There is a thing about emails that is mostly attractive – the way they are written and the matter they wish to covey. Emails being one of the most powerful and inexpensive ways to expressing the desire to get in touch with someone, as well as communicating with text, images, music and so much more. Also, email is a wonderful medium for nonprofits to quickly distribute important information or share rich content filled with pictures or links. Being one of the most powerful and most intensively used mediums, it is also the medium for donor management.
Donor Management – How E-mails can be a Help!
Donor management is an art and should include all the necessary management skills including how to frame an important email for best interest of the donors as well as the nonprofit. Here, the real question however is how you should write an appropriate email so as to efficiently manage your donors, so read the post until the end.
- Write it in a Catchy Headline – The catch about emails to your donors is to write and keep them catchy- A study indicated that as many as 53 nonprofit organizations make use of the email system for donor management and most of their communications happens over emails; therefore the need of starting your email with a really catchy headline always plays an important role. Also, it is important to note that a catchy headline catches the attention of the readers immediately and most of the time this is exactly the one that generates a reply.
- Timing is the Most Important Thing – Time and again you’ve been told that timing is everything but it is important to calculate exactly how things need to be done. Even if you’ve spent hours crafting the perfect fundraising email, when you send it can directly impact its success or failure. Research also suggests that the best days to send emails are Tuesdays or Thursdays, If you send your email on a Monday, it might get lost in the virtual email stack and if you send it on a Friday then your donor may already have signed off for the weekend.
- Do Not Forget the Call-to-Action – So, you’ve sent your email on Tuesday with a catchy header and your donor has decided to open up the email… great! But now what? Once you have their attention, take full advantage of it by including a “call-to-action” within your email. This means at the end of your email, include an appeal to the reader for additional engagement such as making a donation or signing up to be a volunteer – whatever makes the most sense for your nonprofit!
- Keep it Pretty – A small template in the email makes it look pretty and perfect – just because all pretty things make a huge beautiful thing. In your email use a beautiful template, adding a call-to-action like mentioned above. You would want to ask why a call to action is important – it is because it is visually appealing and it will always make sense to use anything that appeals the readers in the first instance.
- Always, Know the Why! Like we said earlier in this blog, people have more email than they have time for, so it’s important to make sure your organization is always intentional when contacting donors. No one likes a spammer so try to develop emails that will leave your donors feeling excited about your organization and mission. Examples of this include success stories (demonstrating the impact of your organization), upcoming events (that your donors could attend), or major organizational changes (your nonprofit just added a new board member or established a new partnership).
These points, mentioned above are the only things you need to consider and keep in mind when drafting an email.
Also, an important tip – your donors (old or new) should always be impressed by your email, and these are the tips that will make all the impact. So, here’s to your first e-mail after all these tips.
