Thank you so much for your great ideas! I love the positivity! I just volunteered to do a monthly newsletter for our Senior Housing Community. Am limited in that I cannot print in color, but would like to do a 4 page letter. Any ideas on good templates to use? Do you use a template?

I actually like to call sponsors or marketing directors of local events and attractions. i will conduct an interview with them to write my article. I always start out by letting them know I was writing an article for my newsletter that would reach approximately 1,500 people (I had to write the newsletter for all 4 of our properties from a blank publisher page. The first interview I did was for a company that did Shakespeare In The Park. At the end of the interview he offered me 10 tickets to one of the plays. That motivated me to do this more. The more interviews I did the more free tickets I got. I would then use these as prizes at the resident events we had. Gave the residents something more exciting to read and also exciting prizes. Increased the attendance to my events too! I think my favorite was I got 4 tickets to give away for Cyndi Lauper plus he gave me 2 free tickets for myself plus backstage passes. It's a win win for everyone. I am with a different company now and use Illustratus so I don't have to come up with all the content myself but I still do the interviews for the little space I have to fill.

Thank You guys! I like the idea of selling ad space to bussiness that are going to benefit my residents. My goal was to fined away to increase our revenue to make up from vacancy loss and reducing rental rates.

Jolene Sopalski
Assistant Manager
Finlay Management,LLC

Selling ads is brilliant! I would suggest that you do so as long as the merchant is offering something to your residents - like 20% off etc. That way it's not just selling...there is something in it for them!

Hi Jolene...

I don't do advertising in my newsletter, just because I want to keep it all about the residents and I figure they get enough ads on t.v. & in their local papers...grin...

I did ask residents for submissions if they wanted to, but I can tell you that became more of a headache than it was worth...people would submit things that were their point of view and I couldn't use the articles for fear of upsetting others. And there was the deadline for people to submit things that they hardly ever met...which meant that I was scrambling to fill those spaces...

I just find that if I do it all, it works better...but that's me...grin...

I do my newsletter in Publisher (MSWord)...it works great

Also, if you are interested in doing the word find in your newsletter here's the site I use... Free Online Puzzle Maker ...it's free and so easy...the crossword puzzle doesn't work as well for me, but it might for you...

Good luck...

Jolene,

I love your thinking! It is definitely an option, it just depends on who is going to sell the ad, procure the ad, proof the ad, etc. Be warned there can be a lot of work involved, but you can, and should try it. Owners love ancillary revenue. They also love resident "programs" that pay for themselves.

BTW, one of my former clients was an online publisher of multifamily newsletters and several of their clients filled the empty spaces of their newsletter with ads. The one industry group that always seemed to be advertising no matter where the communities were based were dentists.

Good luck,
Leigh