President Raleigh Ragan (yes, it does sound very close to a certain world leader) first started working on newsletters back in 1988, when he produced a pro-bono newsletter for the non-profit Wolf Sanctuary in St. Louis. At this time, desktop publishing was still in its infancy, so this newsletter was put together the old-fashioned way: by physically laying out the issue with hot wax and pasting text and images into place.
Raleigh’s honed his marketing and corporate communications expertise through stints as a product manager at a direct marketing company that mailed over one million pieces of mail a day, as a co-founder and owner of Ozzie Smith’s Sports Academy, as the Director of Marketing and PR for the International Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum, and as a product manager for an internet startup back in the crazy dot com days.
Striking out on his own in 1998, Raleigh created a firm that provided clients with the services and resources of an internal marketing and corporate communications department — without the fixed costs. Newsletters quickly became the company’s specialty as clients were delighted they could outsource this incredibly effective (yet challenging to produce) communications tool. Raleigh takes great pride in the fact that The Newsletter Experts now makes it EASY for companies all over the country to produce better employee newsletters.
A bit of an Anglophile, he enjoys several daily cups of tea imported from London and you’ll find his office and home littered with mementos from many trips to England, Scotland and Ireland. When he’s not busy working with staff to oversee the production of numerous client newsletters, Raleigh likes to recharge by running or biking several times a week through the woods and fields of a nearby 550+ acre park.
A lover of the written word, Raleigh writes novels in his spare time and is currently shopping a thriller. Also an enthusiastic film buff, for more than a decade Raleigh and his wife have hosted an annual Oscar party complete with red carpet and awards.
