Best Practices - e-Newsletter Campaign "Go Farther!"

In November 2007 Students Run Philly Style (SRPS) received positive response for a two-week e-newsletter campaign building enthusiasm for the students who would be running the Philadelphia marathon. Project director Heather McDanel shares some techniques they use for all of their e-newsletters.

Lessons Learned at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation strategic communications training:

Use storytelling

• Everyone likes to hear about real people.
• Through one student’s story, supporters see how the program works.

Target each audience separately

• Funders, collaborating groups, parents and other interested parties each need their own message and messenger.
• SRPS sent separate e-mails to different constituents. They all used Anthony’s photos and story with slight variations.
• For example, the staff person best known to each audience signed their e-mails. Funders received messages from the agency CEO, while the project director signed e-mails to community groups.
• Funders e-mails were personally addressed, “Dear Susan;” while a larger mailing list of people who signed up for information received “Dear Friend.”

Specific Tips from Students Run Philly Style:

Hire a good photographer

• SRPS pays their photographer by the hour and receives all the photos on a CD.
• In addition to the e-news and their website, they blow some pictures up to poster size to display at site visits and recruiting events.
• They also print photos on their office copier and give them to parents.

Write strategic messages when you do reports

• McDanel notes that since she’s often writing reports, it’s not a burden to write promotional highlights at the same time.
• The hardest part is deciding what is the most important thing to emphasize for each audience.

Once you have the e-message, turn it into a website story.

• SRPS turned the content of the four e-newsletters into feature stories that are still on their website.
• Once during the 2-week e-campaign they sent out a brief e-mail note instead of a formatted e-newsletter. The message contained a link to an interview with Anthony posted on their website.

Future Plans:

• E-newsletters have become SRPS’s standard way to communicate.
• E-newsletters to kick off their spring training season and to recruit volunteers will be sent to community groups and to individuals who have expressed interest in becoming involved.
• Messages to funders go out at least quarterly, often timed with reports written for other purposes.
• Another E-newsletter campaign will lead up to their major spring event, the 10-mile Broad Street Run. They plan to profile a girl.

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