Email marketing is a major marketing type offering a high return on investment. That’s why people use email marketing for nonprofit strategy. We have listed 5 easy steps to help you build an email for nonprofit strategy.
Plan ahead a series of emails for your campaign
Before you even send out your first email newsletter, plan ahead a series of email newsletters that you would send to your new subscribers. Plan ahead how each email would be sent in succession to your newly subscribed patron.
Planning ahead a series of email newsletters is a smart move that can get your new subscriber or patron familiar with your NPO.
This means a series of key emails that tell your story, why you do what you do, and how your patron’s new patronage is helping make a difference.
The creative freedom in how you send out these emails in succession is entirely up to you and therefore, careful planning is necessary.
However, a welcome email is definitely the first thing to send and everybody would agree to this. In your welcome email, use a personalisation and thank your new patron for joining your cause.
Use a dedicated tool or software to help align many projects
When launching a campaign, many things need to be regarded. First of all, your creative content is key to the success of your campaign.
But the design for your email newsletters is also as equally important to send out the right vibe in your messages. At the same time, you want all the tools for analytics so you can tell just how successful your campaign would be.
Meanwhile, you also want to conduct tests and make survey forms. Doing all of these tasks separately would only cause you a massive headache.
All these require special tools and expertise to deliver. What’s more, how you present your email matters a lot.
Hence use email marketing platform featuring design and built options. These features support increased email engagement rates.
Per an article on the Donor Box website, the entire presentation must be appealing, with enticing characters, well-spaced texts, appealing images, buttons and links.
Therefore, if you use the service of a dedicated tool or software to help you navigate around, all of your plans and designs can remain in one place.
A lot of dedicated software companies also assist clients in getting the most out of their powerful tools! Every penny you spend is worth every dollar you’ll get back in return.
Really think about your subject lines
When operating a non-profit organisation, your budget isn’t always high and you need to be really smart with how you spend every dollar.
With that being said, an email marketing campaign is one of the most affordable and cost-effective marketing campaigns there is.
However, you still need your email newsletters to get opened by the recipients of your campaign news, but this isn’t something that you can actually control.
Therefore, it is important that you create subject lines that will grab the attention of your email recipients. It doesn’t mean you need to be bombastic. You just need to be clear, concise and to the point.
When the message in your subject line is clear, your recipient can guess what the email is about and will be more willing to open up your email. After all, they do care about the cause that has made them join you, right?
Build a real relationship
If you are running a non-profit organisation, you need patrons to help your cause to make the world a better place. Of course, it is their financial patronage that makes all the difference.
But you aren’t a cold-hearted business entity, right? Therefore, try to create a real bond with your patrons.
When commercial businesses are hard at work creating a parasocial relationship with their loyal customers, you should also be able to make a real bond that sees your patrons as people.
As a non-profit, your donors have provided resources to further your social agenda. Most probably due to your effort to appeal to their emotions.
Thus you should continue this trends. Personalising correspondence should thus reflect this sentiment.
Therefore, you can also send your subscribers updates and happy news about the people they have helped by donating to your NPO.
If your cause is about the environment, send new updates about how your patron’s donation has made a change in the same field.
Per an article on the Campaign Monitor, personal notes increase donor response by about six fold. But for it work, the messaging has to be relevant with the course.
People who send money to a charity like to know that there is a real change they have made in the world.
Be reasonable and don’t spam your subscribers’ inbox
When your campaign is very successful, you are sure to have many stories you want to share with your subscribers and patrons.
However, it is still a good idea to maintain reason and not bombard their inbox with your messages every other day.
People tend to want to unsubscribe when they feel that they are getting too many messages from a particular brand or business entity.
Since you don’t want to lose anybody in your database, try to reduce the frequency of your email sends. And when you do send an email, make sure they are not more than 500 words.
Your email newsletter shouldn’t be an article in itself. Rather, it should be a preview of a real article on your website or blog site.
You can use various ways to ensure that subscribers don’t spam your emails.
Avoid embedding directly or attaching your newsletter or forms on the email. Again, avoid sending mails from a no-response address.
Per an article on the HubSpot blog page, limit communicating with contacts outside your verified emailing list. Formally introduce new subscribers by sending informative emails, while allowing opt-outs.
That said, it is a good idea to maintain a clean look to your newsletters so the messages are easy to skim.
