Not having seen the Bulletin, I can't speak to the nature of the content. But speaking about newsletters generally: The only way to get people to read something thoroughly time after time is to consistently give them something they want to (or think they *need* to) read thoroughly. They'll be more likely to read it if they enjoyed reading the last one, or found something of value in the last one.
If over the years they've gotten accustomed to not reading it -- well, bootstrapping that is likely to be tough. If you change the style or design or information design of teh Bulletin, and few people are reading it, there's a good chance no one will notice. (It could be fantastic now, and you might not know, for that matter.) So you might need to do something like get on the forums and talk it up, or even get some kind of a testimonial from somebody folks respect. It also doesn't hurt to do a survey. You can get free surveys from SurveyMonkey, but they're limited in the # of people you can hit until you pay. (If you were going to pay, I'd recommend looking into VerticalResponse, but that's a separate issue.) So you could take an iterative approach: Survey a few people (possibly just 5 or 6), make changes, survey a few more, make more changes, and so on. That's essentially the method that's regarded as best practice in usability testing, and on a larger scale in direct mail and online marketing. Having more content online will likely only help if the newsletter comes in via an online vector (with one possible exception, see below). People aren't likely to go from print to web on a case by case basis. That is, you can get people to type a general (but brief) URL, like "sfwa.org/newsletter", but you're not likely to get them to type a specific URL like " sfwa.org/newsletter/sep-08/effectively-using-book-trailers" to get more info on something specific if they're in print. OTOH, if they get the newsletter via email, all they have to do is click. (And BTW, if you're sending via email with mailing list software or a third party provider, you can track those clicks at a pretty fine grain.) Exception: You could simply do the bulletin as parallel online and print editions, no email. That's not usually recommended since you would be relying on people to take an action instead of just finding it in their mailbox (IRL or email). But it has less startup cost. If you do that, I strongly recommend that you set up a Google Analytics account and tag the newsletter so you can track the analytics. (You should also do that if you have an email edition that links to articles online.) If you do look into sending the bulletin (at least partially) by email, I strongly recommend you look into using a third-party provider to do it. The cost can be less than you'd expect. Vertical Response is probably the cheapest *good* provider -- they can get down to $.01/email pretty quickly, if you buy enough credits in advance. There are several excellent reasons to consider it: - They work very hard to stay off blacklists and greylists, so you have a much greater likelihood of getting past spam filters than if you send using your own or SFWA's own software, or from your own or SFWA's own server. - They can manage the opt-in/opt-out process for you in a way that's attorney-crafted to satisfy CAN-SPAM. (With VR, this part is free.) - They let you manage your lists online, so the task of mailing could easily be passed off to someone else without having to transfer and reconcile files. (VR lets you get your lists from them at any time, and they charge you nothing for the list maintenance part of their service. Others do charge for that.) - It saves you opportunity cost. So, yes, you're a volunteer and you could just do the work yourself, but you have to decide how the extra hours you'd spend and aggravation you'd experience stack up against $30 to send an emailing through VerticalResponse. That's probably out of scope for your request, though. On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 11:13 AM, SteveC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stevecarper/bull172.htm > > MTV Meets Publishing: Book Videos > > from The SFWA Bulletin #172, Winter 2007 > > > Serious question. What can the Bulletin do to get people to read it > thoroughly? I know most people just flip through it and toss it aside, > and I'd certainly like to see a different emphasis in the articles > myself. But it is often a good resource. > > Would putting more articles online help? Does it need to be more > service oriented? Less chatty? Should there be a page detailing what's > offered in the issue? > > Any ideas? > > Steve > > > -- eric scoles ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
