Effective Payment Reminder Letter Format for NPOs

Payment reminder letter format for NPOs

[Music] welcome everybody for anyone who's just joined um we're going to be talking today about how to write better fundraising emails how to drive donations coming up on end of year by just putting together emails that are actually going to stand out in the inbox um and some practical tips to help you do that so let's go ahead and get into it um and just for anyone who's new to feather feather is the digital marketing platform for nonprofits so we can help you grow your audience boost engagement get in front of new relevant people um and drive those donations Drive donations year round and especially for these big sort of um giving Seasons at end of year so um yeah ads email reporting all the things you need in one place to hit the goals that you're trying to hit and we serve more than 1500 nonprofits from a variety of different sectors as you can see here so hopefully one of these logos kind of resonates with you or stands out and feels similar to the work that you're doing and I'm Issa Hasty I'm the senior content marketing manager at feather uh we'll be sending out the deck after the webinar um so look out for that in your inbox tomorrow morning um I included my email here just in case feel free to reach out to me if you ever have any questions or ideas love to hear from everyone um so like I said we'll send out the deck drop questions in the chat as we go um and I'm also going to do something new today I'm going to ask as we sort of go through the different themes I might ask you guys to drop in some ideas into the chat um because obviously I'm here to try to help and offer tips but I also want this to be a space where you all feel like you can connect with each other and exchange ideas because I think since you're all on the ground doing the actual work it's a great opportunity to kind of yeah throw out some ideas for CTA subject lines things that work for you um and hopefully get some inspiration from each other so I will be asking some questions like that throughout and so feel free to yeah engage with each other and like I said drop questions in the chat and if somebody ask a question and you feel like you have an answer to it or you've done something that works for you um that you feel like is relevant to that question feel free to drop answers in the chat as well so I want you guys to feel like you can help and support each other um in the chat here okay so let's talk a little bit about the power of email in fundraising specifically so email accounted for 28% of online revenue for nonprofits last year ing to M&R benchmarks um and that's because email you know um helps nonprofit to build those personal connections directly with supporters right where they are in the Inbox and it lets you do this without making a huge investment so ideally you have an email platform that might even be built in with other marketing tools that you use so if you were using you know an all-in-one marketing platform like feather or something else that lets you do advertising social media campaigns email all in one place email is a really small investment in terms of how broadly you're able to reach people um and how targeted you're able to get so high impact low investment that's one of the major selling points for email for nonprofits and why it works well for fundraising um and then just thinking about you know end of year giving Tuesday the holidays the inbox is a super crowded place um and so you want to make sure that you are standing out in the inbox so you know um making sure that you are standing out with clear compelling um subject lines that your ctas are are clear and effective and driving action um and so you know people's inboxes are overflowing with promotions like you're competing with retail companies other nonprofits other fundraising appeals everything so the subject line is going to be the place where you're actually really going to try to stand out get people to click through but then in the actual email itself like we'll get into a little bit later you want to make sure that you're driving action through compelling language and ctas um and then um another thing to consider is that you know you want to be running email in tandem with other um campaign types because like I said you know you might not necessarily catch everybody in the inbox because people are experiencing email fatigue and all of these things and so it's important to run advertising campaigns retargeting campaigns be tracking you know that website activity and reaching people who have visited your donate page or your homepage and then left without making a gift you want to be nudging them slowly over time reminding them to come back and you can do this with emails but you can also do it with ads you can do it on on social media and doing all of this creates sort of multi-channel cohesive online experience for people with your brand um and that's really important and also those campaigns feed off of each other right so if you you know you might want to run an email campaign based on people clicking on a specific ad so if you're running an ad for your donation appeal and someone clicks on it hits your website but doesn't make a donation you might actually trigger a behavior-based automated email to go out to them you know 30 minutes later asking them to complete that donation so email ads all of these channels can work really well together um when you do it right so email is powerful but it's even more powerful when you combine it with other mediums all right and then like I said email works really well for nonprofits um high impact it offers um a 36x Roi so for every $1 spent it can return $36 which is really powerful you're getting that direct reach to people right where they are in their inbox um personalization and segmentation allow you to really tailor the messaging you can get hyper targeted with the groups that you're sending to we'll get into that a little bit more later um and yeah another thing I think is important to mention too here is that email is a really familiar sort of platform for people and so I think when it comes to like building trust when when people are you know giving money and giving their time um email is a particularly trustworthy place to do do it so I think that's why a lot of people convert via emails because they're used to getting you know retail um emails and paying for things buying tickets things like that through their emails and so email is a really good place to um be reaching people to ask for donations cool so just a quick little agenda of the things that we're going to go through specifically we'll talk about how to craft subject lines that'll make you stand out in the inbox we'll talk about best practices for um the layout of the actual body of your email storytelling tips CT tips we'll go through some real examples of emails both from feather users and from other um organizations and then we'll talk about some sort of strategic tips for optimizing your campaign so personalization timing followup how to sort of continue engaging people year round after they make that donation or even if they don't you want to continue to engage them in hopes that they will eventually convert so let's talk about the specifics of creating emails so before we get into this I'd love If people could drop into the chat um a subject line that you have used that worked well for you um that you feel like got good open rates or maybe like one that you're thinking about testing or an idea for a subject line that you're looking to test out um this year end so any I'm G to get into like a bunch of examples in a minute but would love to hear if anyone has any tips or specific subject lines anything with Emojis has performed well yeah I find that too when I use emojis in our in feathers marketing emails um those perform well knock knock that's cute emojis can sometimes look like spam that's true you don't want to overuse them um so it's definitely a a fine balance but they can be impactful your impact in 2025 starts today yeah um and Peter personalizing we'll get into that as well using Dynamic fields to actually pull people's names into the subject line I'm sure a lot of you do this already but that's a really um great tactic for just making the subject line itself feel personal and when people when you we see our own names it obviously stands out more than anything else around it so um let us know if we shouldn't is interesting too kind of like appealing to their um emotion a bit there uh a letter from executive director founder okay cool yeah and I think like referencing we'll get into this as well um but referencing Aaron like you said the specific amount that can make an impact um I think is is great so actually saying a specific dollar amount and what it'll do um gives people sort of that tangible sense of like this is this is what's going to happen when I give this specific amount and 840 is a higher ticket price but you can do this with any amount you know you can say a dollar does this or $10 using questions it's very engaging yep subject clients that look personal not just names questions yep XA is left to make an impact yeah driving some urgency incorporating like deadlines or or countdowns we'll get into that as well Yep looks like we have a faith-based org here um like quoting someone that's a cool idea uh exclusive invite yep exclusivity goes a long way another giving Tuesday email love it that's cute um okay cool these are all great keep them coming okay so um your subject line sets the stage you know that is the first thing that people will see and they won't see anything else if they don't find it engaging enough to click so you want to keep it short keep it compelling um I've seen recommendations that say 50 characters or fewer is the best practice here um so definitely you want to like load it with uh substance but keep it short enough that it won't get cut cut off especially on mobile devices um and you know I think one thing I'll say sort of throughout and encourage people to remember to do is like test these things out like look at the way that it renders on a mobile device actually send yourself the test email don't just check it on your work laptop pull up your phone check it there see what's getting cut off see how the images lay out all of that stuff um a lot of people are going to be making donations through mobile devices so you want to make sure that they actually can easily make those donations and and see everything um and subject lines getting cut off can be a shame if you put creativity and effort into it and the like the funny part is at the end or the cute part is at the end so you want to make sure that you are optimizing that so people actually see what you're trying to tell them um using personalization like a lot of people mentioned in the chat um pulling people's names in another example is to kind of you know pull in other data about um that specific contact so if they gave a year ago or they gave a specific amount you can remind them of the impact that that had um if it's been a while since they've donated you can even reference that so using personalization in different ways can be really really great um aim for open rates above or around or above 25 to 28% so this is the average open rate for nonprofits across the board um so if you're in this range on average for emails that's great aiming higher than that is always a good thing cool so I have just a couple of lists of um subject line examples um these are for creating urgency the next slide is about creating Intrigue and kind of appealing to um a a little bit of emotional side of things so join 100 donors who've already stepped up today so kind of you know getting people to feel a little bit of that fomo and a sense of um you know like I want to be doing what my peers are doing um sort of a group think but in the best possible way you're just one click away from changing lives so making it feel super actionable super easy um something they can do quickly and make a huge impact only 24 hours like someone said uh referencing a time frame um and driving that sense of urgency same with act now donations match until midnight clock is ticking double your impact so whenever if you are able to do gift match campaigns those go such a long way not only in terms of the actual total amount but just the the things you're able to do with your marketing as a result um so when people think about you know if you tell people that their gift will be doubled or tripled they are more likely to give more and they're more likely to give in the first place so gift match campaigns are amazing not everyone can can do them they're hard to I think actual actually Implement and and execute but if you can do it and mention it every chance you get because it really makes a huge difference in engagement rates for emails ads and conversions um and we're so close your gift can make a difference so these are kind of all a little bit similar to each other but kind of um that sense of like driving urgency and uh reminding people of a deadline um and so the reason that urgency works is because you know scarcity makes people feel that there are opportunities that are fleeting creates kind of that sense of fomo feel fear of missing out um and so people don't want to miss an opportunity um to you know take action especially if it means that they're um making positive change in the world and then you know it's a procrastination breaker so I think a lot of the time um urgency and instilling a sense of urgency can combat that tendency to delay things so people might have seen your emails or your ads or whatever and be interested in giving and kind of almost in their head their planning to do it but maybe their wallet's in a different room or they just don't have time but they want to and so reminding them of the deadline if they were already interested in giving can go a long way in terms of making them actually complete that um conversion um and so yeah and this is also just why it's important to sort of build up to this ask so you want to have well-timed ads and emails that are sort of showing up for people leading up to the the the deadline basically um so that when you are talking about 24 hours or one click away ends at midnight whatever um people sort of know what you're talking about that's the goal right so that it the urgency actually has its intended effect um because they were interested in giving and just hadn't yet um so yeah urgency works best when it's actually something that people were planning to do were putting off and then some examples of creating a sort of sense of intrigue so your gift can spark hope see how a story of hope that you don't want to miss um did you know you can feed a family for just $20 so this is a good place to kind of incorporate some impact statements and dollar impact statements um and just appeal to emotion your kindness could change a child's future um surprising way you can make an impact today so kind of getting people wondering what's inside the email so with creating Intrigue and with subject lines in general you want to leave the reader wanting a little bit more so don't reveal everything up front um and using you know phrases like discover find out um we'll hopefully get them to click through you want to be specific so if you're mentioning an impact or a dollar amount be specific but don't give everything away in the subject line the goal is to get them to actually want to um find out more and yeah appealing to emotion making people feel inspired or proud or hopeful um can go a long way and then you know tying it back to your goals always um showing the reader how they can um contribute to your specific Mission all right let's talk about I'm just going to check the chat real quick okay um let's talk about layout and design so these probably go without saying but I just want to kind of go over the basics so you want to keep things clean easy to read using a mobile friendly format like I said tons of emails are opened on mobile devices um 50 to 70% of people are opening their emails on mobile devices and so you want to make sure that they're mobile friendly like I said check that go through the flow yourself and make sure everything looks good um and then in terms of the email body copy um and and the layout you want to break up text with uh headers bullet points images anything you can do to sort of break things up visually make it easy to scan make it easy to digest avoid clutter and make sure you're always focusing on a single um clear message per email so for fundraising emails you know the most likely it's going to be to make a donation some in some cases it might be to learn more or um you know if it's like to to make a specific donation like donating food or something like that you just want to make sure that you understand yourself what the ask is and you're making that very clear and keeping it singularly focused on that ask throughout the email especially in the CTA and we'll get to that later so just a few examples of emails that I think have really great layouts for a few different reasons so we'll go through some feather examples and um some non- feather examples as well um Cody okay let me see do images perform well I've always heard to try and keep the email looking less designed yeah so more just a personal yeah so this is a great point I think this is one of those things where you have to test and see what works for your audience um and so I'm going to go through a few different versions or a few different examples of emails that have more heavily designed um uh templates and then a few that are more text Heavy um sort of plain text and so I think that it's really just about AB testing what works for you so trying different things with different segments imagery can be really impactful it can evoke emotion it can tell a story sometimes better than words can um especially imagery that actually incorporates key information and helps inform your audience within the imagery that's great too um but sometimes it is appropriate to leave it more plain text make it feel more personal so um that kind of depends on what works for you um but I definitely agree with your point it's it's sort of open to testing out and and seeing what um what works for your particular organization and your audience um so for this example this is on the sort of imagery heavy side um and like I said you know visuals can speak louder than words sometimes this is obviously a very beautiful cherry blossom tree um and so using imagery to evoke emotion that drives action is the goal here so this is obviously you know a garden that if people have been to it this imagery might or this image might remind them of feeling peaceful or tranquil and want to U make a donation to help support the garden continuing to be a beautiful place for they can visit um so you know incorporating imagery of aesthetically appealing places if you are like an arts and culture org or a museum um if you are you know a child services Family Services Human Services org you might use imagery of children or families being helped by donations and we'll get into that a little bit later I know that sometimes there are sensitivity issues and privacy issues around sharing imagery but I think there's still ways to get creative with imagery um using stock imagery and using canva and tools like this that provide you with uh images and photos that like sort of represent your brand without um you know violating anyone's privacy or trust um so if you decide that you know visuals is something that you want to lean into visual storytelling there's always a way to do that if you feel it's appropriate for your organization um volunteers working at a food drive so I think images of volunteers are usually some if you are a volunteer-based organization um You probably have photos from events and from food drives and things like that so I think photos like that can also go a long way and just creating that sort of human connection right up front in in your email header or in your emails um and then uh as you can see here and we'll see this in a few other examples having the CTA sort of very prominent front and center um is a great idea orange on white is a really common um color combination that I see we use that in our own marketing email sometimes I've seen that in a lot of nonprofit emails that are um successful so that's that particular color combination works well and having it as high up as possible or in a place that is easy to find and click so that brings me to this example as you can see the Donate Now button is prominent it's at the top can't miss it even if you don't scroll down um and so this is from the wildlife conservation Society um and I know that it's you know if having um a mission where you're saving baby animals or if you're an animal rescue shelter or something like that imagery is probably pretty straightforward you're using cute pictures of baby animals and things like that and that um can be very effective but I think there's always a way to find imagery that inspires and engages your audience um and so you know like I said before you might struggle if you are you know Human Services org or Health Services org there might be privacy issues sensitive topics and so I think there's still ways to you know pull in imagery that can feel neutral and protect privacy while still um conveying your mission and and in and evoking a sense of emotion in your audience so if you're a health services org for example you might show you know imagery of happy people in a clinic setting if you're Food Bank you might show images of you know families receiving food again volunteer um photos can be a great way to kind of um communicate that human aspect of what your food bank does as well but again all of this is at your discretion you know if you don't feel like it's appropriate to use certain imagery don't do it but definitely lean into it if you think um it could work for you and play around with images and your headers um and just making your emails like a little bit lighter copy and more visually engaging but like Cody said if you feel that you know leaning toward a more personalized plain text email is what works best for you do that and a lot of the time a combination is what works so sort of hitting people with different styles of email to see what works over time and somebody the same person might respond differently um on a different day to to a visual email versus a plain text sort of more straightforward ask so and then this examples from the St Louis area Food Bank um and I like this example because I feel like this image up here does some heavy lifting I feel like this could almost be an ad like a digital ad um because you see sort of the the impact statement here with the dollar amount it's you know the the organization's name is here donate before the year ends so there's the sort of sense of urgency as well as imagery that you know feels heartfelt and warm and so I think this is a great example of doing a lot with imagery but in a way that educates and informs um and again this is at the top um donate today prominent CTA reminding people again of how much um how far their dollars can go and then this is from the Peninsula Community Foundation of Virginia this is a feather customer this is an email they built in feather um and I think that this is a cute version of just sort of driving that urgency through email with the CL or through uh through imagery sorry with the clock um and then referencing the specific ount of time that's left over so it's a little small let me see if I can I zoomed in but you guys can't see it um it says here I hopefully you guys can read it a little bit but sort of The Final Countdown less than 7even hours so if you are able to reference a specific amount of time left over that can help um and then displaying familiar logos prominently so obviously giving Tuesday is a great example if you're running a giving Tuesday campaign maybe using the giving Tuesday hashtag or logo or things like that prominently to kind of instill that sense of familiarity um and trust and also uh this particular organization does a annual giving day in the spring called give local 757 and so they display that logo pretty prominently in all of the emails and ads they run for that giving day um because people you know local people recognize it they've given before and so when they see that they know okay it's that time of year again I'm going to give um and then again reminding them of gift matching and other reasons to give so here doubling your impact so they obviously had a a 2X gift match going here um and then reminding them of other incentives to get involved to make a gift let me check the time here okay we're good um all right and then uh just like we saw here with the actual clock image um it can be really cool to actually use countdown timers in your emails as well so these two examples are also from feather users this is the Japan America Society of Washington DC and this is pal Community Care um neither of these are uh donation appeals these are both for events but I thought these were really great examples of using a countdown timer so I pulled these in here um and so this is for this is a promo email for a um a festival that they're actually both for festivals um that the Japan America Society hosts every year in Washington DC and so this is set to z00 because the event is past but this would show obviously the countdown to the event it's really pretty and engaging and um I drives that urgency same with this one this is for Charleston Beerfest um so this is an annual U Beerfest that they have in the fall in Charleston and they also use these countdown timers to um yeah create that sense of okay your time is running out to buy tickets do it now um and so this is a tool that feather offers to um and you can drag and drop it in and customize it as you can see these two organizations have completely different looks and feels to their brand and they were able to customize the countdown timer to fit their Aesthetics and another point I want to make here um so this open rate is great 59% is amazing click-through rate is 10% that's also very high so these emails perform very well um it's really important to have a platform that lets you track specifically the number of conversions from your emails and from your ads and so um feather lets you actually see how many conversions each email has so you can see which ones were the most impactful um and that can be a really helpful um tool when comes to reporting and seeing you know how each channel is performing which emails actually drove the most donations all right let's get into writing body copy um what was the subject line for the countdown timer email I'm not sure so for this one last chance for Beerfest tickets was the subject line I'm not sure about this one I can't remember and I don't have the subject line pulled up here and for this one I don't have it either um I imagine they were pulling in some language about the the countdown aspect and times running out but um I'm not sure sorry Trey I don't don't remember um but yeah last chance for Beerfest tickets and I think you know for this one it could be obviously this um header says two weeks away so the subject line you could easily pull that into the subject line and say um two weeks left to buy tickets um or something like that so cool let's get into writing body copy um so you want to start strong um capture attention immediately so obviously people might like your subject line they might open your email and then they can immediately bail if they're not interested in what they see so again making your emails visually engaging and if you're not using a lot of imagery making that hook really capture people and and continue reading um so you can do this through a compelling story so storytelling that evokes emotion um so you know something like Maria didn't know where her next meal would come from until you stepped in so kind of building on that idea that you can make an impact in someone's actual life um telling a story of a specific person who was helped by donations in the past uh these impact statements statistics numbers go a long way especially with just um building authenticity and Trust so younger Generations specifically Millennials a lot of Millennials but especially gen Z and gen Alpha um are a lot less I think susceptible to traditional sort of marketing tactics and and appeals and so being as straightforward and as sort of staff driven and data driven as possible helps build that trust so if you're able to point to like a number of people that you've been able to help or share impact reports or share honestly how much um impact can happen from someone donating $10 or $20 that I think can be a lot more compelling for younger people so I know a lot of nonprofits are trying to reach younger audiences these days and that's one way to do it is just sort of cutting to the chase um using numbers whenever possible and just sort of using that in your hook to to get people to sort of continue um and the opening line sets the tone for the rest of your Emil so just like the subject line sets the tone for whether someone even Clicks in the opening line the header of your email is going to set the tone for whether someone actually continues reading far enough to click on the CTA and then these are a couple of examples that I wanted to share these are actually our emails feather emails that we've um run to promote case studies um so you all might have some of the people in this audience might have received some of the these emails um so they might look familiar to you but I wanted to use these as examples of using email headers like this to kind of break up the text so you might have an email uh a header image at the top but then rather than getting straight into copy you might want to leverage like a a bold larger font um header like this and even like a dividing line can create some visual Intrigue and then I also wanted to call out um this so we recently started using this as a a header template so kind of pulling in a quote these are both emails for case studies and so pulling in um a quote from the case study or testimonial from the from the feather user into the actual header image so I was thinking about how this could actually apply to a lot of nonprofits as well so if you have testimonials or quotes from people who've benefited from your services or even volunteers or people who participated in your events you could always create something like this and pull a quote into into to your actual header image so that you're kind of combining copy and visuals in a way that's um communicating a lot in that header image um and kind of breaking things up so I thought these were a couple cool examples and then yeah thanks Rachel she's dropping in um the actual links to both of these case studies so this is um playhouse on the Square and this is American Friends of the Israel um symphonic orchestra um philarmonic Orchestra pardon me um so yeah those are two great case studies where you can see how those uh two organizations so obviously arts and culture we've got an orchestra and a playhouse um how they use feather email adds all of that to um sell tickets to events and further their missions so check those out if you can and then when it comes to body copy less is more so you want to stick to one key message like we talked about earlier using short paragraphs um and making sure text is scannable so I think at the end of writing any email kind of look at it and think like and I do this personally like where can I click enter like where can I turn this into more paragraphs um and you can actually have paragraphs that are just a couple sentences and that is a totally acceptable length for a paragraph in a marketing email so definitely break up your text make it scannable make it feel not like a wall of of words um and that'll get people to feel like it's easier to read your emails include bullet points um for lists and key information add bolded text but you know not don't don't overdo it um but add it where you can to kind of break things up visually um and then yeah here's just a quick example of you know that sort of impactful scanable language so I just pulled these two examples of like a little bit of a longer long- winded um version and then the same thing in a I think a punchier catchier version so our nonprofit works hard to help people and we need you to join us today by contributing a donation you can help us achieve our goals of helping families in need of housing food and education you can actually turn that into your gift provides shelter food and education to families who need it most join us today to make an impact I think we can all agree that option two is the better one it's saying all the same things um but in a much more uh digestible way so um yeah that's a great question Megan actually so I was gonna touch on that now too so I think one of the things I see a lot is nonprofits sending out really long copy heavy emails and a lot of the time that is because you're sending uh emails from your CEO your executive director I think sometimes it is appropriate to send uh those longer emails if it's like a letter or something like that right um but when we're talking about e appeals or sort of like these marketing emails that you want to mix in with those other types of emails it's better to keep the language scannable digestible um easy to read um and kind of pulling on I think the the I I think for profit organiz ations kind of set the tone for what works with marketing and advertising tactics and that is for a reason it's like they have to sell as much as possible they understand that time is a commodity and they want to sell as much as they can through effective email marketing and so they understand through research and through testing what works they understand what actually grabs attention so I think it is good to kind of take a page out of that book when it comes to like B Toc you know consumer marketing and for-profit marketing you see that those emails are Punchy catchy visually engaging um and so that can work really well for nonprofits as well you want to appeal to you know people like what people are used to seeing and what actually makes them click and um spend money basically so I think uh short and sweet can go a long way um and then I also want to plug this I I say this a lot and I'll say it again later um but leveraging chat GPT um to suggest ways to shorten text can be useful too so I think l ing uh AI can be great for subject lines so you know if you have an idea for a subject line but you're not thrilled with it you can put that into chat GPT or AI some other platform and it'll generate alternatives for you to kind of get your wheels spinning I think it's a great way to kind of beat that writer's block and get some creative juices flowing so um I definitely recommend using that if you feel comfortable with it for generating alternative subject lines you can input like the body copy of your email ask chat gbt to shorten it break it up make it punchier add some bulleted lists things like that and it'll do it for you and you do not have to use that exact version but I think it's really great for Saving Time nonprofit marketers nonprofit professionals are like so over you know overbooked and working hard and you don't always have time to perfect things um or you know put so much effort into one email but if you're able to kind of put it into a system and get something back that's a little bit more um sort of following the rules of like what works and um things like that I think that is a great tool at your disposal that you should feel comfortable using so I recommend it I support it um and I think it can be great for these types of things so like sort of getting them getting a Chad GPT to to give you a punchier version of an email that you've already written and help you break it up um yes we will be sending out the deck after um Jen yeah let me go back to the previous slide real quick is this the one you wanted okay yeah we we'll send out the deck after this so be on the lookout for that but this was the this was the slide so yeah keeping things um focus on one key message short paragraphs break things up scanable yep okay cool um all righty and then just a couple of real examples of um so this is from a feather user Food Bank of Northern Nevada um so just kind of thinking about uh ideas that you can incorporate into the actual cont content of your email um so encouraging sort of holiday spirit if that's relevant so leaning on that um and obviously we're approaching end of year and people become a lot more charitable at end of year so lean into that as much as you need to um and remind people of the impact that they've already had so I think this email yeah so with the supportive friends like you the food bank has provided over 21 million meals last year so really like pull in those impact statements as much as you can to not only sort of encourage people to give because they will have an impact but um remind them you know they might have given already and so you want to remind people that the impact that that the dollars they've given to you go to something real um and then yeah highlight the potential for impact so obviously you know um you want to site the specific real impact that has happened in the past but then also remind people again of that sort of dollar impact statement every $1 provides three meals to a neighbor in need so thinking of ways that you can sort of formulate those statements to to make it feel like by giving just a small amount people can can really make a difference um and then obviously multiply that as you need or or sort of frame that however makes sense for your organization but uh that can go a long way in making people be like okay you know what actually I can give a few dollars to this organization because I want to provide like entire meals for people so this is an example from the Peninsula Community Foundation of Virginia again so a feather user um I thought this was a cool example like kind of pasted the email it's a long one so I pasted it side by side this was all one email um but offering practical incentives for people to donate so kind of educating your audience on the benefits of charitable donations coming up on like a tax deadlines things like that suggesting specific ways for them to give so I thought this was a really cool example of of that making almost kind of taking a practical pragmatic approach to like how does this actually benefit you here's how to do it some ideas for for giving in ways that are going to be beneficial for you financially um okay I'm going to come back to some of these questions after I just want to make sure we're powering through the the content okay so let's talk about crafting a strong CTA so um let's take a pause real quick um if people can similar to what we did with the subject lines uh drop in a CTA that has either worked for you or that you want to try out uh this year end for fundraising appeal so something you know donate now things like that are big ones but obviously you know we want to try to get creative and um more personalized when we can so let me see if anyone has any language they've used join the movement I love that support our mission yep and kind of like any chance you get to remind people of the specifics of what you do in a CTA can be really great too so yeah support our Mission Drive our mission forward are great and um I think we'll get into some examples but like if you're Miss mission is to feed children use that language in your CTA feed children today feed you know three families this week things like that um actually pulling that in because also I think a lot of the time you know we craft language like that assuming that people have all the contexts they need but sometimes your CTA might be one of the first things that someone is seeing from you so you want every little asset that they see or every piece of content they see from you from subject line to CTA to ads online things like that to communicate as much as possible about the mission and about the results of of giving to your to your cause light the path to Healing it's beautiful help stop senior hunger see that's a great example of what I'm talking about help stop senior hunger so if somebody only sees that they know exactly what they're clicking on um so I think that's a that's a really great example Megan um cool thanks guys Okay cool so your CTA is the thing that actually drives the action right so even if your subject line is amazing and then your header image is great and your body copy's great if your CTA isn't prominent or if it's not clear all of that could have been for nothing so we want to avoid that um emails with clear ctas generate 371 per more clicks so that is obviously um a powerful stat you want to make sure you're putting thought into your ctas and never let it be an afterthought I think sometimes because of the placement of ctas I think we often put them lower in the email than they should be and because they're kind of one of the last steps they almost feel intuitively like a bit of an afterthought they shouldn't be you should put thought into them you should put thought into making sure you're communicating um what the actual mission is and what the um action is that you want people to take very clearly in the CTA and it's tough because you don't have a lot of space and you have to kind of be concise and still be creative but it's definitely worth the time to make that CTA Pop um so yeah it really is the most important part of the email tells the reader what to do makes it easy to act they just click on it and they're able to do the the thing that they want that you want want them to do but they need to click so um in terms of benchmarks for this you want to make sure you're aiming for click-through rates of around 3.3% or above so that's the industry average for nonprofits so um your ctrs in emails you want to be hovering around 3.3% so just some examples of clear effective CTA so we got some great examples in the chat here um but just a few more so donate now to change your life um join the movement become a member today feed a family today with your gift your $20 uh your $20 gift provides meals for 10 children so I love that one uh be the hero they need click to give um so yeah I think this is a great one um playing around with length is important so we'll talk a little bit in a minute about testing ctas but I think testing out different lengths can be a good thing to try out so sometimes you know it's just you want to have just a couple words but sometimes you can actually have kind of a longer um line of text be your CTA and that that works too um and like we saw in the Chinese Garden email earlier they actually just had like a pretty long orange button across the top of the email um right below the header and I think that that looked great and you're able to communicate more information in the CTA so nothing wrong with doing that you just want to make sure you're avoiding anything like click here or you know um anything completely generic don't want to do that and like like we said even when you know like drive your mission forward things like that are great but like if you can get even more specific um do that and um and yeah and just be as direct as possible um when you're making these asks and then in terms of actual design making it pop so using Color contrast to draw attention orange button on white background is one that I see a lot um but there's obviously lots of color combinations that work so just kind of find what works for you that's inine with your brand um and obviously you know you can look up best practices for that as well chat gbt probably has some recommendations on what works if you sort of um input what your brand colors are and your brand guidelines you can get some ideas on how to really make ctas pop make sure the button's large enough to click and that it's prominently placed early in the email so people see it they're guaranteed to see it even if they don't scroll and then repeating it toward the end for reinforcement doesn't hurt um and you can also link you know text within the body copy to the CTI so you might have a CTA button at the top but then at some point in your email copy if you're saying like you know um feed six families not on the first line like we have here but imagine like a couple paragraphs into the email you might actually hyperlink some text in the email to lead to that um destination URL as well just to kind of mix up the different ways that people can click through and donate and then getting creative with framing so this is an example that I have used on other webinars in the past because I just love it um but I think it's a great reminder that you can get creative in terms of how you're framing your CTA so this is from this is an example from a YouTube Uber called Mr Beast um who partnered up with the ocean Conservancy to basically remove trash from the ocean last year and they raised a ton of money and were able to remove a ton of trash and what's cool about this is that I think this is actually the Donate this is the Donate page not the email but instead of asking people how much money they wanted to donate they framed it as every $1 is one less pound of trash in the ocean so $1 equals one pound how many pounds of trash do you want to remove from the ocean and I feel like this would just have a much more emotional impact on somebody then how many dollars do you want to give because that's easier to dismiss like I don't have dollars to give but like you know if it's a cause that you care about you I think when people put it in terms like this it's going to um drive a lot more engagement and action so sort of thinking about how you can translate you know dollars donated to your organization into something similar so like you know how many children would you like to feed this holiday season or you know every $25 gets one animal spayed or neutered so you know it's like somebody might actually be like I want to help three animals and that's 75 bucks instead of zero or or you know 10 or whatever so um framing it in terms of the the actual impact but like actually framing the CTA in that way can be really cool so get creative with that um you know what is your mission what are you trying to get people to do what does $1 or $10 or whatever equate to and how can you incorporate that into the ask so just a quick checklist before you hit send so is your subject line engaging and personalized does the layout look good on mobile so again test test test make sure website also looks good on mobile so that people are going from a nice looking email to a nice looking landing page or web page is your story clear and compelling do you have a bold easy to click CTA is it prominently placed all of that stuff we just talked about and have you tested your links and buttons so make sure you're sending yourself test emails um whatever marketing platform you're using make sure you're able to send yourself a test check it on mobile check it on desktop all of those good things so this is just a little quick checklist to make sure you're doing all these things before you hit send Okay so let's get into some quick strategic considerations for campaigns so timing is key right so you want to send the right email at the right time um leveraging key dates throughout the year is a great way to do this so again as we're approaching end of year we have Thanksgiving we have giving Tuesday we have um the holidays and just again people become charitable at end of year so it's a great time to kind of lean into that although like we said with Peninsula Community Foundation earlier they have a giving day um in May and a lot of people you know a lot of organizations have giving days at different times of here or lean into other holidays so definitely do that but the point is just to make that prominent make that part of the messaging if you think that that will go over well with your audience so this is just an example here from a feather user called uh World Hope International so they provide clean water to um people around the world and so they obviously went heavy with the giving Tuesday logo and um hashtag and just reminding people it's two weeks away give now um and this is kind of cool just kind of what is giving Tuesday anyway provid a little bit of context for people who I think everyone's heard of giving Tuesday but might not actually know what it means and so kind of educating people on that and then bringing it back specifically to the um impact that they can have with this specific organization by giving and then this is another example from Peninsula I obviously love this customer uh pulled lots of examples from them but this is just an example of an email that they sent around Christmas time um for the children's holiday fund that they were running so they were trying to get donations for kids around Christmas time be a today I think that's really cute like don't be afraid to get playful and creative um and see what works so obviously asking someone to be a Santa will make them feel warm and fuzzy and feel like they're playing a big role and making some kids happy so I think um definitely yeah leverage the holiday spirit when you can or just these key dates um that people will recognize and um that feel familiar to them so in terms of send times you want to make sure you're optimizing this as much as you can so a lot of this comes down to testing what works for you they're really aren't there are some benchmarks and guidelines like I have here but this is really something that differs widely from organization to organization so you can start with some of these best practices but you also might already know what works well for you if you don't pay attention to um open rates and click through rates on different days of the week different times of day and kind of try to hone in on what is working best for your audience so testing is key um but uh yeah and then considering the recipient time zones so you know sometimes when you're scheduling an email it's an option to actually set it to deliver at a specific time based on time zone so if you want everyone on the email list to get something at 8 a.m. um there should be a setting that allows you to do that so that it's not just going at at 8: am. your time but actually 8: am local time for everyone receiving it terms of days of week um some of the information that I found was that Tuesdays Wednesdays and Thursdays have lower email volume therefore it's a good day to send marketing emails um they have higher open rates than Mondays and Fridays so lower email volume means you're more likely to stand out in the inbox um and there's less inbox fatigue right and then in terms of businessto business versus businesses to Consumer emails so uh businessto business emails are better to send during work hours so it kind of makes sense you know you're you're reaching people at businesses while they're working so this could apply to like a corporate appeal if you're trying to you know work out a gift match situation with a company a local company um these emails are better sent during work hours while people are actually going to be responding to emails and you know talking to their staff and figuring out if they can make something work with you um B Toc so basically reaching individual donors this is best sent um later in the email in the in the evening actually so you know when people are sort of scrolling on their phones and um you know closer to their wallets and things like that so definitely try some of this out see what works for you like I said at the end of the day it's what works for you is the thing that works but sometimes it helps to have sort of a starting point based on benchmarks that work for other and then following up with cart abandonment emails so just in terms of you know right time uh the right email the right time cart abandonment is a great way to ensure this so This example is from the Columbus Museum of Art which is a feather customer um so this was this is an email that they send um to people who visit the donation page and don't give so this kind of just brings them back in um and asks them to contribute um a donation to help fund the museum um and so basically you know card abandonment emails again I'm sure a lot of people on here run those but if you're not familiar it allows you to trigger an automated email based on an action that someone took so this could be visiting a specific page on your site like your donate page but then not making a donation it could be clicking on a Facebook ad that you have running getting to your homepage um things like that so you can basically you know set the trigger to be whatever makes sense for you and if you have that person's email so if they've filled out a form before or donated before attended an event things like that if if you have their email you can trigger an email to automatically go out based on the thing they did and this is great in terms of hitting their inbox when they're most primed to hear from you because they were just doing something related to your organization so rather than sending a on many email just whenever that may or may not resonate with people you're actually hitting their inbox um yeah right when they were engaging with your organization your top of mind and so that might be the thing that that final push they need to make the donation or convert or buy a ticket or whatever that conversion looks like um and then you know incorporating language that actually references the fact that they were just engaging with you can be helpful too so you can do this in the subject line to actually stand out and get them to click like oh yeah I was just doing that thanks for the reminder let me click through um so you know you were one click away from making a difference finish your gift today so this could be appropriate for subject line body copy um and you can even incorporate this into your CTA language as well um and then yeah making your emails feel personal so um segmentation goes a long way when it comes to personalization so being able to kind of group donors based on um giving history so if they're a first-time donor a lapse donor so maybe they haven't given in a while and you want to re-engage them um major donors things like that so these people should all be receiving different messaging you wouldn't want to send the same email to a firsttime donor of $5 and someone who's donated you know $10,000 in the past so definitely want to lean into segmentation with your email platform as much as you can um and hone those groups and kind of see what resonates with which groups and you're going to have better uh better open rates better click-through rates especially and better conversion rates um when you're personalizing the content to what the actual group is interested in or what they've done in the past um so tailoring you know to their levels of Engagement things like that so you know you can even create that sort of exclusivity as one of our loyal supporters we wanted to share this exclusive update things like that um and so you know I think another example is um is like younger people like we talked about earlier trying to appeal to gen Z and younger donors um one thing to keep in mind is that they don't always have as much money disposable to give or they might be less willing to give to an organization that they're not familiar with and so offering other options so maybe to give a smaller amount or like if you do have a gift match campaign really leaning into that to make people feel like okay your amount is going to be doubled or tripled so you can give a small amount and it will go a long way um showcasing impact um and being transparent like we've talked about already you want to make sure that you're doing that especially with those younger donors or potential donors because they respond really well to Dollar impact statements straightforward asks numbers proof things like that and social proof as well um and then showing gratitude no matter the amount so the goal is to turn everyone into a donor and ideally a bigger donor as they acquire more more money or or get more engaged with your cause and so treating everyone as um a potential large donor um is a great way to think about how you're thanking people and showing gratitude so um yeah all that to say segmenting your list making sure that you're kind of pulling in some of those ideas um that we just talked about into the the messaging that you're sending to each of these groups depending on who they are and uh what resources they have to actually give and um their interests okay and then using Dynamic Fields so pulling names into subject lines into the greeting in your email things like that to personalize um so you can include recipients names previous gifts favorite cause things like that so you know if you're able to um connect your uh donor management platform or your CRM to your email marketing platform that's ideal so you can easily pull in that data um but you can obviously always upload lists of information like this as well to to pull that in so whatever works for you um but being able to access that information in your email platform is key to personalizing and making people feel like you're tracking what they're doing and that you remember that they gave $20 last year um and you want them to give again and then last but not least okay we are running out of time keeping sporters connected year round so you know you want to make sure that you're not just asking them for money and then dropping off the face of the Earth so sending prompt uh you know thank you emails like we said acknowledging every donation with gratitude transparency sort of showing how the donation will be used sharing impact reports as those are available to you um people love to see impact reports so those are great to send in follow-up emails um and especially if you know it takes you a bit of time to put together the impact report that can be a cool way to re-engage people in the new year so if you have you know a holiday campaign giving Tuesday and you're putting together an impact report takes a few months to get that together re-engage people in February in March with an email and even some ads um guiding them to check out the impact support and learn more and maybe even donate again um and then yeah don't only make asks make sure you're providing value so you want to make invitations to participate in other ways volunteering sharing um sharing your campaigns on social media things like that um inviting them to events all of that good stuff and then staying top of mind so communicating regularly through newsletters updates so if you know they make a donation hopefully you can get them to also subscribe to more Communications from you um invite them to events that you have local events things like that and just build trust by sharing information um and resources over time so they don't just see you as an organization that asks for money but an organization that provides them value because they are the main character in their own Liv so you want to make sure you're always keeping that in mind keep things personal keep things focused on how you can deliver value and then also sometimes get people to give you a little money to support your cause all right that wraps things up right on time thank you everyone for joining