Outreach Case Studies
Green Home Challenge Email Course
Fewer people were attending our in-person education events, so we wanted a new approach to our Earth Month environmental education. Hoping to reach a broader audience and provide actionable content people could do at home, I created an email course. It guided participants through simple changes to their home and habits that would reduce their environmental impact. After a successful first year, I adapted and repeated the program several times, once as an online course.
Email Course
Course Content
Participants received emails with environmental information each week during Earth Month. Each email identified a task to make their home greener and provided guidance and resources.
Content covered multiple sustainability topics, including:
- recycling
- waste reduction
- pollution prevention
- habitat restoration, and
- hazardous waste.
We reached three times the audience we had at our most successful in-person educational events, with high email open rates and rave reviews. Participation more than doubled the second year.
Event Promotion
The course largely promoted activities already planned by environmental teams at the city, including drop-off recycling events and in-person natural gardening courses. I planned the email cadence and content around promoting these events. I also organized an Earth Fair staffed by community environmental organizations.
Gamified Online Course
After running the Green Home Challenge as an email course for three years, I adapted and expanded the content into a self-paced, gamified online course. This allowed people to join the program any time, not just before or during April. As this version was run during the pandemic, it was less important to promote events.
