Customer feature: American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) – connecting a community through email

AYSO Region 13 is a volunteer-run recreational soccer league serving the communities of Altadena, Pasadena, and La Cañada in Los Angeles. While its core mission is to develop and deliver quality youth soccer programmes in a fun, family-oriented environment, AYSO’s impact goes far beyond the pitch.

In January 2025, devastating wildfires swept through Los Angeles, destroying much of the town of Altadena. Amid the chaos, AYSO used its EmailOctopus newsletter to send urgent updates as families evacuated their homes. In the weeks that followed, email campaigns became a vital tool to reconnect the community and coordinate local relief efforts.

Today, the newsletter continues to serve as a lifeline, keeping families informed, engaged and united, on and off the field. We spoke with Shanti about AYSO’s strategy that allowed them to make a real difference in their community.

What made you choose EmailOctopus and what specific objectives did you set when you first decided to move your communications to EmailOctopus?

We moved to EmailOctopus because it’s easier to compose plain HTML for a clean, get-to-the-point look.

Once we started putting more time into writing good newsletters, we realized we were spending too much time wrestling with the newsletter platform itself. We tried several bulk mailing services and chose EmailOctopus because it took the least time to compose and edit the newsletter. In particular, it was easy to set up a simple template. We weren’t going to spend time on elaborate design elements, and it turns out that the members were more likely to open and read content that doesn’t look like it was sent by a marketing department.

Many of the families were using low-end smartphones, and the fancy graphics actually impeded the readability. Simple text with simple formatting was what would be successful. With other email tools, you have to really work to remove all the extra bling.

What kind of content do you send in your newsletter, and what’s your main goal?

We wanted to spend our limited time writing and editing, not configuring the tools. During the soccer league in the fall, the weekly newsletter tells members what to expect. There are messages for the children, the parents who volunteer to coach and referee, and the family who are watching from the sidelines. Since everyone sees all the other groups’ instructions, the community develops a sense of shared responsibility.

Did you have any metrics on injury rates or attendance prior to your newsletter initiative? How have these improved since you started the newsletter?

Normally, when you have 2,000 kids running around playing soccer, a few of them are going to hit their heads, sprain an ankle, or fall down and break a wrist. When we started writing the newsletter, it described each week what to expect: In week 1, everybody is lost, so referees and coaches should take extra time to explain. In week 5, the kids are cocky and think they know everything. In week 9, both parents and kids catch “playoff fever” and start taking dangerous risks, so referees should be extra assertive to prevent recklessness. In the first year that we sent this newsletter weekly during the fall soccer league, the number of injuries was half of what it had been the previous year. The parents on the sidelines also seemed to be considerably calmer.

We think that something about knowing what to expect, and knowing that everyone else knows what to expect, relieves some of the anxiety that parents feel when they watch their children get pushed, kicked, and stepped on.

Which EmailOctopus features have saved you the most time and improved consistency with your style guide?

Most subscribers are added to the list by a bulk upload. And the bulk upload is much smoother and easier to use than other email services, which means it’s easy for us to keep it up to date.

Some parents use the sign-up form, and they receive an automated welcome email that invites them to reply and tell us what they expect from the soccer league. Several times a week, a new member takes the time to put their ideas in writing in a thoughtful reply.

Walk us through your editorial process: how do you decide on topic, tone and structure?

We read a lot of email newsletters to study what worked. One of them, the notorious CB Insights by Anand Sandwal, was the most informative. That’s how we chose the tone.

There’s a shared Google document with a table of what topics to cover at what point in the soccer season. On Monday, a call for newsletter topics goes into the leadership Slack channel. It includes a list of what was covered in the previous year’s newsletter at that time. About ⅔ of the topics are recycled from previous years. It’s always good to review the basics, after all.

AYSO has 6 core philosophies: balanced teams, everyone plays, open registration, good sportsmanship, positive coaching, and development over winning. We try to tie a story in each newsletter to one of these core values.

A new topic might also be written when something interesting happens, like a question of whether to award a penalty kick for tripping someone who was offside, or there is new research on sports psychology to share.

Your style guide emphasises “the secret ingredient is love,” plain Helvetica, minimal design and three‑sentence paragraphs. How do you balance craft and consistency while keeping each newsletter fresh?

Newsletters always start with “what you need to know” at the top, with the urgent instructions. We realized that something had gone wrong with youth sports in America – it’s supposed to be fun, after all. So we decided that the newsletter should highlight the fun, with features like quizzes, Netflix recommendations, or photos of kids being kids. Adults need role models, too, with volunteer-of-the-month profiles.

What’s your approach to subject lines and preview text to drive open rates from 35 per cent to 60 per cent and beyond?

We learned to start the subject line consistently with “AYSO.” The open rate has climbed steadily from 45% to 68% in the last 3 years, I think, because we honor the social contract that the newsletter content will be relevant and useful. While the letters are long, following a consistent writing style shows members that we value their time.

One time, we accidentally sent an email to half the people with the subject line “ AYSO soccer playoffs” and there was a 90% open rate, when it was supposed to be “AYSO Register today for fall soccer”, which had a maybe 20% open rate. So the subject line has a big effect on open rates, but we decided to avoid using fake urgency because we want to build long-term trust.

If you include the names of the family’s children in the first sentence, you can skip the preview text altogether.

The members are waiting for a personal invitation, so an email starting with “Harriet and Oswald are invited to come to the skills clinic on Sunday” would get opened, and are about 4x more likely to get Harriet and Oswald to come on Sunday than a message that reads, “you can bring your children to the skills clinic on Sunday.”

Shanti rao, ayso region 13

Beyond open‑rate and click‑rate lifts, have you tracked outcomes such as volunteer recruitment, fundraising or long‑term community engagement?

Volunteer recruitment rates have dramatically increased. In some age divisions, there are now actually more parents wanting to coach than are needed. This was not the case before the newsletter. Region 13 vastly outperforms in volunteerism – for 2,450 kids playing soccer, there are 980 parent volunteers – and volunteering is difficult! You have to get a background check, get fingerprinted, take hours of online classes, and then take in-person classes.

Year-over-year member retention is 75%, up from 50% before the newsletter. Of course, there were other structural changes, but the newsletter is an essential part of all of them.

When it comes to fundraising, the newsletter tells stories about diversity and the scholarship program. About 1 in 3 families chooses to donate to the scholarship fund.

You encourage a human touch – signing off as a board member, framing “your child’s team” and calling parents “members of Region 13.” Have you had any feedback from your readers as a result? How does the human touch translate into success in your case?

One of AYSO’s core philosophies is “positive coaching,” which is actually quite difficult. The newsletter demonstrates using strictly positive language, avoiding “no” and “n’t”. Once parents have been coaching in the system for a few years, they’ll tell us, “ah, I see what you’re doing!”

A few times a year, a parent whose kids are now in college will stop me in the grocery store to tell me that they still enjoy reading the newsletter.

How have you used call‑to‑action placement to spur involvement, volunteer sign‑ups or quiz participation?

We find that parents need about 3-4 weeks to make a decision, so the newsletter is used more to inform and “pre-suade.” Before we ask for an action that leads to a commitment, like “RSVP for the picnic” or “Apply for all-stars,” we tell them, starting a month ahead, that we’ll be asking for it.

Looking ahead, what new content formats or segmentation strategies will you experiment with next?

This year, we want to add short take-away ideas from books that explain the science behind best practices that we want to encourage. The books are Win The Inside Game by Steve Magness, Soccer IQ by Dan Blank, and How We Learn To Move by Rob Gray.

Sometimes, sponsors or related groups ask us to promote their programs, and they spend a lot of time crafting content they want to include. We throw that away and instead write 3 sentences, reflecting our community’s values and voice. Endorsements outperform advertisements.

If you were advising another youth sports organisation, what three rules from your style guide would you insist they follow to build trust, reduce anxiety and foster community with their newsletter?

1. The newsletter should be 95% timely and relevant information to build long-term trust.
2. Use language that reinforces the organization’s core values, and show the members how you are doing that.
3. Demonstrate the organization’s competence by predicting the future – give members a path to follow, and celebrate when people follow that path.