Question regarding integration of monthly newsletter.

Greg Douglas 2

We have a monthly e-newsletter that goes out at the beginning of the month. Should we tie this into EOY campaign. If so, how?

Should an ask go in this or keep it to the campaign communications?

Patrick Hansen

Hi Greg -

That's a great question. You definitely don't want to hijack your eNewsletter and turn it into an appeal. That can undermine your readership and turn off your supporters.

You can, however, use your eNewsletter to reinforce and strengthen your end-of-year fundraising efforts. Here are some ideas for how:

1. Consider including newsletter articles that are related to the theme of your end-of-year fundraising campaign. For example, if you go with "A World Free of Cancer" as your end-of-year theme, you could feature one or more stories in your December newsletter that play off of this theme. For example, "John's 20th Cancer-free Christmas" as one headline and article; "BCCF's 2009 Breakthroughs that Changed the World" as another.
2. If you use a two-column structure to your eNewsletters with one column for secondary, "feature" items that are not full stories, you might include a graphic or small banner that says something like "Look for xxx in the mail" and use an image that ties to your direct mail piece. This is giving your constituents a heads-up that they should be expecting to hear from you in the mail about your end-of-year campaign. As long as you're making a unified, integrated push through year end, this kind of feature item will also support your end-of-year emails. You can link the banner to your end-of-year giving form (or leave it unlinked).
3. Another option is to have a feature item that is specifically calling out your end-of-year campaign. A fundraising effort usually isn't news unto itself (though a long-term capital campaign might merit it's own news item), but you can definitely call attention to your fundraising push as a side-bar item without hijacking your eNewsletter.

-patrick