Have you ever heard a cooler buzzword than “email marketing”? It’s like a spell from Harry Potter that turns tedious email sending into an automated donation boosting machine. Before you say the magic words, though, you should study up a little bit on where the fairy dust comes from and how you can spread the love. Okay, I can’t keep up the metaphor anymore, but we are here to chat email marketing and what it can do for your nonprofit. We’ve also included an exciting guide that will inspire your efforts.
Segmentation
Email marketing allows for you to create very cool, very specific sender lists. You can divide your huge database of emails into ones that fit specific criteria. Why is this important? Well, do you want to be sending the same email to someone who has recently completed a donation to someone who hasn’t given for a few years? The simple answer is no. Segmentation let’s you get straight up creative with those lists and list requirements.
Personalization
“Hello, all.” Ugh, what a boring way to start an email. With email marketing you are able to personalize emails in mass. I’m going it say this again for dramatic effect “in mass.” I am talking time optimization, you hard working nonprofit folk! This means you can send the same email to your segmented list and it will automatically add the receiver’s name. So I think we have to go back to the metaphor posed earlier and really ask ourselves, is magic real?
Automization
It just happens. I mean you put together a workflow of emails and schedule them to send. You can set them to send after certain requirements are met or if your receiver has or hasn’t responded according to your criteria. You don’t have to do anything after that. Just set it up, walk away, and back in email marketing bliss.
Analytics
With email marketing you can look at your open rates, click through rates, bounce rates and so many other rates! You are able to tell when people open your email and on what kind of device. You can do A/B testing to compare slightly different versions of the same email to your lists. May I suggest a subject line change to see which one performs better? Again, wizarding world, are you there?
Engagement(-ation)
All of these things boost the engagement factor with your lists. Engagementing (I made that up) is so important for the success of your email campaigns and all of the above factors ensure that your campaigns will be just that.
There are a bunch of awesome email marketing tools available to nonprofits and we recommend checking some of them out when you have time. It’s also a good idea to build up your email list to make the most out of your email marketing. If you aren’t sure how to start, check out the guide below that we created with Julia Campbell of JC Social Marketing where we walk you through some important steps.
