Ever since social media became mainstream, its older brother (email) has fallen to the wayside.
Nobody thinks email is cool anymore. It has become ubiquitous and boring.
But…there’s beauty in boring.
Because everyone uses email, it is one of the most efficient communication tools today. According to one poll, about 40% of people surveyed thought they checked their email between 6 and 20 times per day.
How do you get the most out of email for online fundraising?
Let’s talk about four tricks that you can do with email to make it work for you.
An email service provider (ESP) is online software that helps you send emails in bulk to a list or segment of your email list.
ESPs are different than just using your email account because they provide tracking information, the ability to segment lists, and pretty HTML templates.
Our favorites include Mailchimp and iContact.
When should you use this?
You don’t want to use an ESP for day-to-day email. Instead, you’ll want to use it for official messages when you need to send a bulk email to a large group of people on your email list. By large I mean hundreds or thousands of messages at once.
A few opportunities to use this include:
Pros
Cons
A mail merge is a software function that lets you send out text-based emails from your personal email account. The software allows you to insert names, words, and phrases into a predefined template so that it seems like each email is individually tailored to the recipient.
Apple Mail, Outlook, Google Apps and Mozilla Thunderbird are a few good options.
When should you use this?
The best time to use a mail merge is when you have less than 500 emails that you want to send out that need to have a personal feel to it.
A few opportunities to use this include:
Pros
Cons
A shared inbox or email alias allows an email to be seen by multiple people at your nonprofit. This helps you collaborate on incoming emails so you can give better and quicker service to donors and supporters.
When should you use this?
You should use a shared inbox or help desk software when multiple people need to collaborate on incoming requests.
We recommend TenderApp if you’re just getting started.
A few opportunities to use this include:
Pros
Cons
Your email signature is a powerful tool that allows you to quickly reply to emails using a template.
When should you use this?
Use your email signature to create and send template emails. When you find yourself frequently typing or copying/pasting the same email to multiple people, use your email signature to do the leg work for you.
If you’re using Gmail, you can enable “canned responses” in their lab settings to use this trick.
A few opportunities to use this include:
Pros
Cons
Use these four tips on your online fundraising campaign next time. Let us know how it helps you!
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