As we gear up to mark Arkansas Children’s Week, our agency is looking back at the success of our client’s email marketing program – a monthly newsletter published by Better Beginnings, a program of the Arkansas Department of Human Services Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education focusing on giving children the best quality care. The Buzz – as this newsletter is known – exists in two forms. Each month, two versions of the same newsletter are developed and distributed to two separate and distinctly different audiences: Families and Providers.
This award-winning* newsletter program is an essential key to Better Beginning’s ongoing success in connecting families with quality child care providers and supporting providers with tools they need to provide the best quality care – consistently and in a timely manner by driving traffic to Better Beginning’s website and social media. For instance, Arkansas Children’s Week is the perfect opportunity to bring attention to the incredibly important service Better Beginnings offers.
While Arkansas Children’s Week is not a Better Beginning’s sponsored event, it is an opportunity to anchor our message and promote our cause. Typically, The Buzz is only distributed once a month – but we couldn’t pass up the chance to celebrate this event. So, we issued a Special Edition of the newsletter for this specific event to boost our outreach. This is a very common practice when it comes to email marketing and newsletter campaigns. We work with clients to build a unique and strategic editorial calendar to capitalize on events and observations in our communities to leverage our messaging opportunities and ultimately generate value for our clients.
How Does Your Company Newsletter Measure Up?
Here are some questions to ask about the effectiveness of your newsletter or email marketing:
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Does our newsletter have a standard frequency?
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Does our newsletter have a standard distribution date?
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Does our newsletter follow an editorial calendar to help focus content and guide messaging strategy?
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Is our newsletter reaching the right audience, and is it saying the right things for that specific audience?
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Are we measuring our newsletter’s performance, and if so, how?
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What are our objectives for the newsletter?
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Do I Need A Newsletter?
Let’s step back a moment. Maybe your organization doesn’t have a newsletter currently – so your question might be “Do we need a newsletter?” Whether you do or not depends on your marketing goals. Whether or not you can have a newsletter however is a resounding yes! Every organization generates news to share that stakeholders should or may want to be aware of. Sharing news on a regular basis is part of a healthy line of open communication. Not sure where to get started? Consider the following:
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What do I want to achieve with my newsletter?
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What kind of content will it include?
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How often should my newsletter be published? What’s doable? (What do you have time for vs. will you have enough content)
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What platform will I use to manage my newsletter? (Consider program/software expenses)
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Will you write it or will you lean on others for content, and if so, who?
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What will my editorial calendar focus on and how will I structure it?
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These are just some basic things to think about. But let’s say you’ve decided you do need a newsletter, but you just don’t have the time or know-how. No worries – we’ve got your back. Give us a call and let’s talk about it.
*The Buzz newsletter won a PRISM Award from the Arkansas Public Relations Society of America Chapter in 2021 for its strategic and overall quality as a public relations tool.
