Unlock the Power of your Nonprofit's Email List

Tips to Help Small Nonprofits Get Started with Email Marketing

Twice in the past few months, I’ve had the same experience talking to a small nonprofit client. We’ve been doing discovery and planning for a website redesign, and we get to the checkbox on the onboarding form that asks this question:

Do you want an email list sign-up form on your website?

I’ll be honest — this is a leading question. The right answer, of course, is yes. Every nonprofit should be investing some energy into building an email list of supporters who care about their mission and want to get more involved.

But in both conversations with recent clients, the follow-up conversation revealed the same common problem which faces many small nonprofit teams.

Me: Where should the email addresses collected on the sign-up form be stored?

Nonprofit Client: Well … I guess we would want to add them to our email spreadsheet.

Me: Can you tell me more about how you use the email spreadsheet to communicate with your subscribers?

NC: When we need to email our list, I just copy and paste the email addresses into the bcc field of a new message in Gmail.

And this is how we get to one of the most common add-on projects to a website redesign: setting up an email marketing platform. In this post, I want to share some of the common topics I discuss with nonprofit clients that are just getting started with email marketing.

Why is email marketing so powerful?

A user that voluntarily signs up for your email list is valuable. Unlike users that passively view a page on your website or scroll past a social media post, a user that opts-in to your email list is actively raising their hand and saying “Yes, I want you to email me with updates about your work.”

That’s a big deal! It’s a sign that this person cares enough about your mission to want to hear about your progress, your challenges, and how they can get involved. They might become a volunteer. They might become a donor. Perhaps even a sustaining donor that gives every month.

But you’ll never know unless you respond to their invitation and start sending them regular updates!

How to get started: Four steps for small nonprofits

In the example I gave above, the client had an Excel spreadsheet of around 400 people that they maintain manually. Some people on the list were current donors; some were lapsed donors. Others had simply filled out a paper sign-up form at an event. All of that information was carefully maintained in the spreadsheet, but the process of updating information was slow and manual.

1. Sign up for a email marketing service

I recommend Mailchimp for my clients. I don’t have any relationship with the company besides being a satisfied user, and they’re far from the only service out there. I encourage you to shop around and seek recommendations, but if you’re looking for an easy place to start, give Mailchimp a try. They have a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers, and they provide a discount to 501c3 organizations for when your list grows larger than that.

Why is an email marketing service better than just using a regular Gmail or Outlook account? Here are a few reasons:

• You can track open rates and click rates, helping you understand how engaging your content is and who is the most engaged

• You get more design flexibility than a standard email account, with the ability to add images, buttons and other design elements to make your email more engaging

• It’s easier to stay compliant with laws regulating email marketing, such as making sure subscribers have the ability to unsubscribe from future marketing if they choose

2. Create a Template

Once you have an account set up with your email marketing service, you’ll want to create a simple template for your email campaigns. At its most simple, this just requires an image file for your organization’s logo to go in the header, and some basic information about the organization to go in the footer.

For example, it’s a best practice to make sure there’s a complete mailing address for your organization in the footer, as well as a clear unsubscribe link for users that want to opt-out of future messages.

Try to maintain some visual consistency between your website and your email template. When your emails land in subscribers’ inboxes, you want them to be able to quickly and easily connect the email with your organization. Hopefully they will remember signing up and will be enthusiastic to open your email to see the latest news. Using the same logo and color scheme across your website, email template, and social media accounts will help reinforce your organization’s brand and remind readers who you are.

3. Set up a welcome email

Most email marketing services also allow you to create a Welcome Email. Unlike an email campaign that you send to everyone on your list at a time of your choosing, the welcome email is sent automatically to an individual subscriber right after they sign up.

Make sure the welcome email uses the same template that you designed in the previous step, and try to make the email as engaging as possible! Because this email will arrive just after the user signed up when the user is actively thinking about your organization, they’re much more likely to open it. This is a great opportunity to set expectations: preview what kind of content they can expect to receive from you in future, and how often you’ll be emailing them.

4. Connect your sign-up forms

Now you need to make sure new email subscribers are added to your list. How to complete this step depends on where your email subscribers come from. You may need to use sign-up forms provided by your email marketing platform to embed on your website, or link to from your social media accounts.

For example, Mailchimp provides a variety of customizable sign-up forms that can be easily integrated with most modern website platforms. If you need help here, check with your web developer.

Plan your email marketing calendar

Now that your email marketing service is set up and ready to go, I recommend that you spend some time planning out a content calendar.

There are three important factors to consider:

1. Frequency

It is important to email your list regularly, ideally at least once a month. If you let it go too long between updates, users may forget that they subscribed and are more likely either to ignore your emails or worse, mark them as spam.

2. Relevant content

Plan out what kinds of content you will share in your email campaigns. Thinking ahead here will make it easier to make sure you’re gathering content as part of your day-to-day routine.

Keep it simple by giving your subscribers what they asked for! If the sign-up form promises that subscribers will hear about the “latest news” or “opportunities to get involved,” make sure you’re fulfilling that promise.

3. Call to action

Every email should give subscribers something to do. A next step, or a “call to action”. Most often this will be a link to click in the content of your email that takes the user to your website to learn more about an upcoming event, or to a new resource, a news article, or a donation form.

In addition to keeping your subscribers engaged, making sure you include a clickable call to action helps make sure your emails continue to be delivered to subscribers’ inboxes. Email Service Providers monitor open rates and click rates, and delivering relevant engaging content is an important part of maintaining your reputation as a sender of good-quality email, rather than spam email.

Level up: Next steps to get more from your email list

If you follow the steps outlined here, you’ll be able to track your progress over time and take steps to maintain the health of your email list. As you get more comfortable with email marketing as a way to communicate with your organization’s supporters, you can start experimenting to get even more value out of your email list. Here are a few ideas:

• Practice email list hygiene. Put a system in place for reaching out to subscribers that have been inactive for several months to ask if they want to stay on the list, and if they don’t respond, archive or delete their records.

• Experiment with segmenting your list. As your list grows, you will see strongly results if you send different content to different segments of your list. The best place to start is by building separate segments for donors and non-donors. Your donors should receive messages that thank them for their support alongside sharing the latest news. On the other hand, you may want to send non-donors the news update, along with an invitation to get more involved or become a donor for the first time.

• Test your subject lines. Finding subject lines that resonate with your audience and encourage them to open your emails is critically important! Try using an email subject line testing tool like this one from CoSchedule, and if your platform allows it, try running some A/B tests to learn which subject lines perform best.