For animal-related organizations, success can be often be measured by the number of animals you’re able to save. The more funds you have, the more effectively you can do that important work. Most organizations and causes rely on donations to fund the bulk of their activities, and if you’re not using email marketing strategies to increase your donations and fundraising abilities, you’re missing out.
Today, we’re going to explore how your organization can utilize email marketing to connect with people who care about what you do, encourage them to get involved, and ultimately help you save more lives.
1. Use email software
More commonly known as customer relationship management (CRM) software, this tool gives you the ability to personalize your emails, which is a great way to boost engagement. Since you already have recipients’ email addresses, by using CRM software, you’ll be able to automate inserting their names into each email.
This means you’ll be able to create more personal emails that readers can connect with. The more your readers connect with your emails, the more likely they are to donate and pay attention to your cause.
2. Keep your emails focused on readers
It’s easy to go off on a tangent with your emails and talk endlessly about what you do and how you do it. While sharing about your organization’s work is important to a certain extent, it’s even more important to keep talking about your reader.
“Be sure to use words like ‘you’ and ‘your’ and talk about how ‘they’ are going to be helping and what ‘their’ donations are able to accomplish. This makes the reader feel involved and as though they are part of the solution,” shares Henry Kemp, a marketer for Academized and Studydemic.
3. Experiment with formats
You don’t need to ask for money in every single email you sent, but it’s a great idea to experiment with what works and what doesn’t. This will partially depend on the nature of your organization, but feel free to try other ideas on how to connect with people.
This could include a monthly newsletter to keep people up to date with what’s going on within the organization. You could talk about upcoming events or volunteer opportunities that people can get involved in.
4. Include case studies
The best way to connect with readers on an emotional level is to tell them a story. This is a technique used in all areas of marketing, and animal-related organizations are no exception. Instead of broadly talking about all the animals, talk about a few in particular.
“Within your fundraising email, tell the story of an animal and where [they’ve] been, and what your organization was able to do to give [them]a proper life. People are able to connect far easier and more effectively when they are hearing about individuals,” says Michael Goring, an email strategist for UK Top Writers.
5. Prioritize high quality writing
No matter what kind of email you’re sending, you need to make sure you’re sending out quality content every time. After all, would you donate to an organization after they’ve just sent you an email full of grammatical errors and typos?
If your writing skills could use some work, make sure to re-read and edit your emails several times before you send them, and don’t be afraid to use a proofreading program, such as the ones embedded in some word processing applications, or one like Grammarly, which is available online. A wide range of additional writing-related resources are available at StateofWriting.com.
6. Talk about the money
Before a donor parts with their money, one of the key things they want to know is where their money is going. Within each fundraising email, make sure you’re talking about what you’re planning on doing with the money, and how you’re going to use it to create the best results.
7. Implement calls to action
This is perhaps the most important consideration you’ll want to think about. Without a call to action within your emails, a reader can feel hooked by everything you’ve said but will fail to donate if they don’t know how to help.
Featured image: A kitten helps with email marketing. Image credit Pinuxette, CC BY-SA 3.0.
