8 Free Email Marketing Practices for your Non-profit organization

If you are looking for a free guide for Nonprofit email marketing practices, then this article is for you. Below are the top nine free marketing Email practices for your nonprofit organizations.

Your non-profit organization is doing great work, and you want more people to know about it. You could spend more time on social media channels, but you’ve heard that email is the most trusted digital channel. Also, email is often the only direct channel you have to engage with your supporters and potential donors. And, you’re proud of your performance in this channel; your email program is up and running, and you’re sending out monthly (or even weekly) newsletters with updates on your programs, accomplishments, and campaigns.

So, why isn’t your campaign getting more results?

First, Define your goals.

It might not be your fault. Your supporters and donors might simply be tired of receiving so many emails, from your non-profit.

Let’s deep dive directly into the ultimate guide to Email marketing for non-profits.

Is email marketing dead?

Due to the new normal of Video, artificial intelligence, and chatbots. It feels that Email is obsolete. You might want to reconsider, according to optinmonster, email marketing is the number one most successful digital marketing tactic, and for good reason.

Always make a note you are a Guest in their inbox – Make sure that you aren’t getting ignored or sounding uninvited.

There is a variety of email marketing tips. Here in this blog, I shall be talking to you about Email marketing for a specific industry in detail, with different segments. –

1. Strategies for nonprofits to increase giving with email marketing
2. Add-on information to make your content crisper.

Now, let’s build your email marketing strategy from scratch.

Strategies for nonprofits to increase giving with email marketing

1. Best Email Service Provider (ESP) for your Non-profits

Now, you must be wondering What is the best email marketing platform for nonprofits?

That might feel flummoxing while Choosing an email marketing software in particular for a nonprofit. Even before selecting an email marketing Service provider, we think of an email marketing tool. As this includes an extra penny(expense).

For this, you need to be certain the email service provider you have selected is well worth the investment.

The best you can do is contact the Email Service providing businesses directly. Speak to somebody there.

Do they know your nonprofit’s assignment?

Are there particular people in the ESP who’ll be available to provide support as you create your email marketing campaign? (Maybe by providing any discount or so.)

Most of all, locate an ESP using an email tool that’ll be simple for your employees to utilize. When it is a couple of individuals or a whole group, it is crucial for your non-profit to easily navigate its way via the email marketing procedure. A tool that’s complex to find out wastes time which could be used elsewhere. Email marketing automation is good but overdoing is lazy.

So People generally have this question that –

Is Mailchimp free for nonprofits?

The answer is no, but Mailchimp does give a gift 15% discount to confirmed official nonprofits and welfare organizations, additional three months. [10% discount once 2FA setup is done in the account]

2. Positive readers only approach

As I said earlier, You are a guest in your reader’s inbox. Don’t force them to unsubscribe you in the very first instance. Buying email addresses lists are easy and barging into their inboxes isn’t big deal.

The best way is to generally have an update of your work via blog posts, email newsletter and articles, as people are keen and are happy to accept such content that their support has helped your Non-profit

Have a short and crisp process for the viewers to get you into their inbox by simplifying the sign-up process.

Also, you can give a chance to the readers to choose from the various types of email they want to receive and opt out of which they aren’t interested in.

Note – Event is also a considerable option to collect names and Emails. This can be an online or offline event.

3. “Thank you for Subscribing” pop-up.

Now, If you’ve recently used any Signup forms for any free newsletter- You come across a pop-up subscription, “Thank you for subscribing!”. Doesn’t it feel good to see such messages?

These are petty things that build a good relationship. Always acknowledge what you get, these help you to build contacts.

Note:- Don’t sound spammy by asking for donation right after they sign-up

4. Welcome Email.

One of the best free under-rated tactics for email marketing for nonprofits is having a welcome message for your email subscribers.

Any type of email, be it informative content or not which is directly getting into the viewer’s inbox isn’t good manners, without a Hello to my world email (Welcome Email).

This is where your email sequence starts.

Create a good appealing welcome email, as readers do pay attention to such nitty-gritty stuff which makes them feel good and confirmation of subscribing to something useful.

Create a good email strategy.

You need to justify the reason for existence in their inbox as they’ll be sparing some time for your content too, which they opted for in the first place. You don’t want to waste those email addresses.

5. Calls to Action “Donate”, “Social media tags”

Having a clear Call to Action (CTA) always helps. No matter what you want to convey, if you aren’t driving the readers to the end step as per your business then it doesn’t make sense for that particular newsletter /  Email.

The main relevant content in the body of the Email is an Image with the Header and footer being used appropriately to make an appropriate CTR for you.

Focus on the best Email subject as it will decide if your email is clickable or not.

Once your Email series starts do not forget to focus on other marketing channels to keep your email recipients engaged.

You can do this by setting up an email automation.

In this pandemic, you can also opt to inform your volunteering people by giving them a clear picture of your upcoming events,  fundraising campaigns, and thus also sharing your Nonprofit online donation page.

Have a good contact form on your website so that your viewers can contact you in case of any query.

6. Captivate – persuade people.

Having uncommon or fancy words isn’t a great idea when you aren’t actually into vocabulary business for your email newsletter.

You don’t want your readers to not understand the content by complex and fancy words.

Whether you are a nonprofit or a profit organization, crafting a clear and compelling message in an email can be a challenge. You can not directly ask someone to signup for a  fundraising event.

Keep your donor base engaged with your content.

So, Where do you start?

What types of words and phrases should you use?

And how can you read your audience to make sure you are sending the right message to the right people?

The answer lies in good planning. Just as you would with any piece of content to be published online or in print, you need a plan to create clear, compelling content in your emails.

But the key to creating clear and compelling content is knowing what it looks like.

It’s a must if you want to keep your subscribers. Your subscribers are smart people. They are technical and practical. They are busy people. They want to read something valuable to them. But, they can be distracted by too much text. So, you need to make your message clear to them.

Still, confused about how to frame more persuasive content?

• Optimize the subject line 
• Use compelling content 
• Get the first sentence right 
• Create Email templates 
• Use images, and videos 
• Build a relationship with your audience 
• Make your emails personal

7. Design your articles for maximum attention and impact

Don’t think you can get a good design for your content?

Think again.

More than 60% of the Emails /  are viewed on Mobile, plan to design your content to appeal in the first three seconds, else you may get dumped in the SPAM FOLDER or worse case even UNSUBSCRIBED.

You want to be sure that your email content is going to interest, maybe even captivate, your readers. The best way to accomplish this is to design your email content for maximum interest and impact. This is the conclusion of a recent study, which found that design is a key element in the email content.

The researchers discovered that the design of an email message can dramatically affect a reader’s response. In addition, the study found that the effects of design in the email are greater than the effects of the actual content.

You can easily follow the below process to make your content more viewable.

• Optimize Mobile view design strategy
• Design Your Email For Maximum Interests and Impact 
• Use CTAs In Your Subject Lines 
• Make Your Subscription Form Easy To Find 
• Use Different Designs For Different Newsletters 
• Use A/B Testing
• Don’t Include Passwords In Your Email
• Use Social Media To Get Your Message Out

8. Analytics and Segmentations

Now that we understand the basics of email marketing, let’s talk more about how successful we are. If ever we are going in the right direction.

It can be a real pain to collect, organize, and analyze the results manually. Fortunately, a variety of tools exist to help you make sense of your email marketing.

Most Email service providers generally share a complementary analytics section with them.

The biggest challenge faced by any email marketer is increasing the click-through rate (CTR) for the call-to-action (CTA). The highest CTR helps to improve your email open rate and it also helps your organization in building trust with your subscriber.

We need to focus on three main elements in a campaign –

1. Open rate
2. Click-through rate
3. Unsubscribes.

Let’s dissect what we mean by these three key elements statistics.

Open Rate – It clearly states the ratio of people who opens your emails. If you have a good open rate, consider yourself on the right path as you have established a relationship with your reader. On the contrary, if you have a bad ratio, you need to re-engage and unengaged with your readers and get rid of the unengaged readers as they affect your overall open rate.

Click-through rate (CTR) – CTR is generally a ratio between your impression v/s clicks. If you have any link in your email; what ratio of the readers clicked through the link.

If your Click-through ratio is in bad shape, consider you aren’t having a targeted viewer, or as said earlier you haven’t been appealing yet.

Unsubscribes – It’s the ratio of people who have unsubscribed to you, which is located at the bottom of the Email or screen.

What if your unsubscribing ratio is high to your opt-in ratio?

Congratulations, you have passed the point of building value and writing good copy for your opt-in’s… now, you’ve got to do some serious work in Email writing.

Email advertising for non-profits includes a particularly human element. You are reaching out to people, requesting their financial and psychological support.

Clients can view through insincere pitches, therefore it is essential to be true on your writing and layout. Your fans will react more favorably — and liberally! — into a real email advertising effort.

These steps are a fantastic place to start planning your email advertising. Use them to direct your email plan and your outcomes will demonstrate their energy in enhancing your nonprofit’s performance.

Mailchimp for Nonprofits

Everyone know email platforms are increasing their monthly price plan. But for non profit organisations MailChimp is the best option as it allow users to create free account and provide 12000 emails free per month.

So for nonprofit organisations mailchimp is the best option to send emails. If you haven’t check mailchimp till now then visit now and make a free account their now. Click here to create free mailchimp account.

Now, As I said earlier about-

B. Add-on information to make your content crisper.

You can use tools –

1. Grammarly

Successful email marketing makes it possible to stay connected to your donors and achieve a bigger audience to create relationships with new and possible contributors.

A chief advantage of email advertising to get non-profits is that it is an affordable and effective method to reach out to a huge audience. When creating an email mark                .eting plan, your own time and effort must be guided strategically for optimum success.

2. Campaign Monitor

It is a speedy and simple route for nonprofits to send significant email campaigns. Campaign Monitor is an amazing, yet simple to-utilize stage, making emails that help develop contributor connections and hit new donations goals is less difficult than any time in recent memory. Also, nonprofits save 15% with Campaign Monitor each day.

It can send engagement data to Salesforce or Raiser’s Edge and can sync that subscriber data to your database.