Patriots.com is announcing the launch of its newFan Outreach Program, a project team dedicated to helping Patriots fans connect with their favorite team. With all the NFL news out there, it's tough to sort through everything and find the Patriots news that interests you. The team already offers Patriots Football Weekly, its official newspaper, and Patriots.com is overflowing with information on the team. However, the Fan Outreach Program is taking an innovative and unique approach to supplying fans with Pats news by revamping a number of Email-based newsletters.
"We have newsletters going out monthly during the offseason," explained Fan Outreach Coordinator Lori Baranski, a former Patriots Cheerleader. "They're each geared to a different group of readers, the largest group being members of Patriots.com's Fan Zone."
Patriots.com has recently taken steps to improve its Fan Zone section of the site, which includes its popular Pats Chatter Bulletin Boards along with tons of other features. Users are required to register with Patriots.com before making use of the features on Fan Zone, so if you've been considering joining the community, now's a great time!
"ThePatriots NOW newsletter is specially designed for Fan Zone members, in that it's centered around what's happening on Patriots.com, and exclusive to them. The idea is that fans don't have to be local to get informative news direct from Gillette Stadium," said Donna Spigarolo, the project's director. "We want people to be able to have a voice in what kind of news they're receiving, so we've got a writer monitoring discussions on the Fan Zone bulletin boards. His job is to draw from what's being discussed and put together exclusive content focused on what we know our readers are interested in."
The Fan Outreach Program's design team and writers say coming up with a weekly newsletter for the pool of nearly 50,000 fans currently registered to use the Fan Zone section of Patriots.com is an exciting task, and they're encouraged by the fact that the bulletin boards allow good communication between readers and the staff.
"Our goal is to feature content designed for our readers – it's not a new idea," said Kyle Psaty, a staff writer at Patriots.com. "We're just trying to be more direct about it than other periodicals. We have the benefit of doing everything online, so that expedites the process."
"The whole project kicked off at the end of the 2006 regular season. Our goal is to make Patriots NOW a weekly newsletter by the time the 2007 season is underway, along with two other E-mail based newsletters," Spigarolo said.
In addition to producing the Patriots NOW newsletter, the Fan Outreach Program recently started a newsletter only available to members of Registered Patriots Fan Clubs. Members of the Fan Zone can apply to register a fan club with Patriots.com, as long as there are at least 10 members in their club. That newsletter is also scheduled for weekly production in the coming season.
Signing up for Fan Zone takesless than five minutes, and the exclusive Patriots NOW newsletter is availableFREE to Fan Zone members. To sign up for Fan Zone, just follow this link: **
Sign up for Patriots.com's Fan Zone >> **
