Compelling Newsletter Introductions and Examples
When writing newsletters, it’s important to lock your reader in from the beginning. By having a great introduction, you can make sure that the entirety of your newsletter is read and not skipped over by not keeping your readers interest. For many newsletters, since it’s being sent by email, you’ll need a great subject line as well. By finding several newsletter introduction examples to get you started, you will easily find your way.
How To Do It
There is more than one way to write a captivating introduction, let’s go over a few newsletter introduction examples.
Ask A Question
Start off your newsletter by asking a relevant question that gets the reader thinking. This doesn’t mean asking a bland question that requires an easy yes or no answer. If your newsletter is about school and education in younger grades, say K-6th grade, you wouldn’t introduce the topic as “Do you have a 3rd grader?” because the reader can easily say “nope” and move on. For a topic like that, you could start with “How long will elementary schools be like this?”. This gets the reader thinking. Immediately you have your reader hooked with that question because their mind is going in several different places, such as:
- What’s wrong with elementary schools?
- My daughter is in elementary school, should I be worried?
- What can I do to help?
They have to keep reading to find the answers to the questions that your newsletter probably covers. Not all introductory questions have to be shocking or seen as scary. You don’t want to panic your readers. But it is helpful to play around with the wording of your question to make it feel impossible to stop reading.
Statistic, But Make It Surprising
Starting off with a relevant and unpredictable statistic is another great way to hook readers from the get-go of a newsletter. The key to giving a great statistic is to throw one out that surprises readers. If a reader opens your newsletter about hand washing in the United States and the first sentence says “handwashing has declined 25% since the pandemic started”, which is a statistic that for some people would be very predictable. They would find that fairly easy to believe with many people in the United States easing up on their handwashing and hygiene since the initial boom of the pandemic.
A more uncommon statistic you could use instead is, “The global rate for washing hands after using the toilet is under 20%”. Using a statistic that is shocking like the rate at which we wash our hands after using the restroom, hooks a reader from the beginning and they must keep reading at that point to see why that statistic is so shocking.
Relevant Pictures
Beginning your newsletter with a picture that makes people want to read more is crucial to any article you may write. When someone clicks on a newsletter and the picture doesn’t seem like it means anything, or it isn’t of great quality, they are much more likely to keep scrolling past. Or they click out of it altogether. If you are running a cooking/food-centered blog, and your newsletter is about a new crockpot recipe you are loving now that fall has started, you wouldn’t put a few cans of beans and broth as your cover photo. You will most likely use the final product of the crockpot meal. Readers want to see the end result, and if it looks good to them they will want to know how to replicate it.
If your newsletter is about sports, you’ll want to add an action shot from the game you were covering. The reader, who is obviously already interested in sports, will want to know more about the game. Maybe they missed it and are looking for a rundown. Or maybe they were glued to their seat, but wanted to read from your point of view. A great introductory picture locks them in from the beginning.
Conclusion
Writing an introduction carries a lot of weight to the rest of the newsletter. By using relevant and surprising verbiage to hook the reader, you will have them reading through to the end. Hopefully, these newsletter introduction examples help!
