Future Fundraising Now

11 things you can do to improve fundraising emails

Your donors' email inboxes are crowded. You need every possible advantage to get their attention and action. Here are some tactics you can put to work from the Content Marketing Institute, at Fresh Ideas and Expert Advice for Writing Email That Gets Opened and Read:

1. [Use brackets] in the subject line. Brackets have been shown to increase email open rates by 31%. Go figure.
   
2. Keep comparison images close together. Before and after photos are highly compelling. If you use them, make sure they are close together.
   
3. Don’t spell numbers. 6, not six.
   
4. Say "because." This word helps prompt readers to action.
   
5. Capitalize without shouting. Emphasize a word here and there by putting it in all capitals.
   
6. Go negative. Loss avoidance is usually more compelling than opportunity.
   
7. Rhyme at the right time. Don't write entirely in poetry. Just use rhyming words in key places.
   
8. Proofread. Typos are easy to miss, but they can cause all kinds of problems.
   
9. Ask one question first and always. The question: Does this content serve our readers?
   
10. Give it a voice (and a face). Make it look and read like it's from a real and specific person. Not an institution.
    
11. Enable a two-way conversation. Make sure recipients can connect with you by hitting reply. Ask questions and invite response.
    

6 steps to make your giving pages work

How many online donations are lost because giving pages don't do the job?

Too many!

Here's a great post on making that page work, from Donor Search, at 6 pro tips for a great giving page (with lots of examples):

1. Remove or limit navigation. If someone is on a giving page, they are at least considering making a donation. Don't entice them away with links to other things they might do.
   
2. Keep it short and straightforward. Give a clear call to action. That's why they are there.
   
3. Use an actionable and value-driven headline. Grab their attention by capturing the action they are here to take.
   
4. Make your page’s “submit” button text compelling. "Submit" is clearly the wrong action word! DONATE NOW is good. Something else might be better yet, like HELP THE CHILDREN or DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT.
   
5. Use click triggers. Something that makes them feel good about clicking that donate button, like watchdog logos, accountability promise.
   
6. Add a compelling visual aid. Use the power of imagery to tell the story of the need and how the donor can make a difference.
   

It's a small miracle when someone clicks through to a giving page. Don't squander it!

9 ways to make your email fundraising work better

This is the time of year when email shines in fundraising.

Between the many holidays, Giving Tuesday and the final week of the year, this is when email works best.

Here are some powerful email tips from NextAfter, at 9 Proven Steps to Write a Better Year-End Fundraising Email Appeal:

1. Send your year-end fundraising email from a believable human. The sender visible in the inbox should be a person, not your organization.
   
2. Add value and mystery to your subject line. It should communicate that the email is of value to the recipient, and it should do so in a way that sparks their curiosity.
   
3. Don’t customize your preview text. Let the preview text just show the first words of the message.
   
4. Say hello and call your donor by name. Be friendly and human and use their name. Like we do in personal emails.
   
5. Follow the rules of basic fundraising:
   
   • Explain the problem at hand. A human-sized problem that the donor wants to help solve.
     
   • Propose a solution. Action the donor can take that will make a difference.
     
   • Articulate the donor’s impact. Impact that's meaningful to the donor.
     
   • Add an incentive to give now. A deadline or other reason to give now
     
   • Provide a clear call-to-action to donate. Be specific about what they can do. ("Support us" is not specific!)
     

9 things that will strengthen fundraising subject lines

Success in email fundraising depends heavily on subject lines. The best copy, best offer, best landing page all get you nowhere if people don't open your emails.

Here are some things you can do to make subject lines stronger, from the Soapbox Engage Blog, at 9 Ways to Improve Your Nonprofit Email Subject Lines:

1. Send emails from an actual human, not a generic address. Have it come from a real person, not something like info@organization.org.
   
2. Email subject line length matters. Shorter subject lines generally work better.
   
3. Add time-specific details to add urgency. "One day left..." or "Last chance..."
   
4. Personalize your email subject lines for the best results. "Joan, one day left..."
   
5. Write intriguing email subject lines to spark curiosity. As with direct mail, curiosity is powerful!
   
6. Don't give away all the details in the subject line. If your subject line tells them the whole story, they're less likely to open it.
   
7. Say thank you in your email subject lines.
   
8. Send emails at a strategic time and day. There's no single day or time that magically works for everyone. If there were, it would stop working almost as soon as word got out when it was! Test and experiment what works for you.
   
9. Track your email performances. Learn from your own experience. It's the best way to succeed.
   

How to use emojis in fundraising

Are emojis just a fad among the kids these days?

Apparently not.

Many fundraisers are finding that including emojis in the subject line of emails improves response.

But not always. Like anything, emojis have upsides and downsides. The Heroic Fundraising Blog takes a good look at this at Emojis in Donor Marketing? 🧐 Know the Pros 👍 and Cons 👎.

Some emoji positives:

• They catch the eye and can help increase engagement.
  
• They lighten the tone of your copy -- something you may or may not want to do.
  
• They can shorten copy.
  
• They can express emotion.
  
• They can make your email stand out in a crowded inbox.
  

Here are some negatives:

• They can render differently across browsers, email clients, and devices.
  
• Too many emojis can lead to emoji fatigue.
  
• They can come off as insensitive.
  
• They’re small, so not all your donors can see them well.
  

If you have the quantity to test email subject lines, emojis are a great thing to test.

And it's just a matter of time before we start to see emojis in print. I'm looking forward to testing that!

OMG! NFTs are going to upend everything we know about fundraising!

It's predictable. A few weeks after some new digital phenomenon gets a lot of press, you start seeing blog posts about how this Next Big Thing is going to change everything about fundraising, overturning everything from direct mail to the offering plate.

Then a few months or years pass, and everyone has forgotten the old Next Big Thing, because they're talking about the new Next Big Thing.

That's why I appreciate this post at Heroic Fundraising: Are NFTs the Next Big Thing in Fundraising?

So are nonfungible tokens set to destroy direct mail, or anything else? Maybe, but probably not. Because fundraising is not driven by Next Big Things. It's driven by:

... forging relationships between donors and organizations, giving them a way to work together to help solve problems and create a better world, is what matters. Relationships should drive fundraising. Tactics follow.

Things are changing all the time. Some of the new things are important. Most are not. But what matters most is how we think about donors and the way they connect with our causes.

That's always the Big Thing.

Study shows a big shift in donor behavior online

What changed for fundraisers during the pandemic.

The big change according to the 2021 M+R Benchmarks Study (and several other sources too) was a big jump in online giving.

The M+R found that online revenue increased by 32% over 2019.

It was even more for hunger and poverty organizations: for them, online revenue increased by 173%.

More broadly, organizations that provided COVID relief, saw a 40% increase in online revenue, while those not involved in COVID increased 22%.

What happened? Here's how the M+R report put it:

... when the pandemic swept across the world and into our lives, people responded with a heart-swelling urge to help. Uncertainty, fear, and chaos were the daily reality -- and the reaction was compassion. It was empathy. It was generosity.

That's right: Donors want to make a difference! When the need is great, their generosity grows.

And when the need is urgent, they increasingly turn to the speed and convenience of giving online.

Most email metrics -- open rates, click-through rates, response rates, and page completion rates -- went way up in 2020.

What does this mean for fundraisers now?

• Get (or stay) serious about online fundraising. While it may drop back from the highs of 2020, it will most likely stay at a new high level. More and more of your donors are giving online!
• If your organization was one that went silent during the pandemic, you will never get back the opportunity you lost. But it's not too late to start connecting with the donors who stuck with you through the hard times.
• If you had a great fundraising year, don't just assume it's all over. Focus especially on your new and upgraded donors and make sure they have a great experience in stepping up for your cause.

Donor behavior usually changes slowly. This past year, it surged dramatically forward. Don't miss the opportunity to be there and be relevant for your donors.

6 ways to get more from your fundraising emails

It's essentially free, but response is off-the-chart low most of the time. Everyone (including many donors) says it's the preferred way to communicate. But it sure doesn't seem like it.

Email: You have love it and hate it.

From Marketing for the Modern Nonprofit, here are 6 Ways to Improve Your Nonprofit Email Marketing Right Now:

1. Set up a welcome series. Just getting someone to sign up for your email list feels like such a great victory. But it's only a step toward a victory. Be ready with a series of emails that encourage engagement -- especially getting them to tell you about themselves. The first bunch of emails, coming right after they've signed on, is the make-or-break moment.
2. "Scrub" your email subscriber list. Purge the bounces, cold subscribers, spam bots, and fake accounts regularly. If you don't you can be flagged as spam by many email providers.
3. Work to improve deliverability. Send from a real email address (not a "donotreply"), ask people to put you in their senders list, use double opt-in to confirm they want to hear from you.
4. Send more emails. If you email only once a month or less, it's likely your open rates are dropping. Stay in front of your people.
5. Optimize for mobile.
6. Break the email marketing rules. Be surprising. Email at different times of day. Send very short and very long emails. Include videos or photos as well as text-only emails.

On top of all that, emails still have to be compelling, relevant, emotional and all the other things fundraising has to be. But getting these "background" things right really makes a difference.

Should you be pouring your fundraising budget into Clubhouse?

Still trying to crack the social media nut for your fundraising?

Check out this, from the Marketoonist:

If your donors aren't engaging with you on Facebook, it's not going to be better on some other platform.

If traditional channels aren't working, digital channels aren't going to bring some kind of new magic.

Fundraising is hard. There's not an easy way that will make it all come together for you.

5 ways you may be blocking your online donor from giving

When a donor completes an online donation, they have persevered against an army of distractions. A lot of those distractions are innate to the digital world -- no matter what you're doing, you're always one click away from something more interesting.

But some of the distractions are avoidable. You may put them there, costing yourself lost donations.

The Wired Impact blog has some good advice for helping donors stay on task, at Wondering How to Get People to Donate Online? Remove These 5 Barriers:

1. Your donors don’t trust you. Many donors assume your organization is a scam -- until they confirm otherwise. That may seem incredibly cynical, but it's not a bad starting point, given the number of real scams. The burden on you is to show each donor that you are for real. Give them clear signs of your transparency, authenticity, and results.
2. You don’t ask for gifts. If you want people to give, you have to ask.
3. Making a donation is complicated. Keep donation forms as simple as possible. Don't ask for information you don't really need. Suggest some amounts. Make it mobile-friendly.
4. They’re not convinced it’ll make a difference. This is the main barrier to charitable giving in all channels. That's why you need to express needs as solvable, not huge. And keep it simple. Teaching them how your programs work doesn't move people to give. Making them care and showing them they can make a difference is what it takes.
5. They see too many choices. Once someone is on a donate page, completing that donation should be the only thing for them to do. Don't distract them away with other choices.