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Email Marketing – Still The Best ROI!

Email marketing might not seem very modern or revolutionary, but despite all the newfangled ways of reaching people these days, email consistently continues to deliver the best Return on Investment (ROI) for many organizations. In fact, it’s 3X more effective than social media.

Email marketing reaches the people who've already expressed some baseline interest in what you do. These are important people! They're way more likely to donate than a stranger on the street. Email marketing is easy, targeted, and full of rich data that will help you learn about them.

 

getting started with an esp

If you haven’t already, sign up for an Email Service Provider (ESP). We highly recommend using an ESP instead of Gmail or Outlook. Gmail and Outlook are not designed to send mass mailings and using them can get you marked as spam (not good!). There are a lot of ESPs out there, but we recommend Mailchimp for small nonprofits.

Mailchimp has many benefits:

• Free to use if you have fewer than 2,000 contacts
• User-friendly interface, making it easy to create attractive email templates (even if you've never done it before)
• A/B testing, which allows you to test different variations of your emails to see which elements inspire higher open and click rates
• Marketing automation, which uses triggers to send out automatic emails at key points (such as when a new donor joins your community)

Mailchimp has extensive documentation on how to get set up with their product. We do, however, want to help you get the most out of your efforts.

 

Building Your List

An easy place to start with your email list is your Flipcause account, or any other engagement tool you use (PayPal, Eventbrite, etc).  Whenever someone makes a donation (or buys a ticket, etc.), they are entering their email address. Compile a list of email addresses from all the services you’ve used to generate engagement. (How to pull a report of email addresses from Flipcause)

There are several ways to expand your email list beyond donors. Be sure to collect email addresses at events and functions. Have your leadership team collect business cards and add them to your email list. You should also include a newsletter sign-up form on your website, and you can get one from your ESP to ensure that signups go directly to your list. (How to get the code from MailChimp)

 

Setting up Email Templates

Unlike regular emails, marketing emails have a visual design. Your email design should reflect your brand and be clean and easy to read. That said, it can take some time to design something that looks great. Luckily, Mailchimp makes it easy with drag-and-drop tools. They also allow you to create and save templates that you can use over and over again. Don't reinvent the wheel by redesigning each email! Create templates that are ready to fill with content and deploy at a moment's notice.

 

what and how to write

Even though you're unlikely to get direct responses to the emails you send out, you should still think of them as a conversation. Treat emails like you're going on a date: avoid babbling on and on about your accomplishments. Your supporters already like you enough to want to receive your emails, now make them feel special! Tell them about the impact they've had on your organization, or give them ideas about how they can help. At the very least, provide information that they will find useful or interesting.

Email topic ideas:

• Monthly updates/newsletters
• Welcome email to new donors
• Event announcements and updates
• Campaign announcements and updates
• Success stories
• Special announcements

 

Quick Tips:

• Do you like to scroll? Neither do your readers. Keep it short! The days of the epically long newsletter are over. Include your main message and call-to-action above the fold. This means they see the pertinent information and action link before they have to scroll.
• Focus the email on one 'ask' or announcement. This keeps your message clear and prevents the audience from getting distracted or unsure of what to do or come away with.
• Make sure your call-to-action button is clear and descriptive and easy to find.
• Don't reinvent the wheel! Create templates you can reuse instead of creating something new each time.
• 53% of people read their email on mobile devices. Make sure your email looks good on a mobile device before sending it out! The good news, Mailchimp email templates are mobile-optimized by default.

 

Advanced Email Marketing Tools

Mailchimp and other ESPs are pretty sophisticated these days. They now have tools including A/B Testing, list segmentation, and analytics. These tools can help you increase the number of people who are opening, reading, and clicking on your emails.

If you’re already sending great emails but want to explore ways to increase their effectiveness, here are some additional tips:

 

List Segmentation

Think back to your Donor Personas. Should all of them receive the same emails? While there will be some emails you’ll want to send to everyone on your email list, you’ll also want to target others. List segmentation allows you to upload multiple subscriber lists according to all sorts of criteria. Each of your supporters can appear on multiple lists, but they’ll never receive more than one email, even if you select several lists to send an email to.

Examples include:

• Lapsed donors
• Major donors
• Non-donors
• Event Attendees
• Volunteers
• Partners

The more targeted the lists can get, the more people will feel like you’re speaking directly to them. The more people feel like you’re speaking directly to them, the more likely they’ll take action. Studies show that personalized emails can increase click-through rates by 14%.

 

Examples of how to use segmentation:

1. After their big annual event, Camp Wonder sent three separate emails:

• • one to their volunteers, thanking them for their work;
  • one to the event attendees, thanking them for their contributions;
  • and one to all the supporters who couldn’t come, updating them on the event’s success.

2. After their camp programming ended for the year, Camp Wonder sent separate emails to residents of each of the three cities they serve. Each email showed how many children in that city Camp Wonder helped this year.

3. For their end of year appeal, Muttville sent separate emails to people who’ve adopted dogs and financial supporters. While everyone was asked to give, adopters received well wishes for them and their pets in the new year, and donors received a graphic showing how many dogs their gift had helped.

 

A/B Testing

How do you know which subject line will entice the most opens? Which photo of a cute dog should you use? What should your call-to-action button say, and what color should it be? It’s hard to guess what will be most effective when it comes to emails – but you don’t have to! A/B testing is a built-in feature of Mailchimp and other email providers. It allows you to test different versions of email components on a small test batch of recipients. It then tallies which version got the best responses and automatically sends that version to the rest of your email list.

 

Reporting & Analytics

Another reason to use an ESP (as opposed to sending through Gmail or Outlook) is the reporting function. Email tools give you powerful insights into your reader’s behavior and to modify your messaging accordingly. You can even generate a list of people who didn't open, and send them a different campaign! If you choose email as a tactic, your reports will be where you track your chosen KPI.

 

 

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Common Email Marketing KPIs

• Opens
• Click-through rate
• Emails sent

 

How to measure

All email service providers provide reporting on your email campaigns. If you are using Mailchimp, click on the 'Reports' button at the top of the page.

 

Next, we’ll dive deeper into email marketing and explore how to increase conversions from your emails.

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