How Long Should Your Nonprofit Emails Be? Plus: 5-Step Quick Guide to Structuring Emails so the Length Doesn’t Matter More often than not, if my business or nonprofit clients have a question about emails I’ve written for them, it’s about the length. They think the emails are too long. My response is always the same. […]
You are browsing archives for
Tag: nonprofit emails
14 Fundraising Writing Tips – How to Raise More Money without Spending More
14 Fundraising Writing Tips – How to Raise More Money without Spending More If you’re doing your own fundraising writing, you probably wonder sometimes if you’re doing it ‘right.’ Or if there even is a ‘right’ way to do it. Perhaps a better way to think of it is, there are more effective ways to […]
How to Motivate People to Read Your Company’s or Nonprofit’s Emails
How to Motivate Customers and Supporters to Read Your Company’s or Nonprofit’s Emails The Opening Sentence: The Most Important Part of Your Email (TONS of examples included!) Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, the subject line seems like the most important part of an email. After all, if they don’t open it, they […]
Off-Season Fundraising Ideas that Deepen Donor Loyalty
Off-Season Fundraising Ideas that Deepen Donor Loyalty 9 Things Mid-size and Small Nonprofits Can Do the Rest of the Year If you’re like most nonprofits, your best months for fundraising come at the end of the year. Other times of the year could be called the off-season for fundraising – times when fewer people give, […]
Help! Our Nonprofit Is Too Small to Write Emails Consistently
Help! Our Nonprofit Is Too Small to Write Emails Consistently Your Guide to Steady Donor Communication and Fundraising Through Email Email remains the single best media to frequently communicate with your donors and supporters. It costs nothing to send them. You can vary the length, content, purpose, and interactive features with relative ease. You can […]
16 Places You Can (and Should) Be Thanking Donors
16 Places You Can (and Should) Be Thanking Donors 6 Ways Donors Give, and How to Thank Them in Each Situation The data is clear: Thanking your donors early, often, and continuously pays you back many times over. Guidestar reports donor research that found that first-time donors who receive a personal thank you within 2 […]
Why You Should Rarely Use Jargon in Your Fundraising
Why You Should Rarely Use Jargon in Your Fundraising Don’t Let the Jargonasaur Scare Away Your Donors Maybe it’s my background in education, but I can’t stand jargon. I’ll never forget reading about the school board candidates in my voter’s pamphlet one year. One of their descriptions was so packed with industry jargon, buzzwords, and […]
Is Giving Tuesday Worth All the Trouble and the Hype?
Is Giving Tuesday Worth All the Trouble and the Hype? 5 Keys to a Successful Giving Tuesday Campaign Is Giving Tuesday worth it? Does it really work? Or is it just another fad that, even though now several years strong, will eventually fade into the online dustbin of history next to Myspace, Aereo, and every […]
8 Clever Ways to Increase Your Nonprofit’s Email Open Rates
8 Clever Ways to Increase Your Nonprofit’s Email Open Rates How to Beat Typical (and Declining) Industry Open Rates According to an annual study from M&R Benchmarks, 13% of all online fundraising revenue in 2018 was driven by email. So the importance of keeping your email open rates as high as possible needs no convincing. […]
Are Your Emails Overdesigned? Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 2
Are Your Fundraising Emails Over-Designed? See How Email Design Affects Donations Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 2 In support of using data to make better fundraising decisions, ProActive Content will be reporting on some online fundraising experiments from NextAfter for the next four weeks. See Part 1 – How Much Donation Page Copy Should We […]
Complete Guide to Donor Survey Best Practices and Question Ideas
Complete Guide to Donor Survey Best Practices and Question Ideas How to Acquire Survey Data that Strengthens Your Fundraising and Communications At the 2019 AFP Forum for Strategic Fundraising in Bellevue, Washington, Ariel Glassman from The Ostara Group led an outstanding presentation about donor survey best practices. She, along with the executive director from Kirkland Performance […]
How Nonprofits Can Increase Open Rates in 7 Seconds
How Nonprofits Can Increase Email Open Rates in 7 Seconds Changing Who Your Email is From Can Increase Opens by 18% Want to increase open rates for your nonprofit’s emails? There are three ways to do it that aren’t overly technical: 1) Write better subject lines 2) Add good pre-headers 3) Change your sender […]
Donors Who Don’t Get It & That You Can Afford to Lose
Donors Who Don’t Get It & That You Can Afford to Lose Don’t Let the Fear of Losing a Few Donors Cause You to Lose Many There’s a lot of fear in fundraising. If we send out too many emails, people will unsubscribe. If we ask for money too often, people will get angry. If […]
The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs
The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs Part 2: Fundraising Copywriting Smackdown: Verbs vs Adjectives See Part 1: 4 Copywriting Tips on How to Lasso Your Reader’s Attention with Verbs What language best engages readers and motivates them to give your cause How do you tell fundraising stories well enough to evoke a […]
The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs
The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs Part 1: 4 Fundraising Copywriting Tips on How to Use Verbs to Lasso Your Reader’s Attention “The little boy went far from home to look for food.” “The little boy traveled far from home to search for food.” Great fundraising copywriting shouldn’t be complicated. In fact, if […]
How to Write ‘Can’t Look Away’ Headlines for Nonprofits
How to Write ‘Can’t Look Away’ Headlines for Nonprofits 6-Step Guide Reveals How to Engage and Inspire Your Readers to Action In this media-saturated age, getting anyone to read your nonprofit’s content and fundraising appeals presents an unending challenge. Each new piece of content you send out requires a fresh motivation to be read by […]
Real Definition of Spam: Why Nonprofits and Businesses Need to Stop Worrying about ‘Spamming’ Their Email List
Real Definition of Spam: Why Nonprofits and Businesses Need to Stop Worrying about ‘Spamming’ Their Email Lists Don’t be Afraid of Your Supporters and Customers A common fear among both businesses and nonprofits is sending too many emails, or sending emails that are “too long.” This article has one simple purpose: To set the record […]
Case Study: Why Nonprofits Fail
Case Study: Why Nonprofits Fail – Part 1 3 Sobering Lessons from a Nonprofit that Disappeared Read Part 2 – Get Five Foundations for a Fail-Proof Nonprofit If you’ve read any number of my blogs, you may have picked up that one injustice I care a lot about is human trafficking and all its twisted […]
Etched-In-Stone: The 5 Bedrock Email Fundraising Best Practices
Etched-In-Stone: The 5 Bedrock Email Fundraising Best Practices Let No Email You Send Lack One of These (Even When Emailing Your Grandmother) Most emails are too short. Most emails also give the impression they were thrown together at the last minute. The thing is, doing email fundraising and marketing the right way doesn’t take that […]
Ripped from Hollywood: The Anatomy of Fundraising Storytelling – How to Insert Donors into Your Narrative
Ripped from Hollywood: The Anatomy of Fundraising Storytelling – How to Insert Donors into Your Narrative 6 Components Every Well-Told Fundraising Story Must Have The power of story in fundraising is well-known. What’s less well-known is how to tell a story well, such that it motivates donors to want to take action. Besides fundraising copywriting, […]
