Nonprofit newsletters are a great way to keep your mailing list in the loop about what you’re doing in your organization. But, how do you pull off a successful newsletter without breaking the bank?
In this article, I’ll discuss several nonprofit newsletter software solutions that nonprofits can use to broadcast their messages. Before we jump into the list, it’s important to define what structure a newsletter should take as a nonprofit. In this article I’ll explore the best practices for what content to include in a newsletter and how to make it engaging.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign does the trick for nonprofits and regular businesses in search of more robust marketing automation features. It offers marketing automation, sales automation, and even a module for expediting your customer service process. The platform offers an omni-channel system with support for social media posting, web personalization, and even text messages. It includes machine learning to focus on contributors who are more likely to keep donating or spending money for your organization.
The nonprofit discount from ActiveCampaign gets you 20% off the standard price for whichever plan you choose. Pair this with a CRM that works great for nonprofits to generate the perfect marketing automation system to keep track of loyal donors and bring in more money in the future. The company also has a decent number of blog posts that talk about nonprofit earning options and how to market your charity.
The nonprofit discount requires proof of your nonprofit status. New customers must send an email to sales@activecampaign.com to provide the documentation and get set up with the discount. Previously registered customers can contact help@activecampaign.com to make the switch to the nonprofit plan.
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.
MailChimp
Why we love it: Mailchimp Mailchimp’s pricing is also based on list size; they offer a great tool on their website where you can calculate your monthly price based on your list. They offer a host of integrations with many platforms including Salesforce, Square, WooCommerce and more. One snafu that we find, however, is in audience segmentation and automated email sequences. They are a bit tricky and require a bit more work than simply clicking on multiple list choices at once.
Nonprofit pricing? While they do not offer a discount for nonprofits, there is a free option as long as your list is under 2,000 subscribers.
Constant Contact
Why we love it: From the moment you sign up, you are able to get rolling with email creation. While you can choose to use any one of their pre-designed templates, Constant Contact also offers one-time fees to customize a template based on your visual brand (typically by using your website as a guide). Constant Contact also provides a very easy way to tag those on your list (by donor type, for example) and allows you to send the same email campaign to multiple lists at a time by a simple check-the-box method.
Nonprofit pricing? Yes. Constant Contact offers both 60-day free trials and nonprofit pricing.
Campaign Monitor
Why we love it: For those who are non-committal, Campaign Monitor also offers the option to pay per campaign instead of signing up for an ongoing contract. This can be a great way to test out various platforms. In addition to templates and list segmentation, Campaign Monitor also provides ways to personalize campaigns with dynamic content. This allows you to swap out images or messaging based on the individual subscriber as a way to personalize campaigns. For instance, you may want to send different images to support content depending on whether they are male or female or where their age falls within your donor demographics.
Nonprofit pricing? Yes. Nonprofits are able to contact the sales team in order to take advantage of a 15% discount. Other price monthly price points are provided from between $9 and $149.
Vertical Response
Why we love it: Pre-formatted content blocks make it easy to modify content to match your brand via this email marketing platform. Vertical Response also provides the ability for you to automatically send an email follow-up to those that didn’t open your message the first time. Using autoresponders and automated email options can be a great way to boost your online fundraising and donor engagement. A/B testing, email list forms and integration with Salesforce and Magento are additional features this software provides.
Nonprofit pricing? Yes. There is a nonprofit discount available along with price points from anywhere between $11/month up to $196/month. All prices are based on email list size.
Emma
Why we love it: If you like the option of managing your email campaigns from anywhere, Emma’s free mobile app might appeal to you. With its easy interface, Emma also provides integration for Shopify and Salesforce as well as mailing scores to give you intel on how your campaigns look and/or might perform. Dynamic content is also available on this platform along with list segmentation.
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor offers a discount of 15% to nonprofits, with access to all their tools to create your email campaigns. This includes a drag-and-drop email builder and as well as access to hundreds of templates. You can also create personalized customer “journeys,” which allow you to schedule a “trail of emails” and determine what email is sent when depending on what buttons your visitors click on. Campaign Monitor uses personalized data to allow you to customize each email in order to deliver the right information, to the right audience, at the right time. You can also include sign-up pages on your site in order to grow your audience. Through Campaign Monitor analytics, you can see how your emails are performing in real time with interactive data and analytics on your campaign. Also learn how your audience is engaging and sharing, plus learn the effectiveness of your calls to action.
EmailOctopus
EmailOctopus allows you to create time-sensitive onboarding and drip emails, plus offers a 20% discount to nonprofits. Their rich library of free email templates make it super fast to create campaigns that are responsive to any device. You can build drip email sequences, import contacts, integrate with forms, and generate customized reports. Their segmentation also allows you to create highly targeted email campaigns based on the contact data that matters most to your organization. You can get started for free, and with pricing of less than $40 per month for 20k contacts, they are more affordable than the other platforms out there offering the same features.
AWeber
The AWeber email marketing platform features a myriad of features from prebuilt templates to landing pages, and web push notifications to advanced segmentation. They even have donation and ecommerce landing page builders with options to track the incoming flow of money and generate reports to share with other stakeholders. AWeber has a long list of enterprise clients, however, small nonprofit organizations such as churches, political organizations, and charities enjoy the platform as well.
AWeber serves as an excellent choice for nonprofits due to its fee structure and the wide variety of offerings just for nonprofits. For example, all nonprofits start their plans with three free months. Nonprofits also receive a 25% off discount once that initial free period ends after three months. Additionally, if you have less than 500 subscribers, you can take advantage of AWeber’s free plan.
In terms of resources, AWeber offers an extensive PDF guide for learning how to run your email marketing campaigns as nonprofits and charities. Other than that, the ecommerce modules and form creators come in handy for collecting donations.
To sign up for the nonprofit program from AWeber, fill out the online order form. They ask you to print out the form and fax it to this number: (+1) 215-701-8733. They also request you include all 501(c)(3) paperwork with the fax.
Moosend
Moosend has a long list of agency, retail, and publishing customers, with top names like Vogue, GQ, and Domino’s Pizza. Some nonprofits that use Moosend include WWF, TedX, and Make-A-Wish. Overall, Moosend does a wonderful job of simplifying email marketing, with an all-in-one marketing platform and a beautiful dashboard with drag-and-drop editing, A/B testing, and list segmentation. You receive email automation templates and highly advanced personalization settings to make more of an impact when reaching out for donations or collecting event lists.
Moosend is a respectable email marketing software for nonprofits, seeing as how it offers a 25% discount for all purchases made from Moosend, as long as you provide valid verification information. There’s also a free plan with unlimited emails to keep costs low for smaller nonprofits or those on a budget. The blog provides an in-depth outline of the features that help out nonprofits, such as fundraising campaigns, personalization, and segmentation for specific supporters.
To gain access to the nonprofit discount, go to the pricing page and sign up for the plan you want, just like any other customer. It’s best to sign up for the free plan to begin, since you must then contact the Moosend customer support team to ask for the price reduction. They take care of the discount for you, after which you will see it in your payment dashboard.
Nonprofit pricing discounts aside, it’s also worth mentioning that Moosend also has incredibly an affordable pay-as-you-go email marketing plan for occasional email senders.
Benchmark
Benchmark Email offers a 25% discount for nonprofit organizations. You can choose from a variety of email templates and, if you don’t see one you like, you can always design your own. Benchmark Email also has excellent autoresponder capabilities to help streamline your email campaigns, leaving you time to focus on other tasks. You won’t be able to perform split testing, but you can still monitor the success of your campaigns with detailed reports on how your subscribers responded.
Get Response
GetResponse offers nonprofit organizations an astounding 50% off their purchase. This discount enables you to keep your costs very low while sending out a high volume of emails. You’ll have access to hundreds of templates, making it easy to design a professional-looking email that fits well with your organization’s style. If you have a substantial contacts list, you can upload them directly to GetResponse, which saves you quite a bit of time. GetResponse also integrates with popular social media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, so you can easily share your messages across those platforms.
VerticalResponse
VerticalResponse offers a whopping 10,000 free emails per month for nonprofits, along with several other discounts. Depending on how many emails you send per month, you may be able to enjoy VerticalResponse’s email marketing absolutely free. Nonprofits also receive discounted rates of up to 15% on emails in excess of 10,000. Other discounts are available for creating surveys, and you can enjoy 15% off events planned through VerticalResponse. For an event, you create a website, send out email invitations, and even promote it through your linked social media accounts. Not many other email marketing software programs provide services like this, so if you’re interested, it’s probably a good idea to take a look at what VerticalResponse has to offer.
Drip
Drip is unique in that they deliberately do not offer a drag and drop template builder because they claim that customers have a higher conversion rate using the HTML plain text template. It does, however, offer different templates with which you can customize your emails. With Drip, you can apply tags and send one-off emails or entire campaign sequences, all by using their automation system. Automations can be used to move subscribers in and out of campaigns, apply tags, record conversions, send them to an another application (like a CRM system), and more. Some other features include custom fields, lead tracking, email blasts for a specific purpose, split testing, and performance tracking.
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.
Conclusion
Did you know that the average open rate for nonprofit newsletters is lower than 43.2%? Does that sound low to you? I bet it does. That’s why it’s important that nonprofit newsletters are effective. It’s all about sending quality content to your subscribers. There are many different types of nonprofit newsletter software available. We’ll look at each one in great detail. Whether you’re a small nonprofit managing a budget of 15K/month or a larger one handling 100K/month, there’s email software available for you.