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Beyond E-newsletters: Creative ways to use e-mail

March 2009

You already know that it’s important to stay in front of your donors in the midst of this tough economy—after all, if you don’t, other organizations certainly will! But it can be difficult to find the money to launch a full-scale marketing campaign.

E-mails are a cost-efficient way to still get your messaging out to potential donors while not incurring too many expenses.

Some ideas for using the Web to offset any cuts in your traditional direct mail campaigns include:

• Pre-test any new concepts in e-mail instead of direct mail;
• Send reminder e-mails about mailings that have recently dropped to the people that have not yet responded to the mail;
• Cut your magazine or newsletter size in half by driving folks to the website for additional pictures and information; and
• Ask donors to take part in a survey about what interests them—this will allow you to more accurately reflect your donors’ interests as a whole, as well as move to more targeted and segmented communications streams (both on-and off-line) based on their individual answers.
• Look at ALL of your organizations printed pieces—including things like holiday cards and event invitations. Could any of these be e-mailed instead of printed and still reach the same audience?
• Set up e-mails to do some of your work for you. For instance, automatic e-mail receipts or renewal notices can save you both time AND money.

Of course, you can always use the e-mail to contact those donors you have cut from the mail: if you’re reducing your acquisition campaigns, make sure to aggressively reach out to lapsed donors and any prospects you have on file through e-mail; if you're cutting your appeal mailings in terms of size, make sure you send an e-mail to everyone on your file that you cut from the mailing.

And, just as important in this downtime is keeping the donors you do have happy. Use e-mails to carefully cultivate them so that when they do have the capacity to give again or at a higher level, they’ll remember why your organization is so great.

Don’t forget to use your mail campaigns to drive people to your website and organically build your e-mail list. Include opportunities for them to sign petitions, vote/take part in a poll, answer quiz questions; anything interactive to pique a potential donor’s interest.

Click here to see some examples of S&W Direct’s work on the Web. Or contact Melissa Weigel to see what we can do to help your organization reach out to your constituency online.

Schultz & Williams is a national consulting firm based in Philadelphia; providing management, fundraising and marketing consulting for nonprofit organizations, along with full-service direct marketing, database and creative/production services.