School Newsletter

One Key Hack to Get Parents to Open Your Emails

Dr. Kara Stern
2 min read
Female teacher in glasses preparing a newsletter.


When you send out a school newsletter, you want parents to read it, but what about the ones who don’t?

If your newsletter platform has analytics, you can actually SEE 👀 who’s opened your updates. There’s some good accountability there. Not only do you know who’s on top of it, you’ve also got the jump on the parent who says, “I didn’t get that email!” 🙄

Are there’s always that parent…

But what about the parents who don’t open the email at all?


We’ve got a simple hack for that.

All you have to do is tweak the subject line, and resend. The key here is writing a subject line that catches folks’ attention. One easy formula for writing a subject line is for who/so what. Let’s say your subject line is Ms. Howey’s Class April Newsletter. Plenty of parents will click.

But for parents who don’t open the email, write a more specific subject line and re-send, like so:

📢

Important April Events for 4th Grade Parents – Don’t Miss Out.

The emoji, btw, adds to the likelihood that people will click.

Give it a try! And let us know how it goes 😊. If you’d like a pre-formatted template for principals, click here.

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Dr. Kara Stern

Dr. Kara Stern began her career as an ELA teacher, then shifted into administration as a middle school principal. Dr. Stern is a fervent advocate for equitable communication and family engagement. She spent five years as Executive Director at Math for America, where she designed the professional learning community that exists to this day. An unexpected move to Tel Aviv launched her into the world of EdTech where she became the Director of Education Content for Smore and then the Head of Education Solutions at SchoolStatus. Outside of work, she indulges her love for reading, devouring two novels weekly, with a particular fondness for heists and spy stories.

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