Newsletter Handover

June 2022

Background
The existing aims of the Hridaya Newsletter are:
1. Share the teachings
2. Foster a feeling of connection to our centers/community and the Hridaya mission
globally
3. Promote upcoming core and supplemental programs
4. Support international teachers by sharing their offerings
5. Drive traffic to the website

The newsletter currently goes out every 6 weeks, in English, French, and Spanish versions. A
projected schedule for 2022 is here. Previous newsletters are accessible in our Newsletter
Archive and the files live on the drive in this folder.

We generally send newsletters on Monday mornings, but experimenting with different send
days/times to support increased open rate is encouraged.

There is a second mailing, also every 6 weeks but sent 3 weeks after the newsletter, called the
Midweek Inspiration. More about this will be shared below.

Production Schedule
The newsletter production process is most smoothly managed when ample time is allotted.

In general, the following flow works harmoniously:

3+ Weeks Before Send Date
● Request message from Sahaja (strategically figuring out when to ask Sahaja for a
message, based on his schedule, is helpful—sometimes, he may need a few weeks’
lead time to draft a message)
● Edit Sahaja message (crafting versions for blog/newsletter/video voiceover, as needed)
● Ask Sahaja to record voiceover
● Contact stakeholders in Mexico and France to ask if any particular content should be
included (giving a date for this information to be provided)

2 Weeks Before Send Date

● Video goes into production
 ● Choose images to use in newsletter, requesting new ones to be taken as needed (note
that a best practice we’ve followed is only using new images in newsletters whenever
possible)
● Inform translators of production schedule and send Sahaja message/subtitle text for
translation
● Send message to teachers inviting them to share international events (give one week for
submissions)—see 2022 Teachers’ Mailer template in Mailchimp
● Decide what blog snippet or sharing from a teacher will be included at the bottom of the
newsletter (if any)
● Review website content to ensure that any pages you will be referencing are up-to-date
● Determine how content will differ in the 3 languages
○ Generally, only the English version has the International Events section
○ The Spanish version does not have information about English-language
workshops, but the French version does list Longeval’s “workshops in English”
○ Streamline the community update section(s) as needed to give a flavor of the
international nature of the school but also reflect that the majority of people
receiving the message may never have been to Mexico/France
○ Additional content for the Spanish and French versions can be added as
appropriate, based on language-specific happenings/programs at the centers

10 Days Before Send Date

● Draft content (including variations for all 3 languages); When writing content, be sure to
decide on an email subject line and inbox preview text (no more than 150 characters)
and include this in the draft; also be sure to include hyperlinks to the webpage as
appropriate
● Review content to ensure it follows our guidelines and have a meticulous native English
speaker proofread the English version
● Send content to Sahaja for approval (at this stage, the International Events information
may not yet be ready, which is fine; it can be added later and he doesn’t need to
approve it as long as it follows the simple listing format we’ve used before)
● Schedule social media post to share video and, if applicable, Sahaja blog (the video can
be shared on send day or after; blogs are currently sent on Wednesdays)

8-9 Days Before Send Date

● Send final content to translators (deleting any text/making any changes as needed—for
example, if you are sharing a snippet from a blog and the full blog doesn’t exist in
FR/SP, remove this reference); ask that they update hyperlinks to the appropriate
language site
● Request video thumbnail from graphic designer, providing video title and an image to
use (or the video from which she can take a screenshot)
3-5 Days Before Send Date
● Finalize video and upload it to YouTube, marking it PRIVATE or UNLISTED
● Add video descriptions/subtitles in SP/FR
● Add blog (and translations) to website, as needed, scheduling it to post on send date
● Add teacher events to Retreat Guru and finalize International Events text for inclusion in
newsletter
● Format in Mailchimp (some tips below)

2-3 Days Before Send Date

● Review French translation to ensure it follows the content guidelines (Tondanai, our
Spanish translator is incredibly meticulous and I trust his translations 100%; the French
translators have been wonderful, but in the past I have found some inconsistencies,
esp. related to capitalization of brand names and punctuation, so it would be good to
check for these until you have complete confidence)
● Finalize formatting in 3 languages
● Send format proofs to stakeholders, clicking every link to ensure that all are correct and
reviewing on mobile, tablet, and laptop
● Schedule message to be sent (if you are confident that nothing will change, you can use
the timewarp feature so that it is sent to people at a certain time in their timezone; if not,
we’ve found morning in MX/early evening in FR works well)
● Update video status, scheduling it to debut at 7:00 am on send date (or, if you are using
the timewarp feature, keep it as unlisted, and then after the message is sent to all time
zones mark it public so only then will YouTube subscribers get a notification)

Send Date (or a few days later)

● Add the browser link to the Newsletter Archive in all languages
● Share the video on social (not the YouTube link, but upload the video itself, as this is
supposedly better for increasing reach)
● Share the blog on social (as applicable)

Mailchimp
Login Info
We use Mailchimp as our newsletter provider. While there are a few users with access, the
“owner” of this account is:

Username: HridayaYogaFrance
Password: Hridaya2018!
Linked to: marketing@hridaya-yoga.fr
Formatting
● You can find 3 language versions of the newsletter templates in Mailchimp; for the July
newsletter, it’s best to start from the template, as there was a minor change from the
last version of the newsletter (something in the footers was updated); going forward,
you can choose to simply “Replicate” a previous version that you want to work from
● All newsletters are sent to the “MAIN” audience; the different subscribers are tagged as
“English,” “Spanish,” and “French.”
● Be sure to update the campaign link and tracking link in each version of the newsletter:

● Replies to newsletters will go to the Mailchimp audience inbox. A notification will be

sent to Iulia’s email.
● In each edition of the newsletter, I have been alternating the header image between
FR/MX photos, for a sense of balance. But, it’s good for the header image at the top of
the SP & FR newsletters to be an image from the appropriate center (if the Eng
language version doesn’t already reflect that, please consider adjusting)
● If you create the SP/FR versions from an English template, be sure to:
○ Switch out the logo in the header to the appropriate language
○ Copy the appropriate footer text from the SP/FR template and paste it into the
new draft
○ Change the “To:” audience to the appropriate language tag
● When adding the video, if it is “Public” or “Unlisted,” Mailchimp will automatically pull in
the thumbnail. As the YouTube thumbnail is in English and the big red play button
doesn’t look so great, I generally make the video “Private,” copy the link, and then
upload a different thumbnail—generally, the same image used in the main thumbnail,
but without the text and with a play button added; if we don’t have a still of the image
used in the thumbnail, I take a screenshot from the video to use; this is also something
you could request from Selene
● Pro tips:
 ○ Newsletters can get heavy/cut off in Gmail if graphics are too large; it’s a good
idea to size them correctly (I use PhotoScape X to edit images) and compress
them before uploading (a very helpful tool to compress images here)
○ It’s better not to justify text in Mailchimp, as this looks very bad on mobile
○ Refer to our current style guidelines for colors to use, as needed
○ We have a subscription for Epidemic Sounds to use for video creation (login info
is in the credentials spreadsheet)

Midweek Inspiration Mailings

As we have been advised that sending mailings more frequently than every 6 weeks is better
for mailing list hygiene, we have begun sending short messages on Wednesdays 3 weeks after
the newsletter is sent. See a sample here.

This message just includes a link to a short video (a voiceover by Tasha of a snipper from one
of her blog posts) and links to 3 inspiring blogs or other website articles.

There are 2 videos already completed to consider using (but, I think these could be improved),
and 4 more audios that could have videos created from them. I had asked Rossana to work on
one for the Desire audio.

Existing content is here. I’ve gotten good feedback about these messages, and there is room
for expansion—having the video voiceovers translated into FR/SP and sharing in these
languages as well, for example. My sense is that both the French- and Spanish-speaking
audiences would appreciate it and it would take little work on the school’s part.

There is a template for these messages in Mailchimp.