This document provides best practices and guidelines for nonprofit email marketing. It discusses email fundamentals like subject lines, from names, preheaders and call to actions. It also covers segmentation, personalization, A/B testing and list hygiene. Platform options for nonprofits like MailChimp and Aweber are presented along with analytics metrics to measure success. The document concludes with contact information.

1. Nonprofit Email
Marketing 101
Last Updated: November, 2018

2. MARKETING Funnel
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• From Name
• Subject Lines
• Preheader Text
• Body Copy
• Calls to Action
• Content
• Calls to Action
• Content
• Calls to
Action
• Content

3. 3
BEST PRACTICES
PLATFORMS: BENEFITS & TIPS/TRICKS
ANALYTICS
EMAIL Q&A SESSION

4. BEST
PRACTICES
Discuss best practices on the structure and
elements of an email, A/B testing,
segmentation & personalization and list
hygiene.
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5. SUBJECT LINES
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• 33% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone
• When creating subject lines, take into consideration what device they will be viewing it on and tailor the
length to fit screen size
• Rule of thumb: subject lines should be around 15 characters
• Good tactics:
o Questions (Entice the recipient by posing a question to capture their attention and make them stop and think)
o Personalize (Add the recipients first name)
o "Hello (First Name,) I'd like to introduce myself"
o Urgency
o "X reasons we need your help now"
o Benefit
o "5 ways you can help"
o Intrigue
o "One last thing…."
o Specific

6. FROM NAMES
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• Use a recognizable from name
• A good from name will be relevant to the recipient, conveying trust and a desire to open.
• Depending on the use case, emails sent from an actual person can generate better opens if that person is
well known to your recipient.
• Keep the name as short as possible while making sure it correctly reflects your brand
• Use slightly different names to differentiate among subscription categories or types of communications
o NYTimes.com News Alert vs. NYTimes.com

7. PREHEADERS
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• The email preheader is the short line of text in the recipient's inbox that is displayed after the subject line.
• Additional area that allows you to convey important information to convince the customer to open
• Focus the key content in the first half of the preheader

8. LENGTH OF BODY CONTENT
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• Short and sweet, but should have
the same impact on customers as
the content of your website
• You have 3-4 seconds to get the
reader's attention, so make sure you
call out the important details
• Use the email to tease the content,
but use your website or a landing
page to host the full write up

9. CALL TO ACTIONS
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• 87% of clicks will happen when a customer opens your email for the first time.
• Put call to actions in the first place user will see it.
• According to data from eye-tracking marketers this is the top left corner
• Have text with the CTA so user knows what they are doing
• Large and visually prominent CTAs
• Have it a different color then the rest of the email
• Always highlight a primary CTA (your email's main goal) and make that the most prominent
• Use design cues to present secondary and third tier offers/CTAs
• Emphasizing primary CTA again at the bottom for those who are on mobile and scrolled
• Short, clear, descriptive and actionable
• A customer should be able to know what they are getting when they click by the call to action

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11. EMAIL TEMPLATES
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• “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
• Every additional layer of design and content you add to an email increases the likelihood your readers will get
overwhelmed
• The more text that you include in the body of your email, the more risk being flagged as spam
• Recommended Text Sizes
• Mobile Headlines/CTAs: 24 pixels
• Body Text: 16 pixels
• Legal Text/Disclaimer: 12 pixels
• Keep design at 600 pixels or less
• Many people don’t actually open their email but view it in the preview pane along the side of their inbox
• This gives a very narrow space to work with and you don’t want to make them scroll to see your entire layout

12. MOBILE FIRST
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• According to the Litmus State of Email 2018,
majority of opens are happening on a mobile
device.
• Make sure the email is user friendly
• Easy to read layout = good user experience
• Optimize your emails for the mobile experience
• Shorter subject lines
• Shorter preheaders
• Larger text
• Larger buttons
• Minimum content
• Include ALT text on all images
• ALT text is text that displays in place of the image
if the ISP has images disabled

13. SEGMENTATION & PERSONALIZATION
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• Segmentation vs. Personalization
• Segmentation: the grouping of prospects or customers according to identifiable characteristics
• Personalization: the optimizing of experiences and messages to individuals themselves based on those identifiable
characteristics and behaviors
• Why you should segment:
• MailChimp conducted a recent study, demonstrating the impact of segmentation/personalization within email
• Opens increase by 14.31%
• Clicks increased by 100.95%
• Bounces decreased by 4.65%
• Unsubscribes decreased by 9.37%
• Direct Marketing Association also found that segmentation increased email campaign revenue by 760%
• Segmentation enables better personalization. Segmentation & personalization can be based on:
• Demographics (name, gender, age, etc.)
• Geographics (country, region, state, etc.)
• Behaviors (clicks, lack of activity, purchases, etc.)
• User defined preferences (through a subscription center)

14. SEGMENTATION BEST PRACTICES
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1. Create buyer personas to influence possible
segmentations
2. Start with simple segments, and work your way to more
complex segments and personalization
3. Gather as much information from prospects and
customers in order to increase segmentation and
personalization opportunities
4. Test and optimize your segmented content regularly
5. Use tools to automate segmentation

15. A/B TESTING
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• A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of an email against each other to determine which one
performs better to influence future email strategies. Items to testing include:
• Call to actions
• Subject lines
• Designs
• Customer reviews or Testimonials
• Personalization opportunities
• Content
• Images and image placement
• Time & Day of the send
• Rich media email vs. Plain text
• Best Practices:
• Decide what to test (and prioritize based on goals)
• Determine the best metrics to monitor for each test
• Test one thing at a time, and test it over and over to truly understand the results
• Split your samples randomly
• Consider your sample size for testing

16. LIST HYGIENE
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An email address can become invalid after 6 months of inactivity. Therefore, it’s crucial to have a clean list of
active email addresses to establish and keep a positive reputation with the ISPs.
There are two actions you should take to accomplish this:
• Bounce Management Process*: Since large amount of bounces can harm your reputation, it is a best
practice to put this process in place to help ensure minimal bounces.
• Recurring List Hygiene: Run the sending list, as well as new email addresses, through a list cleaning tool to
eliminate invalid or harmful email addresses.
*Dependent on email marketing/marketing automation tool

17. PLATFORMS:
BENEFITS &
TIPS/TRICKS
Discuss the variety of tools available for
nonprofits, the benefits of using them and
how to get the most out of the platform
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18. BATCH & BLAST VS EMAIL MARKETING SOFTWARE
• Email Behavior Tracking
• Batch and Blast – all or most of the
segmentation of leads and email
sending is manual
• Basic email metrics and analytics
• Assumed attribution
• Minimal or no automation
• Email only
• No or minimal integration
EMAIL MARKETING
SOFTWARE
• Email Behavior Tracking + Web Tracking
• Customer journey is automated, and
leads are nurtured
• Lead scoring/grading and targeted
messaging around thresholds
• Tracked attribution
• Triggered campaigns and fully
automated programs
• Emails, forms, landing pages
• Integrates with social, CRM, etc.
BATCH & BLAST
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19. EMAIL MARKETING SOFTWARE
19https://blog.elevationweb.org/nonprofit-email-marketing-tools
• MailChimp
• 15% discount for nonprofits
• Marketing automation (automatically sends your emails)
• Target customer based on behavior, preferences and more
• Trigger emails based on requests
• In-depth reporting insights
• Integrates with Facebook and Instagram
• Aweber
• 25% discount for nonprofits and three complimentary months to
start
• Automated email campaigns
• Email template library
• Benchmark
• 25% discount for nonprofits
• Email template library
• Autoresponder capabilities

20. EMAIL MARKETING SOFTWARE
20https://blog.elevationweb.org/nonprofit-email-marketing-tools
• Campaign Monitor
• 15% discount to nonprofits
• Drag and drop email builder
• Email template library
• Marketing Automation “journeys”
• GetResponse
• 50% discount to nonprofits
• Email template library
• Integrates with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn so you can easily
share your messages across multiple platforms
• VerticalResponse
• 10,000 free emails per month to nonprofits
• Depending on how many emails you send per month, may be
able to enjoy VerticalResponse for free

21. ANALYTICS How to measure success
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22. EMAIL MARKETING ANALYTICS
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• Click through Rate: the percentage of people who clicked a link or any linked image within an email
• Conversion Rate: the percentage of users who take a desired action:
• Downloaded a whitepaper
• Registered for a webinar
• Clicked through from an email campaign and donated
• Click to open rate: measures the effectiveness of the content of your email
• In-Depth clicking analytics
• Everyone can see if their subscribers are clicking on their links. What you need to know to set yourself apart is:
• What is being clicked on the most and why
• What area of the email template generates the most clicks and why

23. MARKETING Funnel
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• Open Rates
• Click-through Rates
• Total Conversions
• Movement
through to
Conversion
• Referrals
• Testimonials
• Repeat
Conversions
• Multiple Email Engagement
• Website Engagement

24. EMAIL Q&A SESSION
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25. CONTACT US
FathomDelivers.com
8200 Sweet Valley Dr. Suite 100
Valley View, OH 44019
shargreaves@fathomdelivers.com
(330)283-1619
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