3 things that will actually improve email campaigns
- Fri, June 04 2010
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
What are they? There’s a nifty free white paper out from Infusionsoft (here) on this topic
It’s written for small businesses, but it certainly applies to nonprofits, too.
Here are the three tips with my commentary - check out the white paper for more details.
1. You almost certainly need better segmentation. Stop worrying about subject lines and first make sure you’re emailing relevant content to people who really want it!
2. Keep your email marketing consistent and predictable. That means steady, valuable messages over time - preferably about the great work your supporters are making possible!
3. Don’t leave it all to email - remember: many channels together work best. There is a lot of nonprofit research showing this is the case, so integrate your online and offline communications!
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Comments
Good reminders, especially on the segmenting. I have a relatively small email file, but despite its size, there is still segmentation that we need to be doing within it.
Adding to my to-do list!
Thank you for highlighting the Email Marketing 2.0 report. You’ve hit the nail on the head when it comes to how to make a different for non-profits who use email marketing.
Segmentation is key especially when doing fundraising and events; and levering multimedia is a great way to make a campaign more relevant and exciting.
We’re happy to hear that people love the report and we’re interested in the feedback from your readers.
Thanks,
Joseph
Thanks for the information. I am planning on doing a email campaign next month and I never actually thought about this.
I agree, email should be to the point, in business time is money so help everybody you communicate with. Giving someone what they want succinctly is a great skill to have and a habit many of us need to improve.
Great information. I;ve been struggling with email marketing. My optin rate is terrible
Point 3 is very important. I recently did some work with a charity and they only did email marketing. They had totally stopped mail outs to save money. The problem being that their email open rates are dropping fast and so are the donations they are receiving. No one is opening email anymore. I advised them to look at a range of different approaches both on and offliine and to test the results. It fell on deaf ears of course even though their donations are getting very low.
Cheers, Michael Moss
This is a great a thread as I do a lot of emailing for my business. I would draw attention to #3 however. We sometimes get caught up in only email, but lets not forget face to face to always better.
My email campaigns always do very badly, so thanks for the tips, hopefully I will have better luck next time!
Good Tips
a few more good tips is
1, Always put the full urls in the email rather than click here so if some one prints off at work to take home to show there partners etc… THEY CAN SEE WHERE THE OFFER is located on the web
2, Try and add a print email link in your email
I’ve always found that we get a much better response rate if we send out a regular mailshot as well as an email campaign - perhaps telling people to look out for the email ‘coming soon.’ It seems that this raises expectations and delivers results.