Email marketing is an underrated method of generating leads. It accounted for 28% of all online revenue in 2022!
So, if you’re looking for a tried-and-true method for creating excitement around your event, this age-old strategy will treat you well.
Around 68% of nonprofits send fundraising appeals quarterly via email. It’s important to set your event apart to grab the attention of potential donors.
5 Email Marketing Tips That Will Boost Your Charity Event
For every 1,000 fundraising emails sent, nonprofits raise $42 on average.
With these tips, you can increase your revenue and maximize your campaign’s impact:
Grab Attention
The average person receives 100 to 120 emails a day—and that’s not counting spam!
How do you ensure your email breaks through the clutter? It’s easier than you think—you just need to craft compelling, persuasive outreaches.
Here’s how you can do that:
- Per the research, 64% of people decide to open or delete emails based on subject lines. Pique their interest while keeping it short and informative. For example: Want to help build a better tomorrow?
- Personalize your message to capitalize on the recipients’ giving spirit. This can increase open and click-through rates. More importantly, it can generate donations 6x higher than their non-personalized, non-optimized counterparts.
- Create a sense of urgency and set a deadline to move recipients to donate as soon as possible.
Make it Mobile-Friendly
Nearly 1.7 billion people check their email on their mobile devices. So to create a user experience that won’t lead to 42.3% of people deleting your emails the moment they receive them, take a mobile-friendly approach to design.
For this, you can:
- Use a single-column template
- Ensure lots of white space between texts
- Use images judiciously
- Keep subject lines short but impactful
Avoid tiny fonts, as they can make your email hard to read and, thus, affect conversion.
Use a Clear Call-to-Action
Your call-to-action (CTA) is what ultimately moves people to take your desired action.
Be explicit about what you want the recipient to do next: register for volunteer work, make a donation, follow your social media accounts, etc. Keep the CTA simple but impactful: “Donate Now,” “Be the Change,” and “See the Impact” are good options to encourage immediate, actionable steps from your audience.
Create an Engaging Experience
Humans are highly visual creatures who delight in aesthetics. Create an engaging, visually appealing, and exciting user experience by:
- Breaking up big blocks of text and using bullets for visual intrigue and easy reading
- Using bolded text to charge your emails emotionally
- Using subheadings to draw the reader in
Integrate high-quality pictures from your last charity event or in-field video testimonials of the ongoing one to grab the recipient’s attention.
Develop Targeted Content
By segmenting your audience, you will provide meaningful content. This improves open and click-through rates.
So, how do you divide your audience into different categories?
Here are some popular segments in the charity world, courtesy of DNL OmniMedia:
- Engagement Type: Look at groups that donate, spread the word for the cause, volunteer for tasks, etc.
- Gift type: This is based on the giving history of the donor. Look at whether they have donated once or many times and what causes they support. With this data, you can ensure a personalized approach.
- Interests: This will help you push content and causes to engage recipients in their preferred manner. For example, you can provide volunteer opportunities to those interested in being a tangible part of the change.
- Donation preferences: Consider how your donors like to donate, whether through crowdfunding, Apple Pay, cash, cheque, or direct deposit.
- Communication preferences: This classifies recipients based on the channels and the frequency with which they prefer to receive messages from organizations.
- Engagement level: Whether they’re a regular or lapsed donor, contribute to specific events, etc.
You can also create segments based on demographics like age and location to appeal to them with their preferred communication style. This will help increase your ROI and improve your email marketing campaign’s performance metrics.
And Remember, Do A/B Testing Before You Hit Send
Not all emails will be a hit with the recipients, which can be detrimental to your fundraising efforts. That’s why it’s a good idea to perform A/B testing to see which campaigns have better open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
You can look at areas that need improvement to fine-tune your campaign, using feedback from your metrics to set yourself up for success.
The Takeaway
Promoting your charity event via email has tons of potential to help you generate leads.
If you’re new to this strategy, you can skip the trial-and-testing and use charity email templates from PosterMyWall. These customizable assets will tap into donors’ emotions, guiding them to make maximum donations—whether it’s money, time, or social shares—to make your fundraising event a roaring success.
