For nonprofits, email is an essential marketing channel, allowing you to connect directly with your most passionate supporters and drive meaningful action. But consistently crafting emails that engage your audience, or even getting your audience to open your emails in the first place, can be a challenge.
Here are seven practical tips to help you create emails that resonate with your audience and elevate your nonprofit’s cause.
1. Use Email As A Relationship Building Tool
To develop a successful email marketing strategy, you need to adopt the right mindset for the medium.
“Email is not just a broadcast tool, it’s a relationship tool,” says Dan Oshinsky of Inbox Collective. “The inbox is a digital living room, a personal space that your readers graciously let you into.”
Relationships are long-term investments.
To build trust and earn your place in your audience’s digital personal space, Oshinsky urges clients to shift their mindset from mere broadcasting to initiating meaningful conversations. Don’t just send emails asking for money, but invest time in your audience and deliver value.
This could be as simple as sharing data or photos to demonstrate your nonprofit’s latest impact, showing your audience their contributions are fueling meaningful change.
You can also provide a free resource, send updates about board activities and recent initiatives, or inform them about upcoming events or initiatives—anything that gives supporters a peek inside and helps them feel more connected to your mission and what you’re working towards.
Position your nonprofit as a thought leader in your unique issue space by sending emails around important news, updates, trends, opportunities, and challenges relevant to your cause.
And encourage your audience to reply! Let them know you want to hear from them.
2. Use Audience-Centric Language
When communicating with supporters, speak directly to them and emphasize their role in making a difference, rather than your organization’s.
Using “you” language centers your audience in the story, emphasizes the relevance of your message to them, and makes it easier for them to see their role in driving your mission forward.
For example, instead of writing, “Our organization provided 500 scholarships last year,” you could write, “Your contributions helped us provide 500 scholarships to deserving students.”
For a new prospective donor, you could write, “Your $50 donation can provide one month of clean drinking water for a family in need.”
Or for volunteer recruitment, try something like, “Just two hours of your time per week can help provide job training and interview skills to someone looking for work.”
One element of great email copywriting is it speaks directly to the reader. Whether you’re writing a fundraising email or recruiting volunteers, speak directly to your supporters and their desire to positively impact the world.
3. Craft Compelling Subject Lines To Boost Open Rates
The subject line is the first thing your audience sees when they receive your email—it can either spark their curiosity, compelling them to open your email—or ignore it.
To make your subject lines more effective:
- Maintain brevity: Short, concise subject lines, no more than ten words long, achieve the highest open rate.
- Personalize: Include the recipient’s first name in your subject lines to make them feel connected to the cause (more on personalization later).
- Use powerful language: Incorporate action verbs in your subject lines to make them more compelling.
- Make them specific & concrete: Clearly state the reason for your email and why it’s important. Numbers and details can help make your subject lines specific and actionable.
- Create urgency: Words that create a sense of urgency, such as “today,” “now,” or “limited time,” prompt immediate action. Setting deadlines for reaching a fundraising goal can also help create urgency.
- Pose questions: Questions like “Can you help X?” or “Do you know the power of your $25 gift?” can encourage readers to open.
- Express gratitude: Use your subject lines to thank your readers for their support.
Try A/B testing different subject lines to see which ones perform better.
Also, start a file and collect subject lines from other organizations that compelled you to open, to use as inspiration for your subject lines. Implementing these practices and constantly iterating and testing subject lines will help you boost your email click-through and conversion rates.
4. Personalize Your Emails For Better Engagement
Personalizing your emails is key to establishing deeper connections with your audience, allowing you to “show them you know them,” and understand what’s relevant to them.
To personalize your emails:
- Address recipients by name: Address your recipient by name with a personalized greeting.
- Segment your audience: Segment your email list based on the audience’s behavior, interests, or past interactions with your nonprofit. For example, you could group supporters by the projects they give to or the topic they engage with.
- Acknowledge past contributions: If the recipient has donated or volunteered, acknowledge this prior activity in your email. Show them you appreciate their support.
- Offer personalized recommendations: Based on the recipient’s past behavior, offer personalized opportunities for them to engage with your cause. This could be recommending an upcoming event, a new volunteering opportunity, or a project that aligns with their interests.
Personalization and audience segmentation features are standard offerings in most email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, SendinBlue, and others. Sending tailored content to different groups shows you recognize what matters to each member of your audience.
5. Choose One Clear Call To Action
Your call to action (CTA) directs your audience to take the desired action after reading your email. Whether the goal is to donate, volunteer, or sign up for an event, you should only have one call to action in your email. A multitude of CTAs confuses the reader, creates choice paralysis, dilutes the impact of your email, and leads to lower conversions.
One clear CTA removes confusion or uncertainty about what you want your audience to do. Make your CTA stand out visually and place it in a prominent position in your email.
6. Keep Your Emails Simple
It can be tempting to jam various stories, updates, and content into one email, but as with extra CTAs, you risk overwhelming your audience with excess information. Simplicity reduces friction in the reading experience and helps your audience focus on your key message and CTA, which can only boost engagement and conversion rates.
Email expert Jess Campbell recommends a one-story, one-click method for writing emails, simplifying the path for your audience to understand your message and take the desired action. For fundraising emails, explain the need or problem, your response to the problem, and the action you’d like them to take.
Adopt a clean and simple design, easy-to-read fonts, and maintain consistency with color palette, imagery, and branding elements across all your emails.
7. Write Conversationally
When writing an email, think of it as if you were writing to a friend. A conversational tone and style will make your message more approachable and relatable.
To write more conversationally:
- Use informal language like contractions and even the occasional sentence fragment.
- Use subheaders, and short, simple sentences and paragraphs to create an easy reading experience.
- Avoid jargon or complicated terms and use natural, easy-to-understand language.
We don’t converse in perfect, grammatically correct language, so feel free to break the rules occasionally and write as you speak in everyday conversation!
While you may never create a perfect email with a 100% conversion rate, these seven tips should help push your nonprofit’s email marketing efforts to the next level.
And remember, Taproot volunteers are available for support with your email marketing and much more! Find your volunteer today!
Written by Brandon Marcus, content writer and advocate for progressive causes.
