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Email newsletters are one of the fastest-growing products in student media, for a reason. Here’s how your organization can start one today.
Email newsletters are a highly engaging and impactful product, and one of the “Core 5” products we recommend all student media organizations include in their media kits.
Email newsletters serve valuable content and relevant promotions straight to your audience’s inboxes. For both national and local buyers, newsletters are a great way to reach a large number of students directly and quickly.
An email newsletter is a digital product where your content is sent directly to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and/or community members via email. Email newsletters are usually sent daily or weekly.
Newsletters can include:
Once you have your newsletter off the ground, you can also use it as a promotional tool for your publication to share upcoming issues, to market events, or to announce job opportunities.
Email newsletters are one of the fastest-growing products in student media, for a couple of reasons.
One, it’s easily trackable and scalable, and has proven to have stronger engagement rates than other digital products.
Why might this be?
It’s a digital product that naturally integrates with student’s routines. According to a survey by Campaign Monitor:
Because of this, email newsletters are an extremely attractive and in demand product for both national and local buyers.
Secondly, email newsletters are a distribution channel that you own.
This means that you are in control of not only where and how your email newsletter is distributed and accessed by your audience, but also totally in control of the revenue earned on the product.
Email newsletters are one of the easiest products to implement. You are already creating 90% of the content, and most likely already have the staff to get started.
Here is a checklist of everything you need to get started.
Explore the option of sending a RSS feed, which can automatically pull all articles published within the last day or week on your site, and creating a newsletter template to make the creation process super streamlined.
It is important to have at least one dedicated team member on your staff that is responsible for curating the email newsletter for each publication date. This for most teams is one person but can be multiple depending on the frequency of your newsletter. This will look different for every publication.
Most newsletters can be started for less than $100 a year if your contact list is small.
If you don’t have the budget, here are some other avenues that we suggest.
A small audience is worth more than you might think. Here’s why:
We recommend pricing email newsletter advertising rates based on reach, or subscriber counts.
Below is a chart that might be helpful to get started. We recommend
pricing email newsletters the same for both local and national buyers.
Once you have your email newsletter rolling, you might be wondering where to get started when it comes to selling it to local buyers. We have a few pieces of advice.
Present it as an opportunity to reach students during their everyday routines. Students wake up, check their phones and read their emails before locking in for class. Sending your email newsletter in the morning is ideal to reach them at this prime time and is ideal for your buyer’s visibility.
Use your engagement metrics as proof that email newsletters are effective. Buyers like to see numbers and facts. Show them your audience, how they engage with your newsletter, and that it works. Focus on your best stats and most helpful audience data, but don’t hide your open rate or other data points if they are less flattering.
Ready to start creating your email newsletter or offering email newsletter ads to national and local buyers?
Reach out to your account manager today if we can help you get started.
We’re here to help with whatever you need, from navigating our resource hub to unlocking more training and support for your student media organization. Reach out to us via email, or set up a 1:1 coaching session.
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