Easy Newsletter & Email Marketing with MailChimp

Whether you're a Recreation Director, Program Coordinator or Administrative Assistant in the local Parks & Recreation Department, chances are you're asked to don a dizzying array of hats on a day to day basis. One of these is probably Chief Marketing Person or Interim Director of Communications. Your department offers a great variety of new and interesting programs - but how do you get the word out? One very effective way is through email.

If you're reading this, then you no doubt are on a computer and need no further expository on how email is playing an increasingly important role in our daily communication and exchange of ideas. People love it because it is timely, can communicate in both words and pictures and doesn't interrupt them when they've just sat down for dinner. In other words, it's the perfect way for your Parks & Recreation Department to reach out to your community with a periodic Newsletter or a timely blast about some upcoming event

There are many choices out there, but our favorite is MailChimp. A quick intro video about their service is included below.


What makes MailChimp better than the rest of the choices out there?..... In my estimation, it's the following:

Easy to use and intuitive interface
Enough said.....you want to spend your time building your newsletter and communicating your ideas.....not trying to figure out how to import a picture or change the text color to red. MailChimp has the best interface I've seen.

Very good list (email list) management

MailChimp allows you to easily import your existing list into its subscriber management database using Excel, a comma delimited file and several other formats. Once imported, these emails can be used in any one of your "campaigns" and things such as Opt-Ins, Unsubscribes and Bounces are handled automatically.

Nice assortment of predefined templates

OK, content is king but there's nothing wrong with a pretty face......A nice variety of predefined templates and professional graphics are available while building your Newsletter.

Good Reporting Tools

MailChimp provides lots of tools for tracking exactly how many people read your email, clicked on content within it and from what locale. This is a great way to measure the success of your mailing and try to make incremental improvements for next time.

Affordable and flexible pricing

The pricing of the service is also very reasonable. If you have less than a 100 people on your list, the service is free. There are monthly plans starting at $10 and Pay as You Go plan. Full details are listed here.

So go ahead and send out your first newsletter! Your public is waiting.

Other Resources From MailChimp

Free Email Marketing Guide
Your First Email Marketing Project

Have you got any email or newsletter success stories? If so, please tell us!

Mike