Why Every Nonprofit Needs An Email List

STAGE TWO

Every nonprofit needs an email list. Sounds strange? Why would a nonprofit organization need an email list? Isn’t that something a marketing company or blogger would need? Yes. And so does a nonprofit organization!

It’s 21st Century business. Nonprofits are businesses after all.

An email list is especially important for start-up organizations, because it may take a while to ramp up operations. Funders are looking for quantifiable impact. Social media has become an accepted method for reaching prospective clients and keeping in touch with current clients.

Your email list is another way to keep in touch with your donors, funders, and your community. Hit send and reach all of your contacts in one go. To streamline things, you use an email marketing service provider, which has real-time tracking tools that report who's opening, clicking, and sharing your emails, so you can determine what types of communications are effective and which ones need to be reworked.

During the setup phase of a nonprofit, I always encourage Founders to develop an email marketing system. It is a critical tool of the trade that will save time, money, and resources. Back in the ‘90s when I first joined the nonprofit sector, funders and potential clients alike, looked for traditional marketing collateral like brochures and pamphlets to obtain information about an organization. Today, the first thing most people do is Google an organization. What comes up is a website, social media platform, or if they’ve been featured online, an article or mention on someone else’s online medium. The point here is that people look for information on your organization online. So capitalize on it!

Every nonprofit should have a website. Having opt-ins (forms asking visitors to sign up for your email list) strategically positioned on the website to capture visitors’ emails will help grow your list. If someone is visiting your website, there’s a high likelihood that they are looking for the information and/or resources your organization has to offer. Utilizing all the tools and resources an email marketing system has to offer will help you grow your list.

The best part about an email marketing system is all the features it has to offer.

📩 Personalized welcome emails. Build stronger client connections with Email Marketing Automation. By creating a personalized email one time, you can schedule to send it automatically at whatever time or date you want. This saves you time and gives you control over your content. When someone signs up to your list, you can send an automated email that acknowledges and thanks them. You can also let them know what to expect from you — what you will be sending them and how often.

📩 Create a series of emails for your contact lists. Add new contacts to your automated lists, and they’ll receive a scheduled series of emails that you create ahead of time to keep your clients engaged — and ready to take action. It’s a great way to cultivate donors, elected officials, or anyone you want to stay actively engaged. You can even use the automated emails to remind clients/parents/program participants about upcoming payments that need to be made, field trips, and meetings…just schedule them in advance as friendly reminders, and increase your engagement.

📩 Get better results with targeted email marketing campaigns. Targeted emails are perfect for engaging donors. Maybe a donor has shown interest in a particular program. No longer do you have to run the risk of alienating donors, or bombarding them with information they aren’t interested in receiving. Segment (group) contacts based on the content they click to create more targeted lists, send more relevant emails, see better results, and make donors happy.

I really love email marketing systems because it gives you a high return on your investment. As a nonprofit leader, you have so many balls in the air. You’re juggling program administration, donor engagement, collaboration/partnerships, and trying to grow your visibility for funding, sustainability, and growth. An email marketing system can help you with all of those! And the themed email templates make it a breeze to communicate with any one of these stakeholders.

It’s super easy to upload your email list from Excel, Gmail, Outlook, and more. Unsubscribes, bounces, and inactive emails are updated automatically in an easy-to-use email marketing software. No hassle is my number one goal, and an email marketing system removes a lot of the stress associated with managing stakeholder relationships.

Take, for example, reports. Every nonprofit should be reporting on their organization’s impact.

Using a customizable email template, you could save money and time, and grow your email list by creating a stunning “full color” report that highlights your organization’s accomplishments. You can insert pictures, videos, thank you letters, report cards, stats/charts — the whole shebang! in one email — and send it to your list. But more importantly, you can continue to add new stakeholders to that list to grow your client and donor base.

Because it’s electronic, there are no printing or postage costs to the organization. Plus, with a quick drag-and-drop feature, you can add a “Donate” button, increasing the likelihood of a donation because the donor stays in the moment. They have a button at the tip of their fingers — as opposed to snail mail, where you could lose a donation if they’re distracted, misplace the envelope, or any number of reasons. Plus, with a donate button, you get the money quicker than a return envelope. 💸

I like that email marketing allows you to fundraise subtly. I provide a nice balance of amazing success stories, statistics that demonstrate impact, the cutest pictures I can find, and information on upcoming events and volunteer opportunities. Then, at the very end of the page, I include a donate button. No pressure…but if the reader happens to be inspired by the amazing work the organization is doing, I definitely want to give them the opportunity to support!

There’s so much you can do with an email marketing system that traditional marketing materials fall short in providing. Most importantly, growing your client base. If you hand a person a brochure, they walk away with a beautifully crafted marketing piece. But with an email marketing system, they get that same beautiful content, AND an opportunity to click a button. That click could have been initiated by a donor…

The opportunities are endless…this is 21st Century engagement and my number one Tool of the Trade.

🔥 Grow your email list, increase your client engagement

🔥 Increase your client engagement, increase your donations.

🔥 Increase your donations, and now you have the formula for long-term sustainability.

Are you ready to start your email marketing system? If so, the email provider that I recommend, especially for those just starting out, is CONSTANT CONTACT.

They offer a FREE 60-DAY TRIAL so click on the link to try it out for yourself.

You don’t have to enter a credit card number to get started. It gives you a 2-month head start on growing that email list and testing out all the features to make sure you love it. When the free trial is over, you are going to sign up for a paid plan because of all the time and money this system is going to save you in the long run. Trust me. This is one investment that is well worth it.

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