Most animal shelters feature pets available for adoption on their website. But sending email newsletters to showcase adoptable pets is another good way to reach animal lovers.

Shelters can include a section on adoptable pets in a general newsletter or set up an email newsletter just for adoptable pets.

Animal lovers can volunteer to send a newsletter on their own on behalf of homeless pets. See Dogs Need Homes . . . and sometimes cats for an excellent example of animal lovers helping homeless pets. See how Carol Wilson, who owns a communications and security company in Mississippi with her husband, started this newsletter by sending 50 emails to find homes for 3 puppies. She received 1000 responses thanks to her animal-loving business contacts who forwarded that email to their contacts! Take a look at the archives of these newsletters to see the excellent photos, complete information on health, vaccines, and a well-written story for each pet. You feel you know that pet with the information she presents. Adoptable pets from five shelters are currently represented.

This is something anyone can do on behalf of the shelters in your area.

What about a kids’ volunteer group to do this? A photographer, a writer, and a computer guru could make an enormous impact on your community’s homeless pets.

A multitude of email newsletter services is available which allow you to set up an original layout in template form. This makes it easy and quick to set up your newsletter after the initial layout is done.

Any business with an email contact list can set up a similar list. For example, website hosting companies, internet service providers, pet food stores, veterinarians, and even grocery stores send email newsletters to clients. A company can send an initial email to clients informing them of its animal adoption effort and ask recipients to unsubscribe if they don’t wish to receive the notices. To expand the audience, ask other companies to mention your email newsletter in emails to their clients and so on.

For all newsletters:

Include “forward to a friend”

Include instructions or a link to sign up for the newsletter. When your newsletter subscribers forward to their friends, you want the friends to sign up also.

I use Aweber for our email updates.