Let’s talk community newsletters
Last week, I listened in on an Insided by Gainsight webinar about Sequoia’s community engagement strategies and the CM presenter offhandedly mentioned a newsletter she sends weekly. It was almost an aside: an afterthought. And then, the entirety of the QA revolved around said newsletter.
So let’s talk about the power of the community newsletter.
Should companies send a community newsletter?
Short answer: yes.
Online B2B communities can’t rely on the if-you-build-it-they-will-come model. Very few (I can think of this many: [holds up zero fingers]) community audiences wake up in the morning saying “Mmm, a sip of that Folgers and then it’s time to check in on the community that cool vendor of ours built!”
It sounds harsh but it’s true. No one is regularly thinking about your community. Not your audience, not your colleagues, not your leaders. Hopefully you’ve raised enough awareness among these stakeholders that they know the community exists, and how to find it, and why they might want to find it on occasion, but even that takes effort.
Community engagement requires both pull (great content that draws members back again and again) and push (direct nudges that alert them to said great content). Newsletters - when done well (and IMO, obvs) - are the simplest, most effective method of doing the latter.
But no one likes newsletters!
Oh but they do! No one likes irrelevant spam. Everyone likes content that meets their needs. Community newsletters already have a leg up on general marketing newsletters in that you are targeting your community which - ideally, and per the definition of community - means a shared interest or identity. Hopefully, you’ve been building content within your community that targets those common needs (and if not, get going!). By delivering a newsletter that alerts your community to relevant content that will help them meet their needs, you are:
Saving them time should they need this content now or in the future.
Piquing their interest with content they may not have known they wanted or needed.
Proactively helping them do their job.
Bonus points if you can make it fun while staying on brand.
How do I create a good community newsletter?
Templates, baby!
Sorta kidding? But also: templates! Disclaimer here, this entire blog is full of my opinions, so take it all with a grain of salt. In my opinion, and based on lots of experimentation with open and click through rates, great community letters do the following.
They keep it short.
No long paragraphs. You’re pointing your audience to where the content lives, not bringing a rehashed version of the content to their inbox. I’ve always favored a list of one-line actionable bullets highlighting the best of that week’s or month's resources. Just a handful - not everything! You aren’t trying to boil the ocean here.
They focus on the audience’s interests .
What will be most interesting to your audience? I tend to see a lot of engagement with peer stories. Of course, that means each month, you need to find a customer willing to share a best practice or story that you can write up, post to the community, and then share out via newsletter. But if that’s what your community members show the most interest in, then that’s the right content to create.
Buuut they also focus on things the audience needs to know
Are you sunsetting a feature? Requiring new certifications? Changing the way something operates? It may not be interesting or exciting for your audience, per se, but the audience (and your legal team) will be happy you communicated important changes well in advance.
They invite participation
At the end of the day, it’s a community. The point is to drive engagement. Tell your audience exactly where they can post, comment, or answer a peer’s question, and warmly call out community members who have done so. In my experience, these simple actions lead to more answered questions, more best practice sharing, more likes and kudos on peer posts, and a stronger overall community.
