3 Ways Principals Use Incentives to Increase School Newsletter Engagement

We asked educators to share a school newsletter engagement hack with us.

Turns out almost a quarter of them use rewards! The rewards themselves fall into 3 categories: emotional, competitive, & tangible.

Let’s walk through each 👇🏽.

1. Emotional – a picture is worth, well, you know!

What parent doesn’t enjoy finding a picture of their own child in a school newsletter?! It just gives it that much more meaning and importance. Educators know that, too, and use it to their advantage. Here are a few different ways they put photos of students to work for them:

That last one is interesting, right? It serves a dual purpose 🤓.

2. Competition has its rewards.

Sometimes a competitive incentive is the best — it depends on the vibe of your community. If this is a direction you could go in, there are lots of ways to have fun with it. Here’s a principal whose parents get a competitive advantage from simply reading the updates:

And here’s one who gets parents competing to score points with the principal:

And a third who gets an entire positive community competition going! 🙌 🙌

3. Lastly, actual 🏆 for reading school updates!

A small cohort of educators give out a variety of school-related prizes for children whose parents read their updates. Some would argue that prizes for reading are counter-productive, but these are thoughtful, school-based rewards! Here are some suggestions from folks in the field:

So, if you’re looking for ways to get more parents to read your updates, try one of these 🥕🥕. And let us know how it goes!

Here’s a template to help you get started.