Are you betting on LUCK … or skill with nonprofit email?

in Email,Marketing for Nonprofits

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Is the luck of the Irish constantly with you and ensuring the success of all your email campaigns?

Or are you more practical in your approach to nonprofit email?

I read a good post in the Marketing Sherpa blog that highlighted the “3 critical factors of ‘lucky’ email campaigns.” They are:

1 – Offer

2 – Audience

3 – Design

Offer – a factor too often overlooked

It seems that folks within nonprofit organizations don’t think in terms of “offers” too much. That sounds too “sales-y” and something for-profit companies need to deal with.

On the contrary. Even a pure cultivation email ought to have an offer … a call-to-action.

Perhaps you have donors and members click to read the rest of the story on your website.

Or have a poll for them to take (embed it within the email if you can). Have you asked them what their favorite topics are lately? You’ll be able to segment your list with that data. And more targeted emails typically get higher response!

Give them another step to take. Give them something to do besides delete your email.

Audience – are subscribers interested

The point here is how engaged your readers are. Have you beaten them down with batch-and-blast campaigns that aren’t relevant to enough subscribers?

Not everyone unsubscribes. You may still have hundreds or thousands of disinterested subscribers. And that hurts performance.

Scrub your list. Offer them a chance to get off your list (sounds bizarre but it can help delivery and other email metrics). Ask everyone to opt in again.

Clean the list before launching renewed efforts to build your nonprofit email list.

The quality of your list is more important than the size.

Design – appearances matter

Make time every month or so to look at design. Is it cluttered? Does anything show up as text in subscribers’ in box, or is it all “x’s” where the graphics should be? Is the font large enough and simple? Is there enough white space? Will this get delivered or does the design hinder?

I recommend you read the Marketing Sherpa post. The author (Adam T. Sutton) has included links to other articles and interviews on these three critical factors with more help on creating lucky nonprofit email campaigns backed by practical tactics and strategies.

Related posts:

18 ways to build your nonprofit email list

How NOT to do nonprofit email marketing

7 tips for better email subject lines and envelope teasers

{ 2 trackbacks }

Email lists don’t matter. Or do they? — Karen Zapp - Nonprofit Copywriter
March 27, 2012 at 5:22 am
How to get higher nonprofit email ROI — Karen Zapp - Nonprofit Copywriter
May 12, 2012 at 4:13 pm

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