Nonprofit Email Marketing Best Practices + Checklist
Email marketing isn’t just for businesses. Nonprofits have a lot to gain from using email as part of their content marketing strategy. Having an email marketing plan in place can help you:
Get people to ACT. Year after year, studies show that people are more likely to act on email asks far more than social media asks.
Develop a loyal following of people who are genuinely interested in your organization
Drive more donations strategically in a way that your donors don’t get turned off (more about that in just a bit!)
Save a lot of time. By automating your email marketing, you don’t waste valuable time manually crafting personalized emails to each constituent.
Let’s dig into the basics. In this post, we’re going to cover setting up your email marketing platform, email marketing best practices you should know, and the best email marketing platforms and nonprofit discounts.
Setting Up Your Email Marketing Platform
Remember the following when setting up your email marketing software:
Select software that you’ve tested using the free trial or plan. It should be software that you’re comfortable with using.
Create contact points on your website for email sign-up forms. Think about placing them in places where they’re highly visible. A simple subscribe form informs subscribers that they can get on your email list for the latest news, updates, and ways to support your mission.
A name and an email address are enough. If you ask for more details, it could potentially scare subscribers off.
Start segmenting your emails from the very beginning. Think donors, past volunteers, event attendees, board members and advisors, and staff.
Plan Your Emails and Decide Your Frequency
It’s important to sit down and plan your email marketing, so your emails are not all over the place. Remember, your most intentional marketing efforts will be your most successful ones.
Create a welcome email or sequence based on segment type – you will be able to automate this with most email marketing software tools. Schedule it, so it gets sent out immediately. The first impression of your organization will have to be the very best, so make it count.
Plan emails that you want to send after that. You can do this planning exercise monthly as well, where at the beginning of the month, you decide the types of emails you want to send out, to who, and when.
Write your emails. Draft up your emails ahead of time and schedule these to be sent out once a week or once every two weeks as you prefer. This is often a time-saver for nonprofits because you can block out some free time to do all your emails at one go.
Frequency is tricky. Too many emails and your subscribers may choose to opt-out of communication altogether. If you can swing it, at least twice a month is a great goal to aim for. If you have more news and updates to share, once a week could be a target goal.
Creating emails like this can seem arduous and time-consuming. The good news is, once you set them up, they will run on autopilot, and you only need to tweak and monitor them occasionally.
Email marketing best practices Checklist
Here are some tips to help you get the best results from your email marketing.
Make it a goal to grow your email list
An email list is simply a list of all the people who’ve chosen to receive email communication from you. Your aim should be to grow your email list from month to month and minimize the number of people who choose to opt out from further communication from you.
Use an email marketing solution or platform to help you build a foundation for growing your email list and managing it. Once you have this in place, you can set up things like a subscription form on your website or exit pop-ups that prompt your website visitors to share email addresses when they’re leaving the site.
Consider creating a lead magnet which is a high-value free resource your subscribers can download in exchange for signing up. Case studies, checklists, and toolkits are great examples of lead magnets. Again, place this in prominent positions on your site. You can even place the forms at the bottom of your blog posts.
Know Spam Laws and Policies
Here are Spam Laws you should be familiar with:
US: CAN-SPAM act
Canada: Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation.
European Union: General Data Protection Regulations
UK: Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of 2003
Essentially, you must be sure that all of your email subscribers are permission-based. That means your subscribers have an existing relationship as a customer, donor, or member (implied permission) or have expressly permitted you to send them an email, like entering their email information in a subscribe form (explicit permission).
Breaking spam laws are no joke. Email marketing software will terminate your account if they suspect you are subscribing to people without their permission.
Create a welcome email or welcome series
Set up a welcome email or welcome series to onboard your subscribers. Your first welcome email should go out immediately after someone subscribes—this is easy to set up with your email marketing solution. Your welcome email is critical to your long-term marketing strategy, so it’s important to get it right.
Aside from a warm and personalized welcome (email platforms allow you to address the first name of each subscriber), your welcome email can thank subscribers for signing up, provide a brief introduction to your organization, and give information on what they can expect in your upcoming emails and the frequency. Check out my blog post here for more welcome email guidelines and a template you can use.
Offer variety in your communication
Your emails should offer resources that keep your audience engaged and interested in your organization. Aim for a mix of general news, nonprofit achievements, impact stories, information sharing, or educational emails of benefit to the subscriber and, finally, calls-to-action (donate, volunteer, come to our event). Read this guide for more ideas.
Provide the Best User Experience
One of the most important rules to follow in your email marketing is that it’s never about you, it’s about your subscribers. While you still need to appeal for donations and promote your organization, the primary focus is building long-lasting relationships.
Personalize your emails. Remember to send welcome emails and all other emails to match your segment type. You can address each subscriber individually by their first name – email marketing software has an option that allows you to this.
Copy hack: when writing emails, write as if you are writing for one person, not a list of people.
Do not bombard subscribers with donation requests. Use your best judgment in terms of when to send donation requests and appeals for action.
Don’t write chunky emails. Keep your sentences short and write shorter paragraphs of about 3 to 4 lines each maximum.
Use buttons when sharing links. It’s easier to click from a button than a link on mobile and other small screens.
Understand Your Insights
Once you are comfortable with using your email marketing software, you can start to explore the email open rate feature to take your content marketing to the next level.
Email open rates can tell you how many users have opened your emails. Because open rates are determined by how attractive your subject lines are, it’s a good indication of whether you need to improve the way you write your subject headers. According to Mailchimp, the average open rate for non-profits is around 25.17%.
There are a whole host of other types of analytics, including split tests that you can leverage to increase the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. Invest a little time in exploring these, as they have the potential to really amplify the returns on your marketing efforts.
Best email marketing platforms and nonprofit discounts
Don’t be afraid to test-drive an email marketing platform before you invest. A lot of email marketing software offer free trials or demos. Also, understand whether they have discounts for nonprofits and features designed for nonprofit use, like nonprofit email templates that you can easily customize for your communication.
Here are some email marketing platforms that nonprofits can consider:
Mailchimp: Mailchimp has a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers. They offer a 15% discount for nonprofits and charities.
Constant Contact: Constant Contact has an exhaustive list of great features that make it ideal for nonprofits. You can test the product with their one-month free trial. Constant Contact offers nonprofits a 20% 6-month prepay discount and 30% for a 12-month prepay.
Aweber: Aweber has monthly, quarterly, and yearly billing plans. They have just the two plans - a free plan for up to 500 subscribers and a paid Pro plan but they do offer a little something extra for nonprofits - 3 months free on the Aweber Pro plan and a 25% discount on the plans thereafter.
Benchmark: Benchmark is an affordable solution with plans starting from as low as $13/month. They offer a 25% discount on their paid plans for registered nonprofits. Benchmark also has a free basic plan in which you can send up to 250 emails a month.
Campaign Monitor: Campaign Monitor offers a free plan for up to 5 subscribers. Their paid plans start from $9/month for up to 500 subscribers. They also offer a 15% discount for nonprofits.
Email marketing is fast becoming an indispensable tool to consider if you’re serious about extending your reach online and significantly boosting your ability to raise funds.
What’s your biggest challenge with email marketing as a nonprofit? Let me know in the comments below!