It’s easier than ever for nonprofits to stay connected with the people who matter most to their organization: their donors! But with so many channels to choose from, marketers must work strategically to meet supporters where they are and stand out from their peers.
Many of the newer marketing channels, like social media and short-form video, can catch attention, but email remains a pillar of effective marketing for nonprofits. 97% of email users check their email at least once a day, with 88% checking their inboxes multiple times, giving your organization ample opportunities to engage supporters.
Let’s dive into the ins and outs of email marketing for nonprofits, from the biggest benefits of creative, targeted communications to key elements you need to consider before launching a campaign.
Benefits of email marketing for nonprofits
When you’re working with a limited budget, your marketing materials need to do double (or triple!) duty to reach multiple goals. Email marketing for nonprofits comes with a host of benefits to help you reach your objectives, whether you’re aiming to nurture relationships and build a community, or cut down on your marketing budget and evaluate your email success.
Cost-effective communication
Nonprofits often have minimal marketing budgets, so deciding which channels to invest in is a major decision. While email marketing does require some start-up costs, like graphic design and software solutions, the return on investment is a major draw. Nonprofits can expect a return on investment (ROI) of roughly $36 for every $1 spent on email, making it one of the most cost-effective marketing channels. That return can be reinvested into email to continually scale your outreach and garner more community support.
Strong donor relationships
With email, your supporters turn into subscribers and stay in the loop on all of your organization’s updates. This helps supporters feel more connected to your cause and strengthens your relationships. When you request donations, announce an upcoming event, or put out a call for volunteers, your email subscribers will be much more inspired to take action and get involved. Plus, email allows you to share materials from your other marketing channels, like social media and blogging, so people can engage with you on those platforms, too.
Awareness and education
Email marketing is a great way to keep your audience informed about your organization and cause through regular email newsletters and educational materials. Let your supporters know where their dollars are going by sharing impact reports, recipient or volunteer stories, and statistics. Be transparent about your current goals and what’s on the horizon for your organization. The more knowledge your audience has, the more excited they’ll be to talk about your cause with friends and continually spread awareness.
Community-building through events
Nonprofit organizations thrive on hosting events, both virtually and in person. Events promote a shared experience, and shared experiences promote shared giving. When donating solo, it can be hard to feel like you’re making a difference, but that all changes with events. By bringing supporters together, you create a community and allow everyone to see the impact they’ve made as a group. Email marketing can help you get the word out about upcoming events, send thank-you messages to attendees, and recap past events to keep momentum strong.
Improved donation collection
With email marketing for nonprofits, you can take your fundraising to the next level by directly speaking with past donors and leveraging powerful communication strategies to inspire donations. Create a drip campaign to encourage contributions and let subscribers know how close your organization is to reaching your fundraising goals. Drip campaigns, in terms of fundraising, work to encourage initial donations and even supplemental ones when subscribers see that an organization is close to reaching the finishing line.
Automatic data tracking
Nonprofit marketing budgets aren’t just about dollars — they’re about time spent, as well. Streamline your system and devote more time to your cause with email tracking software. Using an automated email platform will help your organization easily measure the results of your email marketing campaigns and evaluate their effectiveness in encouraging donations and engaging subscribers. Track open rates, click-through rates, bounces, and your subscriber count to understand where your marketing strategy can improve. Check the average industry metrics often to ensure you’re hitting benchmarks.
The 5 Ws of marketing for nonprofits
Before building your email marketing strategy, take the time to map out the who, what, where, when, and why of your campaign. Doing so helps you simplify your goals, employ targeted marketing for nonprofits, and elevate your overall fundraising strategy. Let’s explore the essential questions to ask yourself.
Who should I email?
It’s tempting to send every email to everyone on your list (we get it!), but if you want to improve donor retention and develop more meaningful donor engagement, you have to deliver the right message to the right person.
Email marketing is one of the most effective channels for communicating with different audiences. Rather than sending one broad message to your entire audience, utilize email list segmentation to create email campaigns that are specific to your supporters.
Here are some ideas for email segments to get you started on your nonprofit email list:
- Blog subscribers who have never donated before
- Previous donors who haven’t contributed in over six months
- Donation amounts
- Monthly recurring donors
- Social media power users
- Corporate sponsors
- Volunteers
- Event attendees
What content are you sending?
Each segment of your audience should get content tailored to them. For example, first-time donors might receive educational material on your cause, while recurring donors get more detailed impact reports.
Think about your message from your supporters’ perspective. Given your relationship with an organization, what kind of information or appreciation would you expect from them?
Tip: Craft compelling subject lines for your organization’s emails to encourage opens. Use action-based words, connect to your subscribers’ emotions, and use urgency when applicable.
Welcome emails
Welcome new supporters to your list with a series of emails that tell them everything they need to know. Be transparent about the content they will receive, when they can expect to hear from your organization, and if your organization offers incentives or gifts as a thank you for donating. Include informational material to educate them on your organization’s cause and thank them for subscribing and supporting.
Fundraising emails
Fundraising emails are a core piece of strategic marketing for nonprofits. Collecting donations helps support your organization’s cause alongside the organization itself. Make sure you send branded, informative emails with clear calls to action to boost donations and turn silent supporters into active donors.
Thank-you emails and donation confirmations
Always thank your organization’s supporters for donating, volunteering, and attending events. Thank-you messages and donation confirmation emails should be timely. Consider setting up automated emails that send as soon as a donation has been received or the morning after an event has ended. You can also automate general thank-you emails during holiday seasons or after large fundraising drives. These messages go a long way in showing your supporters that your organization appreciates their generosity, time, and loyalty.
Education and impact messages
Email educational materials to your audience to keep them informed on new developments at your organization and the impact of their support. Include powerful stories about who or what is benefiting from donations, as well as future goals to promote continued donation and involvement with your organization.
Newsletters
Send regular newsletters to keep subscribers informed about your organization, upcoming events and fundraisers, incentives and gifts, recaps, and donor or beneficiary stories. Use newsletters as an opportunity to do more than just update supporters on the goings-on at your organization. These regular messages help build trust with subscribers and can inspire them to get more involved or update their donor status (think one-time donor to recurring, or standard to premium membership).
Event promotions and recaps
Email is a key element of event promotion, as it builds hype for subscribers who are attending and encourages people who haven’t signed up to RSVP before it’s too late. Send event recaps to non-attendees to ensure they’re in the loop, and share heartfelt thank-you messages to show gratitude to the people who attended your event. Your full email list should receive recordings of virtual events like webinars, panels, and discussions, including supporters who were in attendance.
Volunteer, sponsor, and partner stories
Partnerships and event sponsors help grow your organization’s network. Share stories illustrating your sponsors’ and partners’ impact and encourage subscribers to follow these organizations on other platforms. Volunteers are incredible resources for email — ask them to provide a written or video testimonial sharing their history with your organization and how their service has affected their life.
Where are you directing your subscribers?
Of course, you want your email content to be engaging to your readers, but they should also receive clear direction as to what to do next. If an email is only going out to your newsletter subscribers, the main call to action (CTA) could link to a blog post. On the other hand, if you’re running a recurring donations campaign, add a CTA link to the campaign microsite or a donation form.
Tip: Connect your email’s topic to what readers find on the other side of the CTA. An email sharing a beneficiary’s story should include a CTA to donate, not a link to a downloadable resource.
When should you send emails?
For some organizations, the best day to send an email is on the weekend, while for others it might be a Monday or Tuesday. Ask yourself who your audience is and what their primary behaviors might be, then start experimenting. Review your email reports at the end of each month to determine which days and times receive the best open and click-through rates.
Note that the peak times for open rates can be different than primetime for click-through rates. Choose your send date and time based on the data you’ve collected from previous campaigns. For example, an email with a CTA to donate during the final push of a fundraising drive should be sent on the day and time you’ve observed higher click-through rates. Check conversion rates to see how many people donated after clicking a link to a donation form in your email.
Tip: Build a content calendar to keep your communications organized and to avoid overwhelming your audience. Include all of your marketing channels, like email, social media, blogging, and podcasting.
Why are you sending emails?
This might be the most important question you ask yourself before sending an email or starting a campaign. Remember, effective campaigns reach the right people at the right time with the right message. Creating goals unique to each segment you’re targeting in your campaign makes your content much more compelling to supporters and helps you hone in on the campaign’s purpose. Some reasons your nonprofit organization might be sending emails include:
- To gather donations
- To inform your audience
- To organize events
Here are some examples of how you can use the five W’s in your nonprofit email marketing plan:
Who? First-time donors
What? An educational infographic that reminds them how important their donation has been in solving a problem in your cause sector.
Where? Send email recipients to a blog post or a video that elaborates on the information in the infographic.
When? Within a week of their donation.
Why? Demonstrate a donor’s value to your mission and motivate them to re-engage with your organization.
Who? Donors who have supported your organization multiple times
What? An exclusive invite to be the first to join your brand-new recurring donors program.
Where? To your unique recurring donations program page or form.
When? During the soft launch of a recurring donations campaign or your year-end campaign.
Why? Make dedicated donors feel appreciated, so they become a pillar of sustained support for your organization.
Who? One-time donors
What? A celebratory thank-you message with a soft ask to donate again.
Where? Send them to a unique donation form that speaks to this segment. Maybe the headline of the form is, “Congratulations! You’re about to renew your impact!”
When? On the first anniversary of their first donation.
Why? Increase donor retention through celebration and positive reinforcement.
Nonprofit email marketing best practices
You’ve got the fundamentals down! Before you send out your next campaign, review these best practices to ensure you’re making the most of email marketing for nonprofits.
Mobile-responsive design
Make sure your organization’s emails are mobile-responsive and work on multiple devices. Emails must fit the frame of the device’s screen without content and calls to action being cut off. Content needs to be clickable and scrollable by touch and fit a range of mobile devices, web browsers, and apps.
Social media links
Emails are an opportunity to share your organization’s social networks and expand your reach even further. Link your organization’s social channels within each email and add hyperlinked icons to each platform in your email footer. Consider embedding social media content (especially high-performing posts!) in newsletters to encourage supporters to follow you on each platform.
A/B testing
A/B testing involves sending two different versions of an email to test groups of your subscribers with one element changed. Often, marketing for nonprofits incorporates A/B testing by sharing two different suggested donations or donor stories with audiences.
Other common elements to A/B test include:
- Subject lines
- Email layout
- Images and graphics
- Colors
- CTA text
- Link type (including buttons, hyperlinks, and linked imagery)
Form test groups of similar size and demographic make-up to control the test. Be sure to include subscribers from all of your segments in each test group to avoid skewing your results.
Call to action
A call to action (CTA) directs a reader to your desired next steps, like donating, following your social media profiles, or sharing a testimonial. Calls to action in emails accompany a button that links readers to landing pages that help them complete the action. Focus on short phrases for your CTAs — a large, colorful button labeled “Donate now!” is more likely to get attention than a long, hyperlinked sentence within a paragraph of your email.
Reach your goals with email marketing for nonprofits
No matter your cause, building an audience of devoted supporters and donors is crucial to making an impact. Email marketing can help you connect with subscribers on a personal level and deliver powerful messages that resonate. You’ll build a community online that will translate to both online and in-person action.
Strategies like segmentation and A/B testing make marketing for nonprofits easier by delivering the right messages to the right people at the right time. Keep the 5 Ws in mind whenever you craft a new email sequence to maximize your engagement and garner ultimate donor support.
Whether you’re running a fundraising campaign, sending a monthly newsletter, or preparing a one-off email, Constant Contact has the tools to support all of your email marketing needs. Explore our comprehensive email marketing software to take your donor outreach to the next level!
