While you may think parks and recreation emails to your contacts have to be bureaucratic and strictly clinical, that is not the case at all. Your municipality's parks and recreation department is at the helm of engaging its citizens with fun and activities. It's quite a job where no day is ever the same, and there are many more ideas for email campaigns than you may realize.
Think past the Fourth of July, Canada Day and summer long weekends. There are all sorts of regional, state, provincial, and federal days which draw residents from all over to take a moment and appreciate the great outdoors.
For example, July is Park and Recreation Month, and the National Recreation And Park Association (NRPA) is celebrating with a campaign to recognize parks workers across America to 'redefine the field of parks and recreation as an essential, vital necessity by sharing how park and recreation professionals are frontline staff, confronting our most pressing health, environmental and social challenges.'
To incorporate it into your email campaign, gather a few related blog articles, social media posts, and general feel-good content to get the conversation started. We also recommend checking out a website such as National Day Calendar and listing all the days you want to keep in your calendar for future emails. For example, in Canada, National Tree Day takes place on Wednesday, September 23, and would be an excellent opportunity to email your contacts about regional parks.
If you're currently running a series of social media accounts to promote your parks department, you likely have some great content already you had no idea could be shared through email. Not all email campaigns have to be strictly educational and text-based—beautiful local photography and other engaging pieces of content still make for great newsletter content.
If you have branded your parks department with a specific hashtag, go through this tag to see what people are talking about and sharing about your parks. There is a good chance that this content will also translate well to an email that generates reads. Some ideas to get you started can include photographs, trending topics on Twitter, content from groups on Facebook, and more.
If you do include photographs or content that is owned by another user, it's best to ask for permission before sharing it. While it is publicly available on the internet, you should always seek explicit permission before sending out another user's photos.
One of the principles of content marketing is to share content that is valuable to the reader—what better place to get started than helpful tips for residents? There are countless possibilities for parks and recreation tips to send out. Some ideas to get you started include:
Hint: Think about all the topics that residents frequently ask you about. Whatever they are, they are likely to be email topics that get recipients reading, and content they are genuinely interested in learning more about.
Have your municipality's councillors recently passed a motion that involves your department and affects citizens? If so, this is also something you could send out in an email to thoroughly explain to residents. Most council minutes are hard for the everyday person to fully understand, so more people than you may expect might appreciate you taking time to break down a new bylaw or regulation and how it affect your citizens.
This is also a great practice to maintain a good relationship with your residents. It will help them to feel cared for and looked after if you take the time to go through a new development such as this and send it out on behalf of the parks department. It will also help citizens feel more involved with their local municipal office to be addressed with this news.
Last—but certainly not least—your local parks department isn't just the outdoor activities for community members; it's the team who makes all of that possible. A tremendous amount of work goes into the events and recreation that the parks department facilitates, and that work should be recognized and promoted whenever possible!
To get started, set up a schedule for sending out a highlight of a parks department team member—it could be every week, every two weeks, or every month, whatever works best for your team! Next, share their accomplishments, how long they've been with the parks department, and what their favorite things about your municipality are. This is not just a great way to honor parks employees, but it is also a great way to boost community member morale about their municipality.