How to get the most out of email marketing when you are a nonprofit? GiveCentral gives you 10 keys to success -tried and tested methods to increase online giving.
Taking charge of the emailing of a nonprofit is not easy. Beyond the traditional donation campaigns, it is necessary to manage the donors’ newsletter, emergencies, etc. In this situation, it is often difficult to take the time necessary to develop your email marketing strategy. Let’s dig and uncover some methods that can help you set the right foundation for your online giving campaigns using email marketing.
1. Create and maintain contact lists.
For your subscriber lists, quality is better than quantity!
For your email marketing to be effective, the main thing is to send emails to interested contacts. For that, you must respect some rules:
- Never buy databases,
- Ensure the consent of your contacts,
- Set up actions to collect qualitative emails,
- Maintain your contact lists.
2. Create an attractive newsletter subscription form
Your form should be as simple as possible so as not to discourage your donor.
Ask only the necessary information during the first contact! The email address of course, but also the first name if you plan to personalize your mailings.Your form should be as simple as possible so as not to discourage your donor. Ask only the necessary information during the first contact! The email address of course, but also the first name if you plan to personalize your mailings.
To encourage them to register, do not hesitate to offer them exclusive information or to highlight the immediate benefits of their commitment to your association.
3. Newsletter subscription
Most email marketing tools need you to use a double opt-in form.
On the other hand, no restriction on the way in which the form is put forward! If you wish, you can create it as a popup or as a widget. If you already have a community on social networks, do not hesitate to take advantage of it. For nonprofits, Facebook is the perfect place to promote its newsletter.
4. Welcome visitors with a welcome email
Once your contact is registered, send them a welcome email !
This is the type of email that has the best open and click rates. The perfect opportunity to introduce yourself and make that first qualitative contact between your nonprofit and its new subscriber.
5. Harvesting offline contacts
To collect new email addresses during events, we strongly advise you to use a tablet with a digital registration form to keep the consent of your donors. GiveCentral’s donor management software allows has great provisions for adding and managing donor and prospect data. GiveCentral Go is a POS device that lets run event fundraising and data collection successfully in no time. For ease of use, you could also automate communications using pre-set templates to reach out to different categories of donors.
If you cannot opt for this solution, you can also create paper bulletins containing one or more check boxes.
6. Maintaining your contact list
That’s it, new subscriber regularly arrive in your contact lists. The work is not finished! Here are some tips for keeping a qualitative contact list:
Identify inactive contacts and set up cleaning operations
Locate the contacts who no longer interact with your emails: perhaps they have changed their email address or they are no longer interested in your nonprofit. So you can remove them from your lists.
Remember to do this cleaning regularly by determining a fixed period during which your users will not have interacted with your emails.
7. Process responses to newsletters
When sending newsletters, remember to configure a return email address if your subscribers wish to contact you directly! Otherwise, they may be frustrated that they do not get a response or have to look for your contact information.
8. Enrich your knowledge of your subscribers
Ask what interests them (types of events they would like to learn about, their location, news from your team)
The best way to send engaging content to your subscribers is to ask them what interests them! Do not hesitate to send them surveys to find out their preferences in terms of content, frequency … You can even create different lists according to their wishes.
9. Send quality content
Prepare to send your email.
First of all, you need to set specific goals for your email. What will it be used for? As a nonprofit, you have many possibilities:
- Generate direct donations,
- Give information and talk about your actions,
- Strengthen the relationship with your volunteers or donors,
- Reactivate your inactive contacts,
- Inform about an emergency action.
Once you have your goal in mind, you can choose who to talk to. You can use segmented lists according to the commitment of registrants to your association for example.
10. Creating your email
We advise you to always keep an identifiable sender donors can recognize immediately. Otherwise, your subscribers could take you for spamming and delete your email directly.
When we see an email in an inbox, we first read the sender, the subject and the preheader of the email. These are therefore essential elements to work on, since it is on them that your first impression is based!
You need to take care of your email object and your preheader. To keep the interest of your readers, prefer to create a short email subject that clearly summarizes the content of your email. It is even better if it is engaging.The preheader should serve as additional information .
Conclusion
Whether you have 10 or 100,000 members, it is important to stay in touch with them!
Don’t have an online giving solution yet? Schedule a call with our team for free consultation.
Last modified: January 4, 2020
