I’ve consulted with and delivered Mailchimp training to many charities. As we know, donations often form a substantial revenue stream for charities so that they may pay their bills and deliver on their mission and objectives. There are two broad ways of attaining further donations; by getting new donors and maximizing donations from existing or past donors.
Some charities are very good at using email marketing to engage donors and potential donors. In general however I’ve found that charities aren’t using email marketing effectively and, with just a little training, they can increase their donations substantially (one of my clients have increased their donations by 8% in the past year through email marketing alone).
The ROI on email marketing can be very favorable. An EDM service such Mailchimp makes it incredibly easy and time effective to send targeted email campaigns that can increase your donations. There are even free Android and iOS apps such as Mailchimp Subscribe to increase your number of subscribers (and potential donors). Of course there are also integrations that raise your fundraising to a whole new incredible level such as those with Microsoft Dynamics, Shopify, Raiser’s Edge and Philantro.
How do I increase donations with email marketing?
Fortunately, increasing both the number and value of donations through email marketing is surprisingly simple with a little help and guidance. Usually charities just need some assistance with their email marketing strategy and how to implement that strategy. After that, many of my larger charity clients are seeing around an eight percent increase in donations per annum without a significant amount of extra effort.
Below are three items to focus on when looking to increase your charitable contributions.
Frequency
For advertising “frequent insertions of a powerful ad is the most effective advertising tactic when you’re trying to build your brand or develop a ‘top of mind’ position for your product or service”. Frequency is just as important when seeking donations through email marketing; you must make sure that you both convince people to donate and secondly be the organization which will receive charitable donations from your subscriber.
A trap that many charities fall into is asking too regularly for donations via email marketing. For example, sending email marketing regularly is important but asking for donations weekly is likely too much; a better approach is to send EDMs such as what donations fund and how much good your organization does. Once a month then it would be good to ask directly for donations (with a nice big call to action in a prominent position in your EDM).
Relevancy
What will work better? Asking a previous donor who contributed $20,000 to donate over $1,000 or asking a first year university student? Of course asking the high value donor has a better chance of success and, what’s more, we could easily alienate the student by asking for way too much.
Email marketing relevancy is about getting the right message to the right people at the right time.
In Mailchimp we can easily segment our list to create messages that target specific demographics (i.e. we could ask for a $10 donation from students and a $1,000 donation from high value donors). We can also schedule campaigns to be sent when most relevant to each segment.
Personalization increases donations
According to research, personalized email messages improve conversions by 10%. Yes, you’ll increase your email marketing donations by 10% by just adding personalization. Adding the recipients first name to an email campaign in Mailchimp takes three seconds. These three seconds could greatly increased your fundraising efforts.
Need help to get more donations? Contact me.
Leave a Reply