James Green

Parent newsletters that parents actually read

I've been a school principal for 6 years. In that time I've sent hundreds of newsletters. I know from the email analytics that the average open rate is about 35% and the click-through on anything inside is about 8%. This year I've been writing newsletters differently — with AI assistance — and the open rate is up to 58%. The change isn't that AI writes better newsletters. It's that I write them faster so I put more thought into the content. Before, I'd spend 2 hours writing the newsletter. Mostly spent staring, writing, deleting, writing again. Now I do a 15-minute voice note of everything I want to communicate that week, paste the transcript, and Claude helps me structure and draft it in about 20 minutes. I then personalise heavily. That freed-up time goes into thinking about what's actually worth communicating and what tone is right. The content has gotten more genuine. Less formal. More like how I'd actually talk to a parent at the gate. Parents have noticed. Two separate parents have mentioned "the newsletters feel different this year." That's the goal.