Email’s prowess as a nonprofit fundraising and marketing channel has been proven time and time again, accounting for 15% of nonprofit revenue. However, launching a successful email campaign requires more than drafting your message and hitting send—you need a strategy in place that smoothly funnels your supporters through the donor journey.
To understand why, put yourself in your donors’ shoes. For many, checking their inboxes can feel like wading through a sea of spam to find the few messages that matter. To keep your fundraising strategy afloat, your nonprofit’s emails should function as a lighthouse, guiding your supporters toward making their next gift.
Let’s dive into tips for running an engaging email campaign that opens the fundraising floodgates and has your donors looking forward to your next message.
1. Segment Donor Lists
Your donors have nuanced preferences and motivations, and your email campaign strategy should reflect this. For instance, newer donors might appreciate more detailed emails as they learn more about your nonprofit, whereas seasoned donors might want more direct messages.
Every inbox is unique, but it’s not feasible to send a personalized email to every single donor. That’s where donor segmentation comes in handy. This tactic allows you to send emails to groups of donors with shared characteristics. To create strategic segments, answer these questions:
- Who are we trying to reach with this campaign?
- What’s the intended next action of this campaign?
- What do these supporters have in common, and how does this complement our strategy?
- What data will we use to segment these supporters?
From there, build out your campaign and tailor appeals to your segments’ motivations. To expedite the process, Fifty & Fifty recommends incorporating these details using a fundraising email template to make your messages consistent. Then, use a mail merge tool to fill in personal information and send your emails effortlessly.
2. Leverage Email Automation
From segmenting donors to drafting emails to fielding replies, life as an email fundraiser can be chaotic—but what if there was a way to streamline your workflows and eliminate errors? Email automation can instantly remove menial tasks from your plate, focus your strategy, and prevent communications from slipping through the cracks. Specifically, automation helps you:
- Accelerate follow-up turnaround. Configure your digital marketing software to respond when certain requirements are triggered. For instance, you might have a button on an email that says, “Click here for more campaign information,” which automatically sends donors a follow-up email with further details.
- Communicate consistently. Scheduling communications beforehand ensures you send a reliable stream of content, building interest over time until they decide to donate.
- Optimize send times. When you send your emails matters in addition to their frequency.
Email send time optimization (STO) is an email automation process determining the best time to send an email to boost engagement—automated tools can collect and analyze the data you need to improve your content calendar. - Track performance analytics. Automation can gather and report on email metrics, like open rates and click-through rates, so you understand what’s working and what needs improvement.
Optimizing these tasks will boost engagement and, by extension, donor retention. The easiest way to streamline your workflow is to use tools dedicated to email communications. Just ensure you use the best email automation system for your budget, donor base, and experience level—leverage free trials and demos to invest in the right tool.
3. Incorporate Interactive Elements
Thanks to modern technology, you can spruce up your emails with advanced interactive elements. This will build excitement and improve conversion rates to your donation pages. Make your emails pop with these interactive elements:
- Click-to-share social media buttons
- Surveys
- Polls
- Quizzes
- Image carousels
- Infographics
- Embedded forms
Before sending your interactive emails into the world, ensure that they aren’t overly cluttered. An email with too many components might feel chaotic to your audience, so keep it simple and fun. Poll your audience or choose elements relevant to your campaign message to garner more responses.
4. Strategically Place Donation Buttons
Studies show that people only spend 9 seconds reading an email. That leaves little room for error, so you need to put your most important links and content where your audience can see it.
After all, are you more likely to scroll to the bottom of a fundraising email to find the donation button or simply click on the one right at the top? Making buttons as visible as possible ensures your audience knows exactly what to do and how to do it. Here are some components of a compelling donation button:
- Bright colors. Help your buttons stand off the page by using bright, brand-appropriate colors. Also, style your button’s hover color and text so it remains visible when donors click.
- Direct language. State what the gravity of your cause is and how donors can help. For instance, an animal shelter looking to raise money for emergent surgeries might say, “Donate now to save a forever friend” on a button.
- Optimal sizing. Oversizing your button looks unnatural, whereas your donors might miss it entirely if you undersize it. Experiment with your email template to find the best button size.
To improve your button positioning and style, use a method known as A/B testing, which allows you to try different strategies in different messages to see which is better. Track your click-through rates to gauge which tactics work best for your audience.
Your nonprofit needs to add its unique flair to truly elevate your fundraising emails. It’ll take some time to figure out what works—try different fundraising strategies with A/B testing and listen to audience feedback. Eventually, running your fundraising email campaigns will be smooth sailing!