thoroughly with the content you send. We’re excited to see what sorts of fantastic newsletters you create using these tips! Show us your work on Twitter, or submit them to the Hive, our home for fantastic education newsletters. It’s always buzzing with activity. 🐝
