3 Easy Ways to Engage Donors & Partners Through Email

The Situation

Did you know that 42% of donors prefer to engage with nonprofits via email?

But 70% of nonprofits don’t have a coherent email strategy!

Here are 3 easy ways to increase donor and partner engagement for your organization via email:

1. Give Instead Of Get: Think about how you can provide value to your donors and partners via email instead of brainstorming ways to get more out of your donors.
   
   Instead of starting your org’s email with an appeal or laying out the need, what if your donors were delighted to open your email? Start your email with an impactful quote from someone you serve, or a picture of someone who was impacted by the work you do.

2. Clear Calls To Action: After inspiring your donors through impactful storytelling, ensure that there is a clear way for them to take action. This could be as simple as a “Learn More” button, or it could be as direct as a “Give Today” button. The specific CTA depends on the goal of the email, but ensure that the desired action is clear.

3. Clear And Relevant Subject Lines: I audited an organization’s email marketing recently, and one of the subject lines of an email was “Christmas is almost here!” So I opened the email and it didn’t mention Christmas at all in the email. The open rate was high, but the click through rate was horrible. Why? Because people were expecting to read something about Christmas when they opened the email, but instead they got something completely unrelated.
   
   One easy way to lose email subscribers is to create subject lines that aren’t relevant to the contents of the email.
   
   Make sure your email subject lines are short, catchy, relevant, and most of all pique the reader’s interest.

At the end of the day, you should be looking to provide value to your donors through email, and more than likely the value that your donors are looking for are what impact your organization is making in pursuit of your mission.