Things to think about before you start

Clear Vision

Without a clear vision and audience to aim for, you´re unlikely to create a successful publication.

The top two things you need to think about before starting a publication are: what you hope to achieve from your newsletter and who it´s aimed at.

Having a clear idea of both of these will help you make the right choices regarding your e-newsletters content. For instance, will you just publish news, or will you have features and larger stories. Also, knowing if your audience is internal or external will help you select the right stories to publish. Remember, the feel and design of your newsletter will be affected by the choices you make here.

Time

Rome wasn´t built in a day, and neither is a newsletter. You need to take time to develop it.

While thinking about your vision and audience, consider how your newsletter will be produced and who it will producing it. This will help you decide how often it is published. You need to give yourself plenty of time to produce the content of your newsletter.

As you start to form a picture of what your newsletter may look like, don´t forget to talk to the Internal Communications team. It may be you need a bespoke template or alteration made to an existing template format. If so, you need to allow sufficient time for these developments.

Design

The system contains a generic set of templates for you to use. If these don´t suit your vision for your publication then the Internal Communications team will help you get the template adapted or a brand new bespoke design produced.

Start-Up Costs

The e-newsletter system is very cheap to use once you are up and running. You simply pay for the number of recipients you email your newsletter to. Initial start up costs will vary depending on if templates need to be altered or created. The Internal Communications team will project manage any changes you require and get the most cost effective solution for you.

The Internal Communications team has produced a guide, which you can download, to help you get started with the planning process. It asks all the questions which you need to answer as well as giving you more help besides, and is a great place to get started.