Email marketing is effective, and for PHC donor email campaigns, it’s essential. It allows you to personally reach out to potential donors, explain who you are, what you’re doing, and why they should get involved. But with so many emails being sent each and every day, how can you make sure yours are noticed? A donor email campaign for any fundraiser or event should begin with one thing: strategy. Here are a few things you can do to effectively execute your donor email campaign.
Build an effective email list
Building an email list takes time. And no matter how long it is, you don’t ever want to stop adding to it. More email addresses mean a greater number of potential donors. One way to easily build your list for donor email campaigns is to have a spot where donors can easily sign up on your donor page or website. You can also go the more traditional route and allow potential donors to sign up at a booth at your fundraising events.
Email design matters
Emails cluttered with excessive text or lacking design elements don’t encourage the reader to keep reading. Short paragraphs will help break up the text, making it easier for them to skim. Bring in some imagery that helps illustrate the message you’re sending. Finally, make sure the email design matches the rest of your branding.
Add a personal element
Think about what makes an emotional impact when creating your donor email campaigns. Every PHC has a different client base, and each one serves women and men with different stories. Think about what makes your center different and powerful to your community. Write something you would be excited to read, whether that’s a client testimonial, the number of lives your center saved last year, your goals for the future, or something else. The more excited you are to tell it, the more excited your donors will be to read it.
Encourage readers to respond
When you’re developing automated marketing campaigns, the main goal is to make donors act. Make it easy to respond to your email by creating email content that’s meaningful to them. In order to properly do this, you’ll want to consider who your donor demographic is, and you’ll want to speak to what’s valuable to them.
Include CTAs
Make it easy for your donors to act by including donate buttons in your email. Call to action (CTA) buttons are important, but don’t include too many different options. What you want them to do as a result of your email should be clear.
Make sure your emails are mobile friendly
Did you know that 66 percent of all emails are opened on a smartphone? This means your donor email campaigns need to be compatible with mobile devices. If they’re not optimized, you’re missing out on a lot of potential interaction.
Test away
Make sure your emails are set up properly before sending them out! Test your links, double check your content, and make sure they’re being sent to the right list at the right time. Send test emails to your own personal account and check over how it all looks before hitting the big green button.
Track the analytics
Most email marketing platforms will show the analytics of sent emails. Make sure you’re paying attention to the details, like what time of day most of them were opened, so that you can adjust your future emails to be even higher performing. Take a look at what kinds of subject lines are most clicked on and tailor other emails to reflect similar messaging.
Don’t overwhelm subscribers
It is not a best practice to send out a lot of emails at once, or even within a few hours of each other. That will only annoy potential donors, causing them to unsubscribe to your list. A good standard is to send emails for donor email campaigns out once a week.
Email marketing is an effective practice for donor campaigns when it’s done well. If you have a donor fundraiser or event coming up, Choose Life Marketing can help you make the most of email marketing. Contact us for a free quote today!
