Engaging donors is essential for all nonprofits. There are numerous ways to do so, from hosting fundraising events to writing thank you letters, but all nonprofit organizations should prioritize marketing – specifically, email marketing.
Email marketing is one of the best channels for communicating with your supporters. Nearly half of donors prefer to receive updates through email. With a robust email marketing strategy and great emails, you can build a solid donor base, tell your story, and collect more donations. But what’s the best way to get your message across and send effective emails?
This article covers seven tips to help you excel in email marketing.
1. Improve Your Email Deliverability
Before you start sending out emails, improve the deliverability of them. Email is a great marketing and communication tool, but with the ever-growing amount of spam, you must ensure your emails end up in donors’ inboxes. Fortunately, there are easy ways to improve deliverability.
Clean Up Your List
You might think that the more subscribers you have, the better off you are. However, that’s not the case with email marketing. Subscribers who never open your emails can actually hinder your deliverability.
The more subscribers you have who do not open emails, the lower your open rate is, which tells email providers your emails aren’t as useful. Keeping people on your list who do not interact with you may put you at risk of being marked as spam, too.
So, you’ll want to clean up your list by removing unengaged email subscribers. Wait about six months before removing people from your list. You can also email those people to ask if they want to stay subscribed.
By cleaning up your list, you improve your email reputation and engagement metrics. Plus, having fewer subscribers may save you money!
Include an Unsubscribe Link
When cleaning up your list, you need to ensure it’s easy for people to unsubscribe. It’s required by law.
Many email providers will automatically include an unsubscribe link for you. It’s usually in the footer of the email, but check it just to make sure. You may be marked as spam if it can’t be easily found. So, add a clear unsubscribe link to comply with legal requirements and eliminate spam practices.
Get Rid of the No-Reply Email Address
No-reply email addresses are standard for many organizations, but they shouldn’t be for yours! No-reply addresses discourage conversation and questions, which you don’t want to do with donors or supporters. Plus, people who reply to an email anyway will hit a wall. Spam filters will notice this and suspect you are a spammer.
2. Build an Effective Email Newsletter
Email newsletters work for many organizations, and your nonprofit is no exception. It’s one of the most cost-effective and easy ways to keep in touch with donors. However, there are some best practices to remember:
- Set a schedule: Almost half of nonprofits who send email newsletters do them monthly, but you can opt for quarterly, weekly, or twice a month. If you’re starting out, try different days, times, and frequencies to see what works best. Then, make sure you are consistent with your set schedule.
- Promote the newsletter: You should share an easy signup form for your email newsletter. Add it to your website, footer, social media, donation forms, and event materials.
- Create a template: Make a branded template for your newsletter. Avoid distracting design elements and include visual brand elements such as your logo, colors, and fonts.
- Give it a name: Give your newsletter a creative, catchy title. It will let subscribers know what the email is about and what they can expect before opening it.
- Segment it: Email segmentation is the process of grouping subscribers to send tailored messages. It’s great for increasing engagement and delivering the most relevant content. For example, you can segment your email newsletter by one-time donors, recurring donors, and volunteers.
3. Use Personalization
Personalization is one of the most effective methods for increasing engagement. For instance, emails with a personalized subject line are 26% more likely to be opened.
You probably personalize your emails in some way already, but here are some more ways to use personalization:
- Include a recipient’s name in the subject line or preheader.
- Craft a first-person, personalized call to action.
- Greet the recipient by using their first or preferred name.
- Use locations by sending relevant information about or in a specific location.
- Acknowledge a recent gift or activity.
If you’re segmenting your subscribers, you can personalize based on donor level or their actions. For example, if you email recurring donors, you can say something like, “Thanks to consistent support from donors like you.”
4. Fine-Tune the Signup Process
Email marketing depends on where and how subscribers sign up. As a best practice, you want to make the process as easy as possible. Create a simple form asking for a name and email address, and then add the form to your website.
You’ll want this signup form to be visible from your home page. Add it to your website’s footer, menu, or donation form as an opt-in.
Once someone has signed up, start by sending a welcome email. This email should thank them for joining your list and provide information on the next steps. You can also share some additional resources and ways to stay in touch.
Ensuring the signup process is simple and straightforward gives your subscribers a great experience. It also allows you to receive clear consent to send emails. As mentioned, you should avoid spam-like practices to help your email deliverability and engagement, so send emails only to those who sign up for them.
5. Share Meaningful Content
The effectiveness of your nonprofit’s email marketing will also depend on what you’re sending to subscribers. Fortunately, email content doesn’t have to be tricky. You can reuse much of the content you’re creating and share what your organization is doing.
Think about what’s important to subscribers. Why did they sign up for your email list? Have they already donated? Look at your subscriber list to see what types of people are on it and consider what they want to hear about. That content could be upcoming events, volunteer and staff shoutouts, donor thank you or appreciation, a success story, or an appeal. You can also share blog posts, reports, videos, and images.
Consider how it should be shared once you’ve figured out what information to send. Most emails should not take long to read. You should also make them skimmable, using headers, emphasized text, and avoiding long paragraphs. Remember to include personalization!
6. Consider Your Design
Besides what’s in your email, consider how it looks. Design can significantly impact your nonprofit’s emails. For example, if the design has low contrast, it could be difficult for subscribers to read, resulting in low engagement.
Email design best practices include:
- Use contrast, like a light-colored background and dark text.
- Use a responsive email template that is mobile-friendly.
- Be consistent and feature branded elements.
- Have a clear call to action button.
- Use a visual hierarchy, like a zig-zag pattern.
- Use borders, subheadings, lists, or different background colors to break up text.
7. Track Performance
Keep an eye on email performance to see what’s working and what’s not. This valuable insight can impact what types of emails you send and how often. It can also inform you of potential areas of improvement. For example, if you have a low open rate, you may need to tweak your subject line or preheader text.
Some more metrics to track include:
- Open rates. This metric tells you how many people opened your email. If this is low, reduce send frequency, alter subject lines, or clean up your subscriber list. The average nonprofit open rate is about 28.5%.
- Click-through rates. This metric tells you how many people clicked on a link in the email (that link could be any link in the email, including your call to action). If this metric is low, you may need to change your content or call to action. The average nonprofit click-through rate is around 3.3%.
- Unsubscribe rates. This metric tells you how many people unsubscribe from your email list. Consider the signup process, send frequency, or content if this metric is high. The average nonprofit email unsubscribe rate is 0.19%.
- Donations. Your email marketing efforts should increase donations over time, especially for Giving Tuesday and end-of-year email fundraising campaigns. Look for how many donations can be attributed to your email campaigns, especially when you’re making an ask.
Be sure to track email performance often to understand if your emails are effective and what you should focus on.
Excel in Nonprofit Email Marketing
Email marketing is an effective channel for communicating with donors and sharing your message. Use these tips to boost your email marketing. You’ll have a higher reach, stronger donor relationships, and increased donations.
Remember, a good donation platform can help you find data, segment donors, and offer a donation page or donation form for your email call to action. GiveWP is a great solution here, and you can get started for free. Learn more or try it out now!
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