A tweet from ELCA pastor, Chris Duckworth (@chrisduckworth) about church emails/e-newsletters showed up last week, asking #ChSocM folks to comment about best practices in this domain. No big response. Actually, no response . . . yet.I've been thinking about church e-newsletters a lot, in part because I've performed quite a few communications audits during the past six months.
Years ago, I would audit e-newsletters for coherence, consistency, and usability relative to content and design as stand-alone communications. These days, I audit those factors but also whether the e-newsletter is integrated with social media and the website. Disconnects abound!
In far too many instances I've discovered that the intended audience would probably never know that: 1) the newsletter is generated by the same church for which a website URL is included (if it's included); 2) the church has a Facebook page or opt-in open groups; and 3) readers are welcome to communicate via anything other than email.
As luck -- or grace -- would have it, this weekend I came across the Executive Summary for a Nielsen Norman Group Report about Email Newsletter Usability. (True confession: I'd printed out a hard copy.)
This report came out in 2010 which is practically ancient history in Internet time. Still, I found the reported findings durably useful and translatable to the world of church communication, especially findings about scannability, competition with social networks, and the future of e-newsletters.
So what are or should be best practices in this domain? How can your church e-newsletter be more seamlessly integrated or at least nominally coordinated with your social media efforts? How about which e-newsletter platform to choose? What are the relative benefits/liabilities of using Constant Contact v. MailChimp v. VerticalResponse v. MyEmma v. MadMimi v. [your fave here]. How is writing for a social media platform similar to or different from writing for an e-newsletter?
We'll chat about all this and more on Tuesday, 10/2/12 at 9:00 PM ET.
4 comments:
Thanks for the post Meredith. I just wanted to make a comment. By the time news makes it into a newsletter, it's old. If the messages can be tailored to the reader, given a new spin, then it becomes more interesting. Hopefully I have time to take part in the chat tomorrow.
Very timely discussion for me, Meredith, because I was just facilitating a meeting to "refresh" our church website yesterday and the team became confused about what content belongs on a website vs. Facebook vs. email newsletter and the church sites we are benchmarking seem to be all over the place. Will try to join you if I am home from work in time.
@JeanAnnSchulte
My guidelines: timely and needing action news goes into the e-newsletter; general info and education goes onto the website; whatever generates conversation and participate get posted on FB, with a distinction made between pages and groups.
Another breakdown occurs because most folks don't know how to write specifically for online reading.
I'd be interested to hear how people integrate parish life into any of this. Our parish has a large population of aging members that still like to see somewhat private information such as birthdays and "thank you's" in our parish newsletter but for many reasons this doesn't transition well to electronic media. The only solution I've found is to create a slightly expanded print edition of our newsletter but it's a pain. I'm open for suggestions.
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