Whether you’ve known someone for a day or a decade, your nonprofit has a relationship with each person who engages with it. It’s important to make the most out of that connection by nurturing it over time. In short, email marketing is a great option to make sure the relationship stays fresh.
Benefits of email marketing
Even with all the cutting-edge options to connect with people, lowly email is still a great choice. There are a few reasons why:
- It’s (almost) universal. These days, pretty much everyone has an email address.
- It’s inexpensive. Sending an email doesn’t cost much at all. In fact, it might be free if you’re a small organization!
- It’s flexible. There’s a lot you can do with email, and there are lots of ways to be creative.
When combined, these options make email a powerful way for many nonprofits to connect with their donor base, community, and more.
How can you use email marketing?
As mentioned above, email provides a lot of flexibility for whatever kind of campaign you want to run. The first step is to decide the objective. In other words, what do you want to accomplish?
You may want to…
- Share your accomplishments or impact. Email can be a great way to let people know about what you’ve been doing. Additionally, it’s a handy way to share how people can help you reach your goals!
- Stay on the minds of people in your community. Let’s face it – everyone’s busy. Email can be a great way to remind people in your area about the impact you’ve made.
- Encourage engagement. Are you looking for volunteers or participants at an upcoming event, for example? Or do you want to collect stories from your community? Sending out an email can be a great way to create engagement.
General tips for email marketing
When you start sending email, consider a couple of key points.
- Above all, make it relevant and interesting. We all get a lot of email! It’s not a good idea to send email when you don’t have a purpose for it. Think about what would make people want to read your messages. Can you reach a point where your network is excited to receive email from you?
- Consider segmentation to target the right people. Chances are you want to reach different kinds of people with different messages: donors, community members, etc. After you’re comfortable with email marketing, think about how you can target different messages to different groups.
Email’s a fantastic way to strengthen your relationship with your network and make people feel connected with your mission. Soon you’ll be well on your way to building campaigns that really supercharge your impact!
Once you’re ready to go, read about some easy ways to build your email list.
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