Thanks for making our monthly newsletter! If you get lost, you know what to do (ask Cecily!)
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Login to www.mailchimp.com with your own login credentials. (If you don't already have access to the MITS account through your own login credentials, ask Christian and she'll send you an invite to become an editor.)
2. To start a newsletter, click "Create Campaign"
3. Recipients tab:
8. Send the newsletter on the 1st of the month. Use the "Schedule" function if you complete the newsletter before the 1st in order to send it out in a timely manner. The July newsletter will go out on the first of July, even though it contains content from June.
FOR INSPIRATION, CHECK OUT THESE NEWSLETTER ARCHIVES, WRITTEN BY PAST STUDENT SPONSORSHIP COORDINATORS:
TIPS FOR ROCKING THE NEWSLETTER:
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Login to www.mailchimp.com with your own login credentials. (If you don't already have access to the MITS account through your own login credentials, ask Christian and she'll send you an invite to become an editor.)
2. To start a newsletter, click "Create Campaign"
3. Recipients tab:
- Send it to the MASTER list
- Give it a catchy subject line AND include the month's name. Example: "Meet our five newest students! // July Newsletter"
- Select the "Auto-post to Facebook after sending" option to push the newsletter to our Made in the Streets Facebook page.
- Choose the Monthly Newsletter Template under the "Saved Templates" tab.
- Change the content that needs changing (the banner, the content in the articles). Leave the content that is still pertinent (social media buttons, donate button, etc).
- Write your sections using recent happenings in and around MITS, upcoming news, special announcements, frequently asked questions, guest posts from students, etc.
- Pull photos from your own photography, other interns, visitors, staff, students, or our MITS SmugMug account (http://madeinthestreets.smugmug.com/), which has TONS of high-quality images from past photojournalism interns.
- Please use quality images that are in focus, not blurry, have natural lighting, and meaningful content.
- Remember to resize images that are too large. MailChimp will let you know and give you the option to resize them automatically.
8. Send the newsletter on the 1st of the month. Use the "Schedule" function if you complete the newsletter before the 1st in order to send it out in a timely manner. The July newsletter will go out on the first of July, even though it contains content from June.
FOR INSPIRATION, CHECK OUT THESE NEWSLETTER ARCHIVES, WRITTEN BY PAST STUDENT SPONSORSHIP COORDINATORS:
TIPS FOR ROCKING THE NEWSLETTER:
- Start early. Write your articles in Word throughout the month, then copy the text into each section.
- Stick with a schedule & pace yourself. If you plan to have a monthly staff section or a contribution from a student, set checkpoints for yourself to complete each section by a certain date. The earlier the better! (Things move more slowly in Kenya.)
- Use Pixlr or PicMonkey to add text to photos, if you're feeling some design savvy, but it's not a requirement. Plain photographs compliment the newsletter headlines & text just as well.
- If something in the template is seriously out of date, save yourself some time and update the template so you don't have to keep changing it!