Here is the regular wiki where we can drop in stories, projects, ideas we want sent out.
I would also like to use this space to share tips about how to make our newsletter better, and how to encourage people to join in.
From my research, these are the first things I’d do:
there is not that much news in a regular week to make it a weekly newsletter - twice a month seems more than enough. We keep the more frequent options for the period when there's tons of activity on the platform.
we need a signup field with an introduction on the main page, so that people can easily join the newsletter
shorter titles
subheaders
more graphics and some sort of consistency in the design (maybe beyond the header and a short note from the editor) - I basically think some design work here would be beneficial
carefully selected section headings
one article not from Edgeryders, but relevant to the topic of the newsletter
Some insights from looking at our history of Mailchimp campaigns
Here I agree with you completely @Natalia_Skoczylas: I think we definitely have to stick to not more than 1 or 2 emails a month, it’s how we always did it, and instead we spend more time putting together the newsletter.
Currently, various short updates with links assume people know what is going on in general in Edgeryders - this works for a LOTE (<100 ppl) mailing list because those in the list are directly interested and are recent signups. It’s not the case with our large ER list compiled to include everyone who signs up on the platform, ever since 2012.
So I suggest, in addition to your recommendations (+1 for carefully selected section headings!):
Segmenting the big list into smaller ones (with approximation, I can do this):
design wise: this is my personal favourite because it features prominently community members and has an inclusive narrative (we're all sortt of moving in the same direction as a community)
I think @Natalia_Skoczylas idea about having a link to an external article is a great idea.
I’ve recently been really appreciating the articles that @Iriedawta has been posting about the Armenia/Azer conflict which have helped to shed light on something i would never have known about previously.
I also note that @johncoate often shared some great articles from external sources as well. Perhaps we should have a dedicated repository for these external links on the site? Then maybe the one that is read by the most online members also gets added to the mail so that less active members can follow that link too?
Just an idea, i wouldn’t know how to set up either the posting place, or the analytics to choose the most read story.
in my online travels are sometimes relevant for the ER space, but I often am not sure where to put them. I have put links on the Facebook site a couple of times just because I wasn’t sure where else to do it. Sending stuff to CountOnMe is useful, but some of the things I see are not quite spot on for that either. Natalia puts up a number of links on her FB page, which I find very useful and interesting. On the ER site itself though I am often not quite sure, so in putting them somewhere that an ER ally will see it is in hopes that thewy will know what to do better than I.
This all sounds great to me, but we still have more work to do to figure out what and how often makes a good ER newsletter. A link to an external article will not overturn engagement rates for ER content, but could be a step in the right direction - it still means we need to carefully frame and target the rest of the ER based content.
So as actionables: I’m splitting the groups today and adding the most recent ER site members on the list. @Natalia_Skoczylas if you design the core version (for group 3- LOTE and OpenCare) then we are ready to give this a try tonight/tomorrow morning.
… and always ping Natalia so she can include them in newsletters :-)
Speaking of, @Natalia_Skoczylas: the ER list on mailchimp has now 4 segments of members - how someone is in one and not the other is not always straightforward, but has to do with the time they joined. For example I know most people who joined before May 2013 were part of ER 1 at the Council of Europe etc.
A simple way to move on is to use the OpenCare & LOTE5 segment of 275 people and send them weekly newsletters - they may be the most interested.
Then to the LOTE3 & LOTE4 more rarely.
Then the FutureMakers segment should only get really global news and less Europe centred I would say.
@Noemi and @Nadia, I’ve created and scheduled a campaign for tomorrow morning. If you want to take a look. It will only be delivered to Open Care and LOTE5 people - but if you think this one is good enough, as we had three weeks of break, I could also send it to other lists?
