One of the main advantages of email outreach is that it allows for mass communication between your organization's constituents and supporters. If you wish, you can send your email to everyone in your donor database!
Of course, as your supporter base grows and diversifies, this may not be the best approach. However, capacity is key. Email makes it easy to accelerate the process of communicating with all your supporters based on your organization's fundraising strategy .
This means you can plan ahead to optimize your communications strategy and do some prep work to make email sending much faster. When you have the right email software, country email list your nonprofit can:
Create email templates.
Personalize the message with the supporter's name.
Send different messages based on different donor segments.
When used correctly, email can become a convenient outlet used to notify a large portion of your supporters of an upcoming campaign, organizational updates, or other large-scale messages.
The other side of the coin…
Mass communication has some inherent problems that your nonprofit should be aware of when it comes to mass email communications.
If you're not careful, mass communication can seem impersonal.
No matter how innovative you are as an author, it’s hard to hide when you send the same email to all your backers. It’s much more effective to send more personalized emails to segments of backers.
If you’re still working out the details of your strategy, be sure to test how your supporters respond to different types of emails using email marketing metrics like A/B testing can help determine which messaging, design, and imagery resonates best with your target audience. Gather relevant information so you can create a data-driven marketing strategy for your organization.
5. Email allows you to take risks and try new strategies.
As mentioned in the last section, email offers the opportunity to take small risks to determine the most effective approach to reach your supporters. Because email marketing is a digital strategy , the software you use should collect metrics on the effectiveness of your messages.
If you’re unsure whether a new communication strategy will be effective or not, you can quickly and easily test it through your email and receive immediate metrics to measure success rates.
You can easily monitor metrics like:
Email open rates
Click-through rates
Donations received due to emails
Registration rate increases post-marketing campaigns
Once you’ve analyzed these metrics (and others that are critical to your nonprofit), you can use them to optimize your strategy for even greater success. For example, if you want to change up your email design, you can test a couple of different styles, then analyze the open and click-through rates of the different styles. The one with the highest conversion rates is likely to be the strongest option!
The other side of the coin…
The immediate metrics you receive on your email communications are only part of the bigger picture. While click-through rates and open rates are important and indicate the effectiveness of your message, they can make you forget the whole purpose of your campaign.
For example, if you have a really good subject line for an email, you might get higher open rates. However, if the actual email message isn't good, supporters won't respond positively. So how effective was the email, really?
In addition to immediate email metrics, your organization should pay attention to how your marketing strategy impacts the overall success of your fundraising effort.
After all, what’s the point of developing a communications strategy if it doesn’t lead to a better overall outcome?
A fundraising campaign without an effective marketing strategy is like a ship without sails; it goes nowhere. When email is incorporated into your strategy effectively, it is an invaluable asset. However, if used ineffectively, it can cause more harm than good.
The first step to making sure you’re using email effectively is to implement effective fundraising and marketing software that allows your team to tailor messaging to your target audience as needed. Then, craft a marketing strategy that takes into account how your nonprofit’s supporters best respond to emails.
Find software that best helps your nonprofit exemplify the good qualities of your email marketing strategy and avoid the downside. All-in-one solutions help you create strategies using all available marketing platforms so your organization can get the most out of each.