Non-profit emails are becoming increasingly important as a form of marketing, and as such it is important that they be well crafted.
This article will show you some common mistakes that nonprofits make with their emails and how to avoid them.
Mailchimp
Using autoresponders — automated series of emails triggered by customer behavior — can not only save you time, but they also increase response rates and overall engagement, such as clicks, forwards, and newsletter shares on social media.
There are a number of different campaigns you can automate, such as welcome series for when people first sign up to your mailing list, thank-you emails for when someone donates, and reengagement emails when someone hasn’t interacted with your brand for a set period of time.
Mailchimp provides autoresponder templates for specific types of campaigns.
Setting up these autoresponders yourself and knowing which emails to add next in the sequence can be challenging.
Mailchimp provides autoresponder templates for campaigns such as welcome series so you don’t have to set up those steps yourself. All you have to do is either create the emails or edit the email templates for your purpose.
Flodesk
Nonprofits get a 50% discount using Flodesk, which means just $19 a month for unlimited emails, contacts, and features. Flodesk never penalizes you for successfully growing your list. This relatively new platform is aimed at helping small teams create emails that look great effortlessly.
The intuitive drag-and-drop email builder allows you to customize emails quickly, while the email and form template gallery offer you a head start. While Flodesk’s curated designs are beautiful, their layout blocks really set them apart. Layouts help you to create custom graphics, design collages, and specialty signatures right within the email builder—no other design software required.
Once your email is sent, its layout blocks are responsive, meaning they’ll look great on any device and in any inbox. Flodesk’s workflows and stunning forms (which can even be used without a website) are also top features. Flodesk connects with 3,000+ apps through Zapier to automate tasks. Lastly, you don’t need a credit card for a free 30-day trial.
Campaign Monitor
It’s important to keep track of how your email campaigns perform so you know which ones are effective, which ones you need to improve, and which aspects you can optimize to improve ROI.
When you’re running email marketing campaigns at nonprofits, this ROI often relates to donations rather than purchases. That’s why it’s key to have the tools in place to monitor which campaigns have led to donations.
Campaign Monitor’s integration with apps such as Salesforce allows you to track campaign metrics, such as donations.
Campaign Monitor’s App Store allows you to download add-ons that you can then use to extend the email marketing solution’s capabilities to track donations through customer relationship management solutions, such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This allows you to see which email campaigns have led to donations.
MailerLite
While you may think it’s OK to send most emails to all subscribers as the end goal is the same — to get them to donate — that’s not a good approach if you want your donors to feel appreciated and to trust your organization.
Imagine if you received an email thanking you for attending an event you definitely didn’t go to. Would you trust that organization with your money? That’s why it’s important to segment your customers.
MailerLite lets you create segments based on a wide range of criteria.
MailerLite lets you segment email lists based on more than one condition and according to a wide range of criteria.
For example, you can create a segment for people who attended a fundraising event for the first time who have never donated. Then you can send them very relevant emails that are tailored to their specific circumstances and past behavior.
SendGrid
If you want your recipients to feel like you care about them and you aren’t just after their money, you need to treat them like humans, not numbers on a list.
Automation is great for saving time, but you need to use it hand in hand with personalization to ensure your donors get the best service.
SendGrid lets you add tags to your email to personalize the message.
SendGrid’s email editor makes it easier to personalize emails by letting you add any information you collect on your donors to your message.
For example, you can choose to add simple demographic data such as name, age, and location, or custom fields such as which causes they like to donate to or events they’re interested in. SendGrid automatically pulls in this data from your contact list so you don’t have to manually add it yourself for each recipient.
Sendinblue
Tailoring the content of your email to different stages of the donation lifecycle process is another key way you can personalize content and send your subscribers more relevant content.
This means instead of creating multiple emails for different target audiences, you can create one email and customize it according to past behavior.
Sendinblue’s email editor allows you to display different content blocks to different recipients.
Sendinblue’s email editor includes dynamic content functionality whereby different content blocks in an email are shown to different users depending on certain conditions. This can include demographic data, such as location, or past user behavior, such as whether they’ve donated before.
Benchmark Email
It’s important to send a variety of content to your subscribers instead of always asking them for donations or sharing recent news. You could share case studies of how donations have helped charitable causes or create informative videos about work other nonprofits do to help their cause.
Benchmark Email’s templates are all fully customizable.
To create these emails, it’s useful to have access to a lot of different types of templates, and to be able to tailor each one to your specific purpose. Benchmark Email provides a wide range of templates organized by industry and occasion.
You can fully customize each template, deleting, editing, and moving existing content blocks, or adding new content such as images, videos, buttons, navigation bars, and email permission reminders.
SendPulse
If you want to reach your ultimate goal of generating more donations from your email marketing campaigns, you need to continually grow your list. One of the best ways to do that is to create sign-up forms for your website so that people who are browsing your site can easily give you their details.
SendPulse lets you choose the type of sign-up form you want to create.
When creating these forms, it’s important to think about layout and page placement so that you can generate sign-ups that don’t disturbing visitors’ flow.
SendPulse lets you choose the type of form you want to create, for example:
- Embedded
- Pop-up
- Floating
- Fixed
You can choose either a vertical or horizontal layout for the form, and you can also edit the notification text the person receives after sign-up.
SendPulse also lets you track the success of the form in generating sign-ups using either Google Analytics or Yandex.Metrica.
ActiveCampaign
Email marketing works best when it’s integrated with all of your other marketing channels. That’s one of the principle email and digital marketing tips you’ll read in any Marketing 101 tips.
For example, you could use social media to generate more sign-ups for your email newsletter.
Or you could use SMS marketing and push notifications to quickly let customers know about new campaigns or urgent appeals that need their attention.
ActiveCampaign lets you communicate with donors in different ways from the same place.
As ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one marketing suite, it provides this functionality in one channel. By integrating multiple channels in one platform, you can communicate with your donors in different ways from the same place.
For example, if they have signed up for a fundraising event, you can schedule an SMS to be sent the morning of the event to remind them.
GetResponse
People are busy, and they receive tons of emails every day.
It doesn’t matter that you work for a nonprofit organization, you still need to create engaging content that will cut through the noise. It’s not an easy task, but there are a couple of ways you can make your life easier.
First of all, the subject line is crucial. You need to personalize the subject line and make it interesting enough to entice people to open your newsletter. Secondly, you need to test different elements to see what resonates with your subscribers.
Every organization is different, so what works for one nonprofit might not work for another.
GetResponse lets you test different email options to see what works.
GetResponse provides a wide variety of options for A/B testing your campaigns, including subject line, delivery time, the from field, and content. It lets you test five different subject lines for each message and personalize each one.
Salsa Labs
Salsa’s email marketing tool, Engage, offers organizations like yours online marketing solutions tailor-made for nonprofit needs.
With the platform’s robust email builder, your nonprofit can expertly craft email campaigns. Drag and drop text boxes, images, buttons, and more to customize the layout of your emails. You can even insert merge fields to tailor the text of your emails to their recipients.
Once you’ve designed your email template, you’ll be able to preview it as a mobile, tablet, or desktop user to ensure it’s optimized for all of your supporters no matter how they access it. Your team can create custom email segments for your different campaigns based on factors like donor type, interaction history, campaign, giving recency, donation frequency, and more.
Not only that, but when your nonprofit uses Salsa Engage, you’ll also have access to Salsa Engage’s online fundraising, online advocacy, and peer-to-peer fundraising software.
Zoho Campaigns
It’s important to get to know your donor base, to ensure you have up-to-date details so you can contact them in a timely fashion, and to make sure all interactions are stored in one place.
That way, you can make sure only one person is reaching out to your donors, that you’ve recorded their contact preferences (such as whether they prefer you to reach out via email or phone), and that you have all relevant previous interactions on hand in order to provide better service.
This email marketing software also brings together all donor information and interactions with your brand into one place.
Zoho Campaigns centralizes all donor information and interactions.
Zoho Campaigns has a set of contact management features that make it suitable for nonprofits. You can add custom fields to your sign-up forms and your contact management functionality to make sure you record the specific information relevant to managing your donors.
The information you can add to this contact management hub is entirely customizable, but some useful details include:
- Email segments and lists on which they are included
- Campaigns they’ve been sent
- Updates to their contact details
- Social media activity
Conclusion
Email is one of the most affordable and effective forms of marketing for nonprofits. From promotional campaigns to welcome series, email marketing can increase online donations, build emergency gift funds, or keep your donors engaged with your nonprofit.