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How to use email to drive online donations
- 1. How to use email to drive online donations Ronald Pruitt, 4aGoodCause
- 2. Email is important to online fundraising Email messaging drove 28% of all online revenue for nonprofits in 2017. Nonprofits sent an average of 66 email messages per subscriber in 2017. Email list size increased in 2017 by 11% 2018 M+R Benchmarks Study
- 3. How to build an email list
- 4. 1. Deliver value to attract new subscribers with a “lead magnet” Offer something valuable to your subscribers Animal shelter – Sign up to get an email whenever we have a new dog/cat to adopt Cancer group - Upcoming road races to support Cancer Awareness Church – a Bible study guide for parents Environment – a “Home Energy Savings” checklist
- 5. 2. Build a landing page Easy opt-in for new subscribers Sell your offer Isolated page, no distractions Minimal fields (email and name) Testimonials of happy subscribers
- 6. 3. Drive traffic via your online marketing Promote your resource across your online marketing Spotlight on your home page Lightbox popups Links in your navigation and footer Ask at the end of blog articles In the signature of personal emails Social media posts and ads to promote signup
- 7. 4. Collect emails at your offline events Gather emails at registration Collect business cards at your receptions Run contests that require emails to enter
- 8. Make a good first impression
- 9. Welcome email series 1-4 automated emails sent to introduce your organization and set expectations Send one per week Should be segmented by audience New Subscriber New Donor New Event Attendee Should end with a call to action
- 10. Core components of a great fundraising email
- 11. Share a story of impact Tell the story of a beneficiary Personalize your cause
- 12. Employ emotional storytelling The heart makes donations, not the brain Use a compelling image that demonstrates the need for a gift
- 13. Focus on the reader and their impact Don’t say “we need money” Instead talk about how the donor’s dollars will make an impact
- 14. Don’t stress about design Keeping it simple helps with deliverability A 80% - 20% breakdown of text to images is good
- 15. Have a single, clear call to action “Donate Now” button or link that goes directly to making a gift online Your monthly email newsletter is not a fundraising email
- 16. If 100 potential donors visit a donation page how many do you expect will complete an online donation? Answer: Only 18 2018 M+R Benchmarks Study
- 17. Anatomy of a donation page that converts
- 18. Continue the story from the fundraising email Set up a branded donation page that continues your story of impact and matches your email Branded donation pages raise 6 times more than non-branded pages* nonprofitssource.com*
- 19. Be mobile-friendly 40% of donation page traffic is from mobile 59% of email opens occur on mobile
- 20. Isolate your donation page Be like Amazon.com Minimize external links Do not embed your donation form
- 21. Easy one-step form Minimal fields Only ask for the info you need Real-time error messaging
- 22. Don’t forget the thank you No robotic, computerized payment “receipts” Send immediate heartfelt email that reinforces their decision to give
- 23. Retain donors with email
- 24. Emails you should be sending Thank you emails Stories of impact – how your donations have helped Event announcements Volunteer opportunities Celebrations of important days Donor stories – “why I gave” Surveys Educational content Blog postings
- 25. Homework Subscribe to 10 nonprofits you admire Implement one idea from today Keep the faith – building an email list is hard work but will pay off in the end
Editor's Notes
- Thanks for having me here today. I’m Ronald Pruitt, president and founder of 4aGoodCause. I’m based in Kennesaw. For 20 years, small and midsize nonprofits have used our platform to raise more money online. Running a fundraising platform makes me obsessed with helping our clients understand how they can generate more traffic to their donation or other fundraising pages. One of biggest tools in their arsenal to do that is email. Today we’re going to explore that further and talk about how your nonprofit can use email to drive more online donations. Just so you know I’ll be sending everyone here a copy of this presentation as well as other resources on this topic.
- Let’s looks at some benchmarks of how important email is to your online fundraising. These are stats from the M+R Benchmarks study, a large study of large nonprofits and their giving done each year. You can find this study online if you are interested. Email is significant driver of online giving and the email has a great return on investment. You can send emails for pennies on the dollar. Email messaging drove 28% of all online revenue for nonprofits in 2017. This is a significant portion of online giving. You can also benchmark your email use by this study. Is your list growing over 10% per year and how many emails are you sending each year? Probably not as much as you should. These nonprofits
- Before you send an email you of course need to have someone to send it to. Let’s first talk about building your list. AS we do this keep in mind the two main reasons a person won’t subscribe to your list. They don’t know why they should (they have no incentive – no value) and they can’t find where to sign up. You didn’t make it easy. We are going to start by looking at what you need to do online to gather emails. Our plan will be to do something more effective than the typical or most common “stay informed” or “keep updated” on the cause.
- Why should they give their personal information and their time? What will you give them in exchange? Boil that value into a giveaway, a resource – sometimes called a “lead magnet” – something you will give them when they sign up. This giveaway could be tangible or intangible – a guide that they can download or just a statement of value – what you will receive if you sign up. You must sell the idea of your email news. Community organization – A guide called “4 Simple Ways You Can Give Back to the Community” Environment – A “Home Energy Savings” checklist or a photo-book of gorgeous photos of places threatened by climate change (tied to a blog post about places to visit before they’re gone) Animal shelter – A guide called “How to prepare your home for a new dog/cat” or “sign up to get an email whenever we have a new dog/cat to adopt” Cancer group - Upcoming road races to support Cancer Awareness For my company - my value for subscribers is free fundraising advice - alerts of each blog article I post. What are you going to deliver to the subscriber (on a regular basis) for signing up? One note – feel free to change your value offering from time to time. Don’t go stale.
- Next, include this offer in a landing page you build on your website (or off) where subscribers can opt-in. This page should have no distractions and have minimal fields (typically name and email). Your goal is to make it easy to sign up. In this example Horizons Education Center is offering a summer learning loss guide. It is easy to sign up to get this guide and subscribe to the email list. The only thing this page is missing is a testimonial of a happy subscribers.
- Third, focus your website and other marketing to driving people to this page. Entice them with your offer from your home page, your navigation, footer, at the end of blog articles, in personal emails, social media posts. etc. The goal is your website and online communications is not to just inform or create awareness of your cause – you want to drive email sign up and then online donations. Mention your value or your resources throughout your communications and link each of those offers to the landing page. Don’t be afraid to be aggressive. Use pop-ups and other tools that encourage sign up. They work If your value offering is solid.
- In addition to gathering emails online - Don’t forget to gather emails offline as well. At events have people drop business cards in a bowl, sign up on your clipboard, text in as part of contests, etc. This can be made easy of your are gathering emails as part of online registration. Don’t miss an opportunity to gather an email. Make sure you are still using lead magnets for offline collection as well.
- Getting a subscriber to sign up is only half your battle. Once they are in your list you want them to stay. The first step to that end is a nice welcome email or emails. This is often called a welcome email series.
- These are automated emails you set up to fire out to the subscriber. A series is typically 2-4 automated emails sent out about a week apart from each other. The goal for these email can be different based on the audience. Say you’ve got a new email subscriber. You should: Thank them for subscribing and make sure they know that your emails won’t be just another thing cluttering up their inboxes. Let them know that they will get a few emails to introduce them to your organization (your welcome) and what to expect after that. In your series share stories of impact with relevant testimonials from other subscribers or donors. End your series with a call to action, most likely asking for an online gift. WDC has sent a video in this example. A great way to introduce your organization. One side note – for these and all the emails you’ll send make it easy to unsubscribe. People are reassured to see that it's easy to leave the list if they want to, which paradoxically tends to mean they don't feel they have to.
- For the past few years I’ve been gathering and studying year-end fundraising emails and talking to email experts about what works, what gets the donor to click from the email with an inclination to give. Here are some simple best practices you can put into place.
- Share a story of impact – A story of impact is not a statistic – It is a story of a beneficiary – how has your work impacted. Often this is a “story of one”. UMCH has personalized their cause by telling the story of twins Kate and Emily and UMCH’s work to get them into loving foster care. They tie this back to the fundraising ask by asking you to help others like these twins.
- Employ emotional storytelling – The heart makes donations, not the brain. Instead of telling me that your cause got a person off the streets tell me how he feels about that. This a great example from Humane Society of Memphis. They write up and emotional story of each animal that comes ito their shelter. This story is shared via email and other communications. This is paired with an impactful image that tugs at the heart strings.
- Don’t be afraid to talk money – not that you need it to stay in business – donors don’t care about that – instead show how a donation of a certain size will impact. Where will the money go? This GS council does a great job connecting certain donation levels to the impact it will have on this scouts.
- Don’t stress about design -- Emailing your list should be like emailing a friend. While it might be great to place an image that shows the impact of your cause if you can’t do that it’s okay. Your story is more important. Make sure to have at least 80% text in comparison to images. Too many images can actually impact deliverability. This example shows a small nonprofit that helps those in Afghanistan. This is a simple letter from the director asking for a gift on Giving Tuesday. When in doubt keep it simple.
- Have a single, clear call to action - don’t make a fundraising ask as part of a newsletter email that has 20 other places to click. Your fundraising email should have a single action you want them to take – donate. Use action language like “Donate Now’.
- Let’s say 100 donors click the donate button in your fundraising email and land on a page where they can make a gift. How many of those donors can you expect to actually give you money? The answer is only 18, only 18%. This is from the M+R Benchmarks study again. Most donors are just window-shopping wanting to be further convinced and leave because the page is confusing, has too many distractions or puts up roadblocks to completing their gift. Keep in mind this study looks at large nonprofits with big budgets and for the most part compelling donation. You can see more abandonment if you are using Paypal or other generic checkout pages.
- A great fundraising email can get a donor inclined to give but all that effort is for naught if you are not sending that donor to an effective donation page. This is a topic I could spend hours on but for today I want to focus on 5 goals for your page.
- You’re not done convincing the donor to give. You need to continue the story. . Remember the twins email from UMCH. This is another example from UMCH, a campaign that tells the story of Renee and her sons. This donation page continues the story of the fundraising email and is contains the story of a beneficiary. To accomplish this the page must be branded with your look, logo, colors – set up in a way to tell that story. This will pay off for you. Custom-branded donation pages are shown to raise six times more money on average than non-branded pages. Build on the impact story you wrote in your email. Connect it to your greater mission by including a call to action headline, supporting appeal and images that support the reason to give. Make the donor want to complete your donation form. Remind them why they clicked to get here.
- Your page must be mobile-friendly. (not just work on mobile but be a compelling and easy experience). 40% of the traffic to our platform is via mobile. This is even more important when marketing through email. 59% of email opens occurred on mobile
- Just like your email sign up page your donation page must be free from distractions. Take a lesson from Amazon. When you checkout on amazon they isolate the checkout from the rest of their website. They remove the thousands of links available during the shopping experience. They do this to reduce distractions, to keep you focused on competing your order. Do the same with your donation page. Do not embed the form in your website where there are tons of links to serve as exit ramps for your donor. This is a great example from WCS. My kids give to them every year When you give their donation page is isolated with a simple form and beautiful image of what you are giving to. There is only path forward to give.
- Your donation form must be easy to use and only ask for what you need. The easier it is to give, the more $ you raise. If there is information that you don’t need to take the gift don’t ask for it. A good for profit example -- Expedia shaved one field off its online buying process and gained an extra $12 million in revenue.
- Don’t let your donors get some sort of robotic thank you from the credit card processor. Your donation page should send a heartfelt thank you email that reinforces the decision they made to give. Include that on the thank you screen so the thank you is even more immediate. It should come from a real email from a real person.
- Ok. You can’t just fundraising emails. So, what other types of emails should your nonprofit be sending? You need to engage your subscribers, show them the impact they are making by supporting you. Your goal for these emails are mainly donor retention. If you have an email newsletter you should send it once a month but there are no hard and fast rules here. Send an email when you have something important to say, something of value. Include calls to action – what action do you want the reader to take on this email. The more value in these emails the more likely you’ll get donations when you do ask for money.
- So what emails should you be sending?
- Thank you for having me. Look for an email from me in the next week or so. You’ll receive this PPT, our donation page checklist and 2018 year in review with all types of insights into online giving. Please continue to follow our blog for our free fundraising advice. Thanks for having me out today. Please reach out with any questions. Here is my contact info.