If you haven’t articulated your newsletter’s goals recently (e.g., in a yearly communications/marketing plan), it might be time to re-establish and prioritize your list of objectives. To help you get started, or just to give you a quick refresher, here are some best practices to keep in mind as you’re building your newsletters. This makes it very easy for readers to quickly identify the key message. Remember, people give, among other things, because they want to feel good.
You will help supporters connect with your team while showcasing your employees’ top-notch work. This type of personal messaging works hard to nurture donor relationships and promote 15 best practices in setting up and sending nonprofit newsletters ongoing donations. When relevant, let your audience know about any exciting partnerships as they happen. In addition, your partner will feel grateful for being featured in your newsletter.
- Every time you get an email that you open immediately, ask yourself why you did it.
- Once you have your blog up and running, your nonprofit newsletter becomes the perfect distribution platform to share your latest blog posts.
- Connect these channels by cross-promoting each channel on the other ones.
- Additionally, M+R’s 2020 Benchmarks Study has found audiences growing in email and social media platforms.
- Every newsletter should have a clear call to action (CTA) that encourages the reader to engage with your organization in some way, such as donating, volunteering, or attending an event.
Your Email Newsletter’s Audience
Whether you are creating a new newsletter or making changes to an existing publication, the following tips can help you put together an effective communication tool for your organization. Even if your email template has room for various messages, like those shared above, you’ll still want your email to have a single focus. Your focus will be clear because your subject line will point to it, and the first item of content that appears in your newsletter will be interpreted as its main point. This is a clear and direct marker of what you want your reader to do next. It could be to “Read More,” “Sign Up,” “Donate,” or “Share,” to list a few ideas.
Using an e-newsletter service also automatically optimizes your newsletter for mobile, which is incredibly important. Include specific calls to action and links that make following through as simple as possible. In addition to regularity, consistency is the other secret ingredient to the magic sauce of engagement. Once you’re clear on the objective, the objective will then inform the content and the format of your newsletter.
Monthly Action Plans (MAPS
Unfortunately, most nonprofit email newsletters look like someone created it in a rush, throwing a bunch of random things together so they could call it done. The Keela Team comprises dedicated individuals passionate about simplifying nonprofit management. With a shared commitment to innovation and empowering organizations, they bring expertise in technology and a drive to create impactful solutions for the nonprofit sector. Did you just create an awesome video to tell the world about your mission?
Building a Loyal Community
Newsletters must be sent regularly in order to maintain readership. For example, this United Way sends a monthly newsletter, which might be a realistic goal to start with. Publish too often and you may struggle to sustain your efforts; publish less frequently and readers may forget about you. To ensure that your newsletter is published on time each month, create a publication calendar, and plan to send it on the same day each month (maybe the first Tuesday morning of the month!). Most organizations follow a general nonprofit newsletter template that consists of content relevant to their cause, headings, links, and calls-to-action. Creating a newsletter for a nonprofit might sound tough, but these suggestions will help you get started.
Make it Shareable
Nonprofit newsletters effectively keep your supporters, donors, and community members informed and engaged with your organization. Whatever content you share should be timely and always on-brand. Many nonprofit newsletters rely on curated content to fill this need. A curated nonprofit newsletter aggregates content based on a specific subject, pulling it together into one place; your email newsletter. Every nonprofit newsletter must include what is known as calls to action.
So, you need to remind donors how great giving feels if you want them to keep giving. If you use an email marketing service to send out your newsletters, develop a template that you’re going to use moving forward. Yes, we said earlier that keeping in regular contact with your supporters is important.
- As organic reach declines, many organizations must invest in paid advertising to maintain visibility, which is problematic, especially for cash-strapped nonprofits.
- This is an invitation for you to share more information about your nonprofit organization and the impact you have.
- Donors want to stay in the loop of what’s going on in your organization.
- For growing associations, a “good enough” approach often won’t get you very far with recruitment.
Include a donor spotlight
For example, because John thinks your design looks cluttered, hard to read and confusing, he assumes your nonprofit is bad. It’s best to create a schedule and stick to it, so your readers know when they can expect to hear from you. Therefore, soft bounces are usually a short-term issue – you don’t need to permanently take these addresses off of your list.
GiveForms can take over at this stage and help you raise funds by letting you seamlessly accept donations online. Your supporters can donate using a credit card, PayPal, Google Pay, or bank transfers. With a focus on intuitive, human-centered design, GiveForms goal is to help you increase your online donations. Current supporters want to read about how their involvement made a difference.
Give donors a look at your work culture by sending behind-the-scenes photos to build meaningful bonds. Your supporters want to know about your successes and the impact you’re making. Break up your content with headings so that readers can scan your overall message and easily see what’s of interest to them. Headings make it possible to break up large chunks of text and avoid overwhelming your reader.
Canva is especially useful for creating graphics and other visual elements to include in your newsletter. HubSpot is a marketing and sales platform that includes a variety of tools for email marketing, marketing automation, lead generation, and more. It offers a drag-and-drop editor as well as a variety of templates and design options. HubSpot also includes features for list management, audience segmentation, and analytics. Use analytics to measure the success of your newsletter, including open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
Your thank-you email templates can include major milestones, anniversaries or program launches. Anything that will give your readers something to feel good about. As mentioned already, be sure to take time to think about a subject line that is catchy and promotes your audience to open your email. While there is a general flow of operations to follow, the bulk of the time is generally spent on email newsletter design and content. The festive design catches the eye, the big headline makes the event clear, and all important information is included in the short body of the newsletter.