Library Newsletters: Best Practices - A Guide to Connecting With Your Community Through Newsletters

Sep 12, 2026

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Library Newsletters: Best Practices provides practical guidance for designing effective e-newsletters that strengthen relationships with library patrons. It details the anatomy of a strong email, including an engaging subject line, concise scannable text, a clear call to action, and branded signature or footer elements. Planning sections cover setting goals from strategic plans, gathering content intelligence, building an accessible experience, ensuring legal compliance, developing brand consistency, and analyzing results to improve future issues.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time4 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Anatomy of a Good e-Newsletter

Subject line

CTA and signature/footer

Planning for Your Newsletter

Determine Your Goals

Set up for Success

Library Newsletters: Best Practices A GUIDE TO Connecting With Your Community Through Newsletters Introduction Newsletters are an effective way to make a meaningful connection with your library community. Even better—it’s easy and convenient for them, as well as for you. Anatomy of a Good e-Newsletter 2 3 4 5 Subject line – maximum 50 characters Make it eye catching: Use a big image at the top to grab eyeballs! (And make sure the image is on brand and relevant.) Keep the text short to allow your subscribers toskim & scan CTA: Have a clear and concise call to action. What is it that you want your readers to do? Signature/footer – this is a great place to have your library’s branding NoveList | Library Newsletters: Best Practices | ©2021 2 For more than a decade, NoveList has provided NextReads, an award-winning newsletter service for libraries; our LibraryAware newsletters are popular ways to keep patronsup to date on library programs and services. These tips come from libraries big and small, urban and rural, in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. We’re sharing them in the hope that they will help you engage seniors, parents of young children, readers, job hunters—whomever you’re trying to reach. 4 5 Planning for Your Newsletter Keep these five steps in mind as you plan your newsletter: 1 Determine Your Goals 2 Gather Intelligence 3 Set up for Success 4 Establish Your Brand 5 Analyze Your Results 1. Determine Your Goals What are your goals? What will make this an effective and successful newsletter? It’s hard to know if your newsletter is working for your library if you’ve not yet determined what success looks like. The first place to look for goals for your newsletter is your library’s strategic plan. Your strategic plan probably has goals such as“support literacy in our community;”“encourage reading;”“increase attendance at programming;”“reach more adults without children,” etc. A newsletter can support all of these goals. Don’t have a strategic plan or currently in the process of creating a new one? You can develop goals for whatever you want to accomplish—including increasing circulation, higher attendance at book clubs, increasing cardholders, updating your community about new building projects, etc.—and consider how a regular newsletter will help support these goals. Subject Line Best Practices: Short, sweet, and to the point: Email subject lines should communicate the content of the email. A tall order? Yes! But it should be clear what this email is before your patrons open it. A few successful subject lines: • Celebrate Women’s History & Teen Tech! • Books in the National Media: July 2021 • New Arrivals: July 2021 • Back to School: 4 Online Resources for Homework Help • Monthly Newsletter: Artsy Affairs to Zombie Scares Numbers get results: Numbers in subject lines draw attention more than a descriptions do. Questions do the trick, too: Leading with a question that makes your readers think or stirs emotions will help open emails. Avoid words that trigger spam filters: Words like “free” or even “money” could potentially send your email to spam. Familiarize yourself with words and phrases that are likely to cause these triggers. NoveList | Library Newsletters: Best Practices | ©2021 3 2. Set up for Success ✓ ✓ How much time can you commit to your newsletter? Before beginning your newsletter is a good time to ask yourself practical questions about the time you can dedicate to this newsletter. How often will you need to send out your newsletter? Are you creating a weekly programming newsletter? A monthly reading recommendations newsletter? Or perhaps a quarterly update on how various building projects are going? Is your newsletter accessible? Reaching subscribers includes creating emails that are accessible to everyone. This means considering best practices such as text size and color, using proper alt

FAQs

What are the key elements of an effective e-newsletter?

It highlights an eye-catching subject line, short scan-friendly text, a clear call to action, and a signature/footer that showcases the library’s branding.

How should libraries determine newsletter goals?

Goals should be defined by what success looks like, using the library’s strategic plan as a starting point and mapping newsletter work to targets like literacy, reading encouragement, attendance, or reaching specific audiences.

What should a library consider to set up a newsletter for success?

The guide advises planning the time commitment and sending cadence, ensuring accessibility (text, color, alt text, meaningful link text, and a plain-text version), confirming content sources, and staying compliant with applicable email marketing laws.

Sep 12, 2026

Upload by Kurz