Children in Need e-mail newsletters finally mention event's date
Howard Lake | 1 November 2004 | News
If you subscribed to BBC Children in Need’s e-mail newsletters you would only now have been informed of the date of the telethon.
BBC Children in Need has for several months been sending out e-mail newsletters updating supporters on preparations for this year’s telethon. Unfortunately on all the issues UK Fundraising has seen, the charity has not actually mentioned the date of the event, the charity’s one major event of the year.
Of course, the date is listed on the charity’s Web site, but the e-mail newsletters are missing a trick by not indicating how long supporters have to go in terms of organising their fundraising events.
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Last Friday’s newsletter mentioned that there were “only 3 weeks to go” and that there was a competition to win a trip to London on “Friday 19 November 2004” to photograph the stars behind the scenes. But still, nowhere have we seen a headline or sentence that reads “BBC Children in Need: Friday 19 November 2004” in any communication we’ve received.
For some reason Web and e-mail publishing seems to lead many organisations into simple mistakes. One of the most common is not to date an item or a page. Good ways to avoid this are to ensure that you use a content management system for publishing a Web site that automatically inserts the date of publication. When publishing e-mail alerts, send test copies to colleagues and ask them to check content and for any glaring omissions.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.