Automate sales content for Nonprofit

How to create outlook signature

if you work for a non-profit there's a good chance that you're wearing many hats spinning lots of plates and looking for ways to improve your fundraising efforts this is especially true when it comes to communicating with supporters of the organization which of course is crucial to fundraising well that's where email marketing comes in it's hands down the best way to keep your donors informed and with that said there's lots of questions that can pop up when you think of email marketing questions like what platforms should i use how often should i send emails what kind of content should i include in my emails and should i send emails to everyone on my list or only some people so in this video we'll unpack many of these questions and go over the best practices for non-profit email marketing i'm addie with antidote and let's get into it [Music] since email marketing can be such a powerful tool for communication there are many platforms out there in the market to consider for your nonprofit when choosing an email service provider or esp it's important to identify what your needs are so then you can know which one is right for you if you need an advanced automation in a full crm then platforms like hubspot activecampaign iterable or campaign monitor may be the best option for you and if you're looking for a more mainstream option that's more cost effective then mailchimp constant contact sympulse or mailerlite may be good match many of the esp options that i mentioned provide similar services so we recommend checking out more than one of them to see which one works best for you now let's talk about building a list the first thing that you'll want to do is think about what information that you want to gather and how you wish to gather it it will come in handy later when you're trying to personalize your content to the individual now organization is key here so make sure that you develop a standardized format for example you should make sure that you're collecting the first and last name separately an email address and a cell phone number so you can text your supporters knowing a supporter's location can also be extremely useful if you're regionally focused so a zip code will come in handy for knowing the city and state that the supporter is in collecting all this data will help your email marketing platform because many of them have mail merges where you can dynamically use this data inside your emails studies have found that personalized content can increase engagement rates significantly if you need a simple way to build these forms without knowing any code we have a lead page builder that's easy to use and it looks amazing click the link in the description to sign up for a free account and try it out once you have your optimized form you'll need to promote it and a great way to do this is to put it in your web pages that have the most traffic along with adding it to your social media profiles another potential option is a pop-up form that sits in the bottom right hand corner of your website when you're in person a great idea is to have text to join and qr code options so someone can quickly join your email list right with their smartphone if you would like to try out text to join this is another feature that we offer at antidote and it's free just a heads up now one thing you should definitely avoid when building your email list is renting or buying an email list from a third party we covered all the details about that in another video which is linked in the description below but in summary your email's deliverability will suffer if you have excessive number of people marking it as spam now if you're going to consider using another email list consider partnering with another nonprofit in the area or another group with a similar focus now that you've done all the prep work to get your email marketing set up for success it's time we talk about content it's the driving force of what's going to keep your community engaged and involved now there are many different types of emails that you can send out but here are several that can be really helpful to you first step are welcome emails a great way to use these is to send them out automatically when your donor signs up and then there are newsletters which can keep your donors up to date with the latest on what's happening with your organization event invitations are key because that's where you can connect with donors through virtual or in-person fundraisers calls to action can encourage your members to volunteer or donate oh and don't forget the holiday emails those will keep your organization in mind during those busy seasons keep it simple with fundraising appeals champion what your organization is accomplishing with success stories and of course look for every opportunity to express gratitude especially with standalone thank you emails now what's going to make or break these emails is how you craft them so let's take a moment to talk about the best practices for the subject line the sender email design and call to action buttons in every email the subject line is paramount it's the biggest factor that will determine whether or not someone will open it so make sure the subject is concise while showcasing the value of what the email has to offer to find out what works best here it might make sense to a b test two different options and see what works also make sure that the subject and snippet are mobile friendly so test them out to see how the email preview is shown on email apps and on a smartphone the sender of the email should be someone that the recipient would recognize this would simply be the organization's name but many times including the leaders of the organization can also boost the engagement rates most people prefer to interact with other people as opposed to an abstract entity the email itself should mix tests with imagery and give a sense of who your organization is shorter paragraphs are generally better so that the content is more digestible and imagery should humanize your message and connect with the recipient the content should also feel on brand with your logo at the top and designed professionally most email marketing platforms have templates that can assist with this lastly call to action buttons should be used to highlight specific links that you want your reader to click this can also be a great place to highlight donating different amounts in a fundraising appeal it's a great idea to include a donate button in the footer of every email along with social media sharing buttons to make it easier for supporters to share your content now let's talk about email frequency keep in mind that this may vary depending on the resources available to your organization i will say that automation will be a massive help to handle the workload and as i mentioned earlier welcome emails or welcome sequence can be set up once and you only have to monitor it from there event invitations can be scheduled to be sent a few times before an event and thank you emails are sent immediately after someone has taken some kind of action and the holiday emails shouldn't take up too much time because they're only sent around major holidays for email newsletters generally speaking they're only sent once a week or once a month depending on the level of activity for your organization here's a pro tip if you post news articles and updates regularly on social media you can use your email newsletter as a digest of those posts that can help speed up the time it takes to build a newsletter and it makes good use of the posts that your organization has already worked on concerning a call to action and a fundraising appeal schedule you should remember that people are less annoyed by emails than you might think generally one to two emails per week are perfectly acceptable for most organizations if you're a smaller organization you may send a weekly newsletter and send a fundraising appeal every other week call to action emails are used to promote action around a specific initiative or event for example you may be asking someone to volunteer for an event coming up these emails are sent less frequently and on a one-off basis in these cases you can build a calendar to outline when you want to send these emails notifying people about the initiative and who you want to send it to generally having a calendar for email marketing is a good practice it will ensure that you don't over or under sin and it will help plan out the workload the needs of supporters and your audience are different which is why you should evaluate what information needs to be communicated to who for example a major donor doesn't need a pitch on why it's important to make their first donation while this may be really valuable to someone who's thinking about giving their first donation this is where segmenting your email list comes in this is a key feature when you're searching for an esp so your communication stays clear and personable you can also use segmentation to tweak your frequency too maybe you send your email newsletter every friday at 2pm but one person gets bombarded with emails from other organizations at that same time sending a second email to anyone who didn't open the friday email on a different day and a different time could help boost your engagement rate similar to this finding out who's frequently engaged in your audience and who simply isn't leads to cleaning out your email list this is really important to do on a regular basis because google and yahoo and other email providers consider your open rates when deciding whether your email should be delivered to the primary inbox or the spam folder another factor to pay special attention to is the number of people who click spam or unsubscribe from your list if you've followed the best practices and are sending at least one email per week then you should know pretty quickly who's opening your emails and who isn't i would recommend checking once every three to six months to clean your list and remove inactive users the best way to do this is to tag them as inactive and try to re-engage them separately you may find that the number of people who open your email increase if you remove the 20 of your list that's inactive your email marketing platform should allow you to filter your list by the number of opens per email over a period of time all email marketing platforms will give you key statistics like open rate bounce rate unsubscribe rate spam rate and click through rate you should consistently monitor these data points to ensure that you're reaching your target audience and seeing success now if you're struggling to fundraise for your organization you should consider tweaking the subject sender or content as we mentioned earlier to see if that could be the cause we hope these tips will help you improve the email marketing for your nonprofit as always if you're looking for a free fundraising lead collection platform with zero hidden fees and a very competitive processing rate we hope that you will sign up for a free android account you can get started at antidote.com thanks for watching before you head out be sure to like subscribe and hit the notification button for more videos like these also be sure to check us out on social media i'm addie with antidote and we'll see you next time