4 Nifty Tips for Building a List
- Fri, February 08 2008
- Filed under: Fundraising essentials
Katya’s note: This guest post is by my talented colleague Rebecca Ruby at Network for Good. I want to share it because I often get asked, how do I build an email list?
By Rebecca Ruby
A philosophical question: If an e-newsletter is powerful enough to move someone to action, but no one’s around to read it, does it make an impact?
If not particularly mind-bending, this inquiry does bring up a valuable (seemingly obvious) point: You can craft a fabulous e-newsletter, send it out just the right number of times per year and impart some really powerful information, but you need to create an email contact list (an audience) at your organization to be effective.
Here are four tips to get you started on the road to contact-information glory:
1. Make it easy, compelling and cool for your website visitors to give you their email addresses (yes, it can be cool). The majority of people visiting your organization’s website is there on purpose-they may have been searching for your organization in particular or simply shopping around for a nonprofit with your mission. Make the sign-up button easy-to-spot, put it “above the fold,” and make your form brief yet informative (you risk form abandonment if you require or ask for too many pieces of information).
2. Include “join our email list” everywhere you can. Once you have your online form, send people there from all directions: your homepage, the signature at the bottom of your email (your everyday contacts may opt in), and other places you have content sprinkled around the Internet such as blogs and social networking pages.
3. Use the “people love free stuff” principle. Incentivize. You’re asking people to give you something (information), and they’re going to wonder what’s in it for them:
•Set up a drawing.
•Offer prizes to the first X people who sign up for your new e-newsletter or who sign up by Y date.
•Show people that they’re making a difference and/or joining a community.
4. Make it easy for your current subscribers to hook their friends. Promote your newsletter and gain new subscribers by asking current subscribers to forward your message along; consider including a “forward to a friend” link in your message. Keep in mind that you should always include a subscribe link in your newsletter so people who do receive a forwarded copy have an easy way to get their own copy in the future.
Comments
Once an organization starts building an email list, it also needs to be maintained. My full list of suggestions is here, but some key suggestions are below:
- When you collect emails addresses at events, be sure to send welcome message to new addresses within a week.
- Make sure your printed mailers include an “update your information” section - pre-printed with the information you currently have - to make it easy for people to notify you when their information changes.
- Set a schedule to regularly purge invalid emails from your list.
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Leyla Farah
Cause+Effect - Public Relations with a Purpose
Great ideas, Katya. I include sign-ups everywhere on my site but hadn’t thought of it for my e-mail signature. Love it! Thanks.
Email lists are good, but what about online tools, how to create donor circles, etc. I’d love to here your thoughts on best practices. I seem to only find vendor stuff (like this one from Advanced Solutions International http://www.csrwire.com/News/11012.html). Do you think I should put any stock in these (have you seen this yet)? Do these really work? Are there others?
One client (non profit) offers a downloadable track from a singers CD that donated to them when they sign up for the ezine.