Email Newsletters

Get Creative With Stories In Your Newsletter

Using storytelling in your newsletter allows the association to accomplish different goals, such as demonstrating the need for continued support, reminding past donors of the impact they helped make through previous donations or educating your audience on the issues that are being advocated for and the position the association plans to use to help solve the issue. You can use stories to share how the latest campaign impacted a specific person, how your association became engaged with helping during crisis or how one of the members decided to join the association.

Here’s a look at a few supplemental techniques that you can use to make your newsletter more interesting and engaging. For a full list visit Poynter.

Story So Far: Do readers know the “story so far” on Aleppo, the indictment of a lawmaker or the fight over a proposed highway? This type of textbox gives readers the backstory on the news. It’s like a flashback in a movie that explains the motivation of the characters. News stories have characters and motivations, too, and readers want to know what they are.

What’s Next: This story form describes the next step in a news story. It’s useful for long-running stories and gives a forward-looking view to your coverage.

Characters: Because some stories have many sources, this textbox can help the reader sort them out, offering short biographical information as well as explaining the role of each “character” in a news event.

Bio Box: These miniature biographies give fast facts on people, places or companies. The basics (birth date, hometown, education) are obvious, but these also can include trivia (favorite movie, pet peeve, etc.) about the subject of the bio box.