Starting a School Newsletter: 5 Things You Need to Do

School newsletters are an important communication tool that helps keep parents updated and involved in their children’s education. Starting a school newsletter, however, can be an intimidating prospect, as most of the grunt work happens in the initial setup. Once you’re done with the initial groundwork, you should be able to run your newsletter like clockwork.

What does it take to start a successful school newsletter, then? In this post, we’re sharing with you 5 things you that will help you establish a newsletter for your school.

1. Get permission and establish the work procedure.

Before launching a newsletter, it’s important to approach the school board, the principal, administrators, and teachers with your intent to start a newsletter. Aside from getting permission, you can also get their insight and advice on how to manage it. Be prepared to answer some basic questions:

• Who will finance the newsletter?
• Who will be involved in it?
• Who will oversee it?
• Where will you meet and do the work?
• How will the content be approved?
• How often will the newsletter be sent out?
• Will you be using a school communication app to distribute the newsletter?
• What equipment will be needed?

2. Set the goals and target audience.

Naturally, the goal of the newsletter is to keep parents up to date on the latest school happenings. While the primary audience is the parents, they aren’t the only readers. The faculty, staff, and students will be reading the newsletter, too. Keep this in mind when coming up with content.

Next, you need to determine the goals of the newsletter. What should it accomplish? Maybe you would like more attendance during parent-teacher interviews. Or maybe you want parents to participate more in events. In most cases, the goal of a school newsletter is to encourage readers to take action in one way or another.

3. Always have a content calendar.

A content calendar is a necessary tool for organising and tracking everything you plan on publishing in your newsletter. You can create your own calendar format or you can take a look at other formats used by companies and business owners.

Personalise the content calendar to include all the important details for your newsletter, such as the author for each specific post and which news section it falls under.

4. Know how to make effective subject lines.

Newsletters should contain catchy headlines that draw the readers’ attention. But what about the subject line? The subject line is what people see in their inbox that tells them they just got something from you.

If the subject line isn’t interesting enough, there’s a big chance they’ll ignore your newsletter. Then all your hard work will have been for naught. A good headline should accomplish two things:

• Inform the audience what the newsletter contains.
• Give the audience a good reason to open the newsletter.

5. Make the newsletter mobile-user friendly.

The best (and most modern way) to circulate your school newsletter is to make use of a free parent-teacher school communication app with an integrated newsletter creation feature.

Being able to create a newsletter and disseminate it to your target audience in an integrated multipurpose school app is much more efficient than old fashioned print-based newsletters and/or single function email newsletter apps like Mailchimp.

When launching a school newsletter campaign, it pays to be prepared and to constantly have your target audience in mind. The readers—which includes parents, faculty, staff, and students—must have something to gain by reading the newsletter. It’s your job to make the content fun, engaging, and relevant so everyone can have a more participative role in your school’s activities.