Email Marketing For Nonprofits Strategy: 5 Steps To Build Yours

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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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

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.

  1. 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?

  1. 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.

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.

People who send money to a charity like to know that there is a real change they have made in the world.

  1. 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.

That said, it is a good idea to maintain a clean look to your newsletters so the messages are easy to skim.

Hope you enjoy reading "Email Marketing For Nonprofits Strategy: 5 Steps To Build Yours" :)

What Is Email Sequence?

An email sequence is a chain of emails or a series of messages automatically sent to the contact list. An email sequence may be sent simultaneously through a trigger action or may be set to be sent on prescheduled times.

An email sequence set up with a clear objective can be a supercharging booster for the email marketing campaign. It not only helps to save a lot much time, effort and resources but also provides a marketing campaign with a fair chance to have a higher conversion rate.

Email sequence can be circumstantial or occasional; it can also be based on certain reactions or responsive clicks performed by the recipient of that particular email. For example; in response to an email, a recipient subscribes an email or a newsletter, in response, he or she may be served with a triggered email thanking him for his subscription and inviting him to perform a further step.

Email sequence can also be set on the basis of trigger action upon observing certain responses from the audience like leaving the page, discarding the shopping cart, going through certain browsing habits or buying a product or service. Email sequence can also be set on the basis of prescheduled time intervals; usually, such emails are categorized under the class of autoresponders.

Such kind of automated email sequence can be set up on the basis of time periods like soon after an opt-in, or after passing one hour from reading an email, etc.

An email sequence is set up by the sender, an email marketing professional or any designate, the content is also to be made customized, personalized and attractive, their sending time can be set for automated actions which are to be performed by the software, a plug-in or email service provider.

The email sequence carries a lot of advantages and convenience of operations for the marketing experts.

1 Tip For An Efficient SMS Campaign

Never Forget Customers Who Unsubscribe

Always remember that the unsubscribers were initially interested in your SMS campaign. Do not ignore them if they decide to unsubscribe one day.

You should ask the customers who have left your SMS service campaign, why they did so. However, make sure that you do not annoy them at this stage. As there might be a good reason leading to them unsubscribing.

You might want to have an auto-response text set, for such customers. This should be sent to them as soon as they send the keyword for unsubscribing. This text should include that you are sad that they left your service. You should mention that your brand always has room for improvement and that you value good suggestions from your customers.

While you might be grieving over a customer having left your SMS service, you must remember that they might still buy from your brand and just be a regular unsubscribed customer. Hence, you must engage with them in a positive fashion.

Here Is The One Costly Email Autoresponder Mistake

Forgetting a hyperlink to your website

While it may not actually be too fatal, it's quite a grave mistake to forget this. Super interested readers may want to take the time to spell your website's name and google it themselves, but if you're only beginning, this could actually burn down any bridges between you and your new clientele. It sort of also shows how unprofessional you are about making newsletters.

Especially if you are promoting new products, make sure your newsletter has a link or picture-link the readers can click right to your page on the website showing the said product. This way it drives traffic to your website, plus allowing the readers to browse more of what you have to offer. It is after all much convenient to read more description you've provided on your website, rather than providing the same long explanation on your newsletter.

The newsletter is better kept concise, yet informative. It may take extra effort but it's an effort that dictates the life and death of your business.

1 Tip For Perfecting Your Email Etiquette

You Are the Reflection Of the Company:

Whoever you send emails to, bases his/her idea of your company upon your email. You can call an email a representative of your company or a reflection. Therefore, the email should be perfect, without errors, to mark a solid image of you in front of the receiver.

It should have all the etiquettes starting from not being crude to maintaining professionalism. Based on this one email, the recipient would make the decision of whether he should reach out to your company or not, or whether he should buy the product marketed in your email. The entire reputation of the company is dependent on the person writing the email.

If you’re writing the email yourself, be sure to use correct grammar and sentence structure, and if you’ve appointed someone else to do it for you, do keep an eye on them. Hence, represent your company well and make sure to follow proper etiquette.

1 Tip For Writing Email Marketing Copy That Converts

Readers should be rewarded

The readers should be rewarded for putting up efforts and opening your email. They should see what they had been expecting from the subject line or landing page. You should be showing them the benefits and also the proof of the benefits they are going to get. Often, it is in the form of some link or some statistics of a case study that will show the readers they were right to subscribe to you. Also, that will give the users another reason to stay on board with you.

Or you can also give out a free extra gift to say thank you to them for subscribing. It is beneficial because only two on ten readers open the marketing copy so it is always a win-win situation for you. Building trust is a crucial part of high converting email marketing copies or there is a risk of losing subscribers.