Cynosura

Newsletters

Types of newsletter

• Promotional or marketing newsletter – designed to promote a product or service
• Relationship newsletter – used for internal news, community news or membership
• Expert newsletters – designed for specialists, often subscription based

First stage

• Ask yourself – why do you want to write a newsletter?
• Will you have enough content?
• Are you willing and able to produce a newsletter on a regular basis?
• Is it sustainable?
• Do you have the funds (how much?) and human resources?
• Who are your audience?
• What’s important and relevant to them?
• What are they going to be interested in reading?
• How many issues a year will you publish⁽¹⁾
• What title will you give your newsletter, it should be catchy and relevant

Developing a format

• Have editorial and article guidelines
• How much content are you looking for?
• Create a look – that may be based around the brand for your organisation
• Now build a format⁽²⁾
• How many pages?
• What size of paper?
• KISS – Keep It Short & Simple; especially your articles
• Spelling mistakes and poor writing will kill your newsletter dead
• Think who, what, where, when, why and how
• Write stories not information
• Make them recent news, no-one will read old news
• Stories should be true, inspirational, paint a picture and be of human context
• Add pictures, quotes, and make it human interest
• Beware jargon, acronyms and anything else that others may not understand
• Headline story should be catchy and interesting – people decide within second whether they are going to read it or not
• Keep headlines short – you don’t see long Headlines in ‘The Sun’ – max 6 words
• Keep sentences short (max 14 words); also paragraphs (two sentences per para).  Huge chunks of text make indigestible reading
• Use colours but not so many that it distracts
• Keep to one or two fonts and don’t be quirky⁽³⁾
• Also watch the font size.  Decide on a font size (11pt or 12pt) and stick to it.  Cut out text rather than drop font size
• Put in boxes for side stories and use sub headings
• If publishing to external stakeholders, avoid hard sell or constant reference to your organisation.   

Putting pen to paper

• Rank your stories and put the most important on the top of page one
• Have a design format that you keep to so that people get used to navigating it
• Have one main story, this should have a photo attached to it
• People look at photos first, so make sure it is good and big and leads them into the story, avoid square photos
• Have a caption for the photo
• Vary the size and shape of your stories
• Use columns (possibly three) and don’t stack stories one on top of the other
• The main headline should be the largest (possibly as much as 48 point font) with other headlines in a smaller font size
• Use colour sparingly. 

Publishing your newsletter

• Have an editorial calendar; dates for submissions, dates for changes, date to send to printer, date of publication – do that for at least a year in advance⁽⁴⁾
• Check printer availability
• If publishing online, determine format and test
• What quantity are you planning to print?
• Who will deliver? Give them a timescale by which it must be delivered
• Internally, through post room?
• If online then what database will you be using?
• Internally on the intranet?

There is a big difference between knowing the theory and making it happen. For help in implementing your communications practices email us now.

⁽²⁾ One or two lead stories, some shorter news items, perhaps a background article, editorial, message from key figure such as CEO

⁽³⁾ Times New Roman, Garamond, Arial, Calibri, Verdana, are all very good, but don’t mix serif with sans serif fonts.  Don’t use fonts such as Mistral or Bradley Hand ITC

⁽⁴⁾ Under no circumstances should deadlines be broken; the first time you relax your deadlines will be the last time you ever get near a deadline and your newsletter publication dates will drift out of control