Hi, we’re Olivia Dunn, Jenna Williams, and Jimena Vallejo, members of the email marketing team at the Urban Institute—a policy research organization whose mission is to drive impact by equipping changemakers with evidence and solutions.
What matters to us is getting research into the hands of the people who will make it actionable. We achieve this through our unique email program, which provides timely, targeted outreach to engage audiences across a policy spectrum including housing, financial stability, health, and community development.
Hot Tips
Below, we share some hot tips to grow audience engagement:
1. Identify your audience
We work hand-in-hand with our subject matter experts to determine our target audiences for each research product, creating customized engagement strategies directly informed by the evidence. Our first step is to determine who can make the most impact when equipped with our research—who holds the policy levers in this field? Who can use this specific evidence to inform or advocate for policy change?
With an organization immersed in as many policy arenas as Urban, this step is crucial to ensuring the right research product makes it into the right hands. Research insights on how to develop climate adaptability strategies? Engage with local climate resiliency officers. Recommendations for disaggregating race and ethnicity data from public datasets? Send it to chief data officers in local government. We target our outreach—and it works.
2. Tailor messaging by audience
When developing messaging for our targeted audiences, we don’t adhere to a one-size-fits-all approach. What resonates with a local policymaker may not be what resonates with a program manager at an advocacy organization—even if the overarching product is relevant to them both. To catch a busy reader’s attention, with a limited word count, we take the time to highlight the findings most relevant to each audience’s work.
And a tailored introduction that recognizes someone’s expertise and speaks to their interests will ensure they keep reading. Climate researchers need little context in a report about climate adaptability strategies. But for audiences who are less familiar with the topic but hold the levers to change, like state legislators, the introduction is an opportunity to set the stage for the research’s importance.
3. Evaluate impact through analytics
Our work isn’t finished when we conduct our outreach. We rely on key metrics to inform the development of future engagement strategies and ensure readers are receiving accessible, engaging content that matters to them. Defining success measurements, like click-through and open rates and reader responses, can contribute to the growth and depth of audience engagement.
At Urban, we use audience management dashboards to track engagement metrics, and we analyze performance trends to better equip us in writing strategically and amplifying researchers’ work. Since we’re dedicated to turning evidence into impact, another critical measurement for our outreach program is tracking responses from researchers, changemakers, and other readers who wish to connect with Urban experts. This contributes to growing important bodies of work, establishes connections, and elevates impact.
Takeaway
When engagement strategies are led by audience needs and interests, email marketing has the power to promote change. Through targeted audience identification, tailored messaging, and analytics-based strategy development, Urban consistently achieves engagement that is above industry average.
Rad Resources
Learn to target audiences and grow your newsletter
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