Personalize Your Newsletter

Almost everyday I receive a communication from a missionary, some of whom are friends of ours. They vary in style and content with some being much better done than others. Regardless, I rejoice with them that they are on the right path to fundraising and are communicating with their friends and supporters.

Most of them are missing the element that would quickly improve their effectiveness greatly - to personalize their newsletter.

Just so there is no confusions, by personalize we mean that it has each person's name is on their email or card. When I get any communication that says "Dear Curt:" it is far more likely to be read and evaluated than "Dear Friend:," or no salutation at all.

Their are many tools that make this fairly easy to do now. Most email programs with newer Windows or Macintosh software make this very doable. They function much the same way the "mail merge" files do in word processing. So if you have a list of 100 names, you can insert their names automatically into your newsletter.

We cover this other places on this site, BUT we wanted to dedicate a page to this exhortation. Even if you have to cut & paste your enews letter to each recipient and add the "Dear *****:" part to it at the beginning and in the subject line manually - IT IS WORTH THE EXTRA TIME AND EFFORT.

On of the themes of this site is that your partners are special, and should be treated as such. How would you feel receiving a note from one of your partners that supports a few missionaries and it started:

"Dear Missionary:"???

It wouldn't mean nearly as much to you would it? It would certainly be better than nothing, but with a little added effort, it increases the impact greatly.

PLEASE do NOT simply put all your email addresses in the "To" box and send it to everyone so that everyone else can see the rest of the email addresses. This is unprofessional, and some will consider it a violation of their privacy rights.

Do whatever it takes to PERSONALIZE your newsletter.