Raiser Sharpe Tips » Email fundraising

Answer the Only Question Donors Have and You’ll Raise More Money Fundraising

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:07:43 +0000

Your donors have only one question that bothers them.

If you want to acquire more donors, you have to answer it. If you want to raise more net revenue, you need to answer it. And if you want to increase the lifetime value of your donors, you must answer it.

Here’s their question: “How will my donation change the world?”

Donors are confused
Donors ask this question for a number of reasons. For one thing, they’re confused. If they live in Canada and want to support an organization that helps children with cancer, for example, should they donate to the Childhood Cancer Foundation, Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian Research Society, Cancer Recovery Foundation of Canada, Coast to Coast Against Cancer, Wellspring Cancer Support Foundation, Terry Fox Run, or someone else?

Many donors don’t know. Or can’t decide. So given that your non-profit organization has competitors who do similar work, you must tell prospective and current donors exactly how you will use their gift to transform lives. Otherwise your donors may donate somewhere else.

Donors have limited funds
There’s another reason you must tell your donors how their gift will make the world a better place. Some of them are on a fixed income. Others just retired. More than a few have student debt. Or other kinds of debt. Some are broke. Either way, they can’t support as many charities as they’d like, so they give their money to the few causes that promise to make the biggest difference with their gifts.

Donors fund specifics, not generalities
Given the choice between donating to “End Hunger in Your City” or giving a donation that buys “Thanksgiving dinner for $1.73″ for a man at the local homeless mission, you know what the donor will choose. And so does the donor. “How will my donation change the world?” is a question that demands a specific answer, not a general one. Supply the answer and your donor will supply the donation.

Don’t ask for a single donation until you can answer this question. That goes for every campaign, every appeal, every ask throughout the year. And make sure your answer is clear, concrete and compelling. Your donors demand it, no question about it.

Need help with your direct mail program?
Download this book now.
Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program.

Need help?
If you need help raising money through the mail , give me a call at Harvey McKinnon Associates, at (416) 537-2904 ext. 212

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Ask for Email Addresses, Not Donations, in Online Fundraising

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:32:28 +0000

The key to raising money online isn’t Facebook or YouTube or Twitter or a donate button on every webpage.

It’s email.

Email is the tool that gets your message into the mind of your donor and persuades her to return to your website to make a donation.

Your charity cannot afford to wait for donors and potential donors to return to your website. You need to give them a reason to return. And you need to give them a way to return. Email is that way.

Which means the number one priority of your website is not to raise money or to acquire donors. It’s to acquire email addresses.

Unless your charity is a national, well-known charity that helps people during emergencies, and unless there is an emergency on right now, most visitors to your website will not donate during their first visit.

You need to start a conversation with them. A conversation that starts with email.

Stop asking for donations and start asking for email addresses instead.

Invite your visitor to complete a survey. Or take a poll. Or sign your petition. Or subscribe to your email newsletter. Or request your e-bulletin.

Use as many creative, compelling, donor-centred ways of persuading your visitors to give you their email address. But don’t simply say, “Enter your email address here to be added to our mailing list.” Instead, offer your visitors something of value that is delivered by email.

Your goal is to acquire as many email addresses as possible. Online fundraising is a numbers game. And the numbers are small. Open rates of 8%. Click-through rates of 2%. With metrics like these, you need to be reaching as many donors and potential donors as possible with every email appeal.

Think tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Aim for quantity. Secure as many email addresses as you possibly can, using as many tactics as you can think of, can afford and can manage.

Then develop a plan for converting a large percentage of the people on your email list to donors. Pretend you are dating. Treat their first visit to your website as the way you happened to meet. Instead of asking for their phone number, you asked for their email address.

In your first series of email messages, start the relationship by helping your potential donor get to know you a little better. Be interesting. Charming. Engaging.

When the time is right, pop the question. Ask for a gift. Direct the reader to your website to make a donation. Then follow up with a heartfelt thank-you letter.

Stop asking for donations and start asking for email addresses, and you’ll succeed at online fundraising.

Learn More
Read Online Fundraising Secrets.
Learn the latest tactics for attracting website visitors and raising money online with compelling webpages, irresistible email appeals and engaging email newsletters.

Need help?
If you need help raising money online, give me a call at Harvey McKinnon Associates, at (416) 537-2904 ext. 212

Twenty Postal Strike Survival Tips for Charities and Non-Profits

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:04:50 +0000

What should you do if your charity raises money through the mail but your country’s postal workers are about to strike, or are already on strike?

Naturally, you’re troubled.

Most charities in Canada that are not places of worship raise a substantial portion of their operating budget using fundraising letters. Many charities also rely on the mail to recruit new donors, keep their donors up to date with newsletters, invite donors to special events, conduct donor surveys, and issue charitable tax receipts and thank-you letters. So a strike by postal workers isn’t just an inconvenience. It threatens a charity’s very existence.

Here are some ways to survive a postal strike.

In the weeks before the postal workers go on strike, write to your donors. Tell them that a strike is imminent, and give the anticipated strike date if possible.
Describe how the strike will affect your donors’ ability to communicate with you, and your ability to communicate with your donors, by mail.
Warn your donors to expect delays in receiving their gift acknowledgement letters, since their mail gifts, and you thank-you letters, will likely be delayed in the mail system.
If the labour action involves rotating strikes in cities across the country rather than a nationwide general strike, warn your donors to still expect delays, since the location and duration of each strike is unpredictable.
Give your donors a way to keep current on the status of the strike by showing them where to sign up for email bulletins, text alerts and media releases issued by the postal labour union and the postal service. Direct donors to the websites of each party in the strike.
Encourage your donors to make their donations using other methods, such as email, phone, online, text and in person.
Before the strike begins, make contingency plans for sending your appeals by email, provided you have the technical ability and sufficient email addresses to do so profitably.
If you are going to solicit gifts during the strike by email, write to donors whose email addresses you do not have on file, and invite them to give you their email addresses. Give donors an incentive, such as a gift certificate, for doing so (you’ll acquire more addresses this way).
If you anticipate that the strike will be prolonged, consider phoning your high-value donors and asking for a gift. Mention the impact of the strike and encourage them to either phone your charity or give online. Do this throughout the duration of the strike.
If you anticipate that the strike will be prolonged, write to your donors before the strike and invite them to join your monthly giving program. If some are reluctant, invite them to give a gift each month, however small, for the duration of the strike only. Stress your need for daily funds to continue helping the people you serve.
Before the strike begins, invite your most frequent and generous donors to mail you a series of post-dated cheques.
Before the strike begins, invite your donors to add your charity as an Internet banking payee so that they can donate to your cause when they pay their bills online.
Ramp up your homepage so that it makes a clear, compelling request for donations (perhaps even mentioning your inability to receive donations in the mail, and stressing the need for visitors to donate online or by phone instead).
Revise your Twitter homepage so that it stresses your need for funds during the strike, and then solicit donations in some of your tweets.
Post a provocative, viral video on YouTube that shows the predicament your charity will be in if you stop receiving gifts during the postal strike. Make a strong request for funds, and direct viewers to your donation page, or even better, to a special landing page dedicated to the strike.
Post regular status updates to your Facebook page so that your fans, friends, donors, advocates, members and everyone else is reminded regularly of your need for funds.
While the strike is on, email your gift acknowledgement letters, charitable gift receipts, newsletters and special event invitations.
If your charity has to cancel a fundraising event because of the postal strike, host the event online instead as a creative, fun, tongue-in-cheek non-event. (“Our Black Tie Non-Event will NOT take place on (date). Cocktails will NOT be served at 5:30 p.m. Dinner will NOT be served at 7 p.m. NO program will be held at 8:30 p.m.)
When the strike is over, and you have a backlog of gift acknowledgement letters to mail, mention in each letter that you are sorry for the delay in thanking the donor.
When the strike is over, don’t be tempted to persuade as many donors as possible to start giving online instead of by mail. The majority of today’s donors prefer the mail. Gifts made by email and online still make up less than 10% of the revenue for most charities in North America.

Boost Email Fundraising Open Rates by Sounding Like Grandma

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:40:09 +0000

The secret to persuading your donors to open and read your direct email fundraising messages is to make them sound like a note from grandma.

Your donors receive three kinds of email:
1. Email from family and friends (personal)
2. Email from colleagues and suppliers (work)
3. Email from advertisers and fundraisers (legitimate and
spam)

The least important of these emails, in the mind of your donors, are the promotional messages from you and me. Most donors say granny comes first, the boss second, and purported wives of deposed Nigerian leaders last.

That’s because your donors and prospects read newspapers and magazines, and watch television, for the news and entertainment, not the advertisements. Your request for funds is an intrusion. Same goes for the phone. Your donors use it to talk with people they care about, which does not include telemarketers. Same goes for email. Your donors and prospects read it primarily to learn stuff and to do stuff, not to give money away.

Which is why I unsubscribed from a popular email newsletter. All it seemed to do was pitch products. Just about every issue tried to sell me something instead of teach me something. The author is a well-known and well-liked consultant and author. I like him. I signed up to learn from him. But just about all that he did was pitch me his products week after week. So I said sayonara.

Start with your subject line. “Grandpa is in hospital” will arrest the attention of your reader sooner than a subject line that says “Donate now to our annual fund.” So think of how you would grab the attention of a loved one in a letter or phone call, then write your email subject line using that same visceral power (while telling the truth, of course).

Next comes your salutation. Don’t use “Dear Friend” or any of its lame cousins. Address your reader by name. Say “Dear Alan,” or “Dear Mr.
Sharpe.” You address family members, colleagues and vendors by name because you have a relationship with them. Extend the same familiarity to your donors and opt-in email prospects and they will immediately feel more inclined to read your offer.

Then, write only about things that are of the greatest concern to your readers. Appeal to their self-interest. You mail birthday cards to your friends and family. You phone mum and dad on their wedding anniversary. Do the same in your fundraising emails, sort of, by putting your readers first, making them
the star of every email, and making them feel important to you and appreciated.

They’ll love you for it.

Online Fundraising Secrets

Learn the latest tactics for attracting website visitors and raising money online with compelling webpages, irresistible email appeals and engaging email newsletters.

Online Fundraising Donation Pages Must Answer Donor’s 3 Questions

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:15:58 +0000

Do you use direct mail fundraising letters to drive donors to your website to make their donations? If you do, make sure your website donation page answers the three most common questions asked by donors.

Question #1. Am I at the correct place?
What you say on your donation page needs to match what you say in your direct mail appeal. Visually, this means that if you feature in your direct mail package a photo of a homeless man eating supper at your drop-in shelter, you should feature that same photo on your make-a-donation page. If the ask in your letter is for your Tornado Relief Project, then the ask on your donation page needs to match that. Which, by the way, means you should never direct your direct mail readers to your home page to make their gift. You should send them directly to your donation page, preferably one designed specifically for each direct mail campaign.

Question #2. Where is the one thing I’m looking for?
Donation pages, for some donors, have replaced business reply envelopes as the response device in direct mail fundraising. A growing number of supporters like to read your letter offline but make their donation online. Which means your donation page is not so much a webpage as a response device. And Maxim Number One of direct mail response devices and order forms is to make them simple to understand and easy to complete.

So if you have invited your direct mail reader to sign a petition on your site, make that petition form simple to find and easy to complete.

If your appeal letter offers a tote bag in exchange for an online donation, show a picture of the premium and give instructions on how to get it.

If you’re offering a discount that visitors receive by entering a discount code found in the letter you mailed them, make the place on your donation page where they enter that code impossible to miss.

Question #3. Can I trust you?
Trust is the deal breaker in fundraising, both online and offline. Potential donors and members who decide they cannot trust you won’t donate. So if your direct mail piece wins their trust but your donation page loses it, you lose the donation. And the donor. Which means you must avoid the things that create suspicion online, and employ the tactics that increase trust.

Avoid donation page mistakes that arouse suspicion:
1. No street address, just a PO Box
2. No phone number
3. No privacy policy
4. No security policy

Use donation page elements that create trust:
1. Better Business Bureau logo and a link to your online BBB profile
2. eTrust logo, or similar (so donor’s know their privacy is secure)
3. Toll-free customer service phone number
4. Endorsements from trusted, objective, third parties, such as Charity Navigator

Remember that your online donation page is part-two of your direct mail case for support and ask. You’ll convert more visitors into donors when you give them what they expect to find, make the process easy and quick, and avoid the tactics used by spammers and scammers.

You might be interested in…

Handbook Number 24
75 Easy Ways to Build Your Opt-in Email List.
Acquire new subscribers, donors, members and advocates with these tested strategies.

Handbook Number 14
The Fundraising Letter P.S.: 100 and 1 Ways to Make Yours More Powerful.
Attract gifts and motivate donors by improving one of the most important sections of your donor appeal letters.

Online Fundraising: Four Deadly Blunders to Avoid

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:31:48 +0000

The good news is that 62 percent of adults visit a non-profit’s website before donating (according to a recent online survey conducted by Harris Interactive).

That’s also the bad news.

For many non-profits, the quickest way they can scare away donors is to direct them to the organization’s website. Too many non-profit websites are making blunders that discourage donors from browsing, donating, volunteering or referring others to the site. Here are four common blunders, and how to avoid them.

Blunder #1. Obscure website address
What would you expect to find at www.gghorg.ca? Is this address obviously for Guelph General Hospital? How easy is this website address to remember? Is it as easy to remember as www.lenoxhillhospital.org, the address for, you guessed it, Lenox Hill Hospital? If you want donors, volunteers, members, alumni, the media and others to easily find your website, give it an address that’s both intuitive and easy to remember. If your organization’s name is a mouthful, then create a unique website address, as the Arthritis Research Institute of America did with its website, www.preventarthritis.org.

Blunder #2. Donate button on the homepage only
Some visitors will find your website by typing your website address into their browser. But plenty more will find you through a search. Which means they may land on any page of your website other than your homepage. So if you want visitors to donate, put a Donate Now button or link on every page of your site, not just on the homepage.

Blunder #3. No email sign-up
The key to raising money online is not your website. It’s your email. You raise money by emailing folks who have asked to hear from you. But you can only do that if you have their email addresses. A website that does not collect email addresses is not likely to raise much money. So put a sign-up link on every page of your site, offering a free email newsletter, email updates or something else of value to your donors that they will receive from you by email.

Blunder #4. No interaction
I heard recently of a young boy who explained to his father why he didn’t watch television: “It doesn’t do anything. All I can do is watch it.” That explains the beauty of the Internet: it’s interactive. Which means your website visitors expect your website to be interactive. They expect to be able to “do something.” Your visitors will stay longer, and enjoy their visit more, if you offer them online surveys, polls, petitions, quizzes, refer-a-friend buttons, donation pages and other ways for visitors to interact with your site.

You might be interested in…

Seminar-on-Demand 008-3
How to Attract Donors to Your Website
Presenter: Alan Sharpe.
Learn how to optimize your website to rank higher on the search engines, take advantage of You Tube, My Space and other social networking sites to drive potential donors to your website, and avoid common mistakes that penalize your search engine rankings. 6 pages of tips, best-practices and full-colour samples of effective websites. 90-minute recording of a live seminar. Delivered by mail on a CD.

And don’t miss…

Handbook Number 24
75 Easy Ways to Build Your Opt-in Email List.
Acquire new subscribers, donors, members and advocates with these tested strategies.

Handbook Number 26
Raise Funds in a Recession.
Twenty-seven development professionals describe how to raise funds, cut costs and retain donors in an economic downturn.

Email Fundraising Subject Lines: Use Today’s News Headlines to Boost Open Rates.

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 13:35:31 +0000

If you want to increase the number of people who read your email fundraising letters and email newsletters, put today’s headlines in your email subject lines.

Paris Hilton is in the news right now because she is in jail right now. She’s behind bars because she drove drunk while her license was suspended for drunk driving. Mothers Against Drunk Driving made good use of Paris Hilton’s celebrity status and newsworthiness in an email appeal dated May 13, 2007.

Their subject line? “Help MADD stop the 500,000 Paris Hiltons.”

Here is the opening of the email:

“Help us raise $500,000 keep our roadways safe and support victims of this violent crime, especially those who drive while suspended.

“There has been a news explosion over the fact that Paris Hilton drove drunk, had her license suspended, and then continued to drive anyway. What has not been mentioned is that she is one of 500,000 people do this same thing each year; studies shown that 50 to 75 percent of people who have their license suspended for drunk driving continue to drive without a license and many of them are continuing to drive drunk. We are trying to raise $500,000 by the end of June to combat these 500,000 unsafe drivers and we need your help.”

As you can see, MADD did three things right with their subject line.

1. They tied it to a celebrity who draws massive media attention and who is in the news today.

2. They tied that celebrity to an alarming statistic (500,000 drunk drivers yearly), making that statistic more dramatic and concrete, less abstract.

3. They tied that alarming statistic of 500,000 drunk drivers with their campaign goal of raising $500,000. Very clever.

Amnesty International did the same thing during the week that a new movie about the illegal diamond trade appeared in theatres. Their subject line: “Go see ‘Blood Diamond’ this weekend.”

Covenant House tied current events with their May 2007 appeal with this subject line: “A Gift of Love on Mother’s Day.”

Greenpeace did the same thing at Christmas 2006 with this subject: “Green holidays, your campaign to save the whales, enviro art and much, much more.”

Like everyone else, donors like to read about what’s new. And nothing is as new as today’s news. So tie your email message to a breaking news story, put that in your email subject line, and you’ll boost your open rates, and clickthroughs.

If you need help crafting email fundraising letters that deliver results, call me today, on my nickel, at 877 742-7732.

You might be interested in…

101 Irresistible Direct Mail Fundraising Envelopes. Borrow inspiration from the ingenuity and daring of more than 70 non-profit organizations. This is an electronic book delivered by mail on a CD-ROM in Adobe Acrobat format.

Breakthrough Fundraising Letters.
How to write direct mail donation request appeals that attract more donors, raise more money, and build stronger relationships. Available in paperback and as an e-book.

Handbook Number 8
101 Terrific Opening Lines for Your Fundraising Letters.
Dozens of quotes, statistics, anecdotes, witticisms, questions and other zingers to make your letters irresistible.

Online Fundraising: Build Your List of Email Donors in 10 Simple Internet Ways.

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 16:54:14 +0000

Your greatest challenge as an email fundraiser is your list. If your organization is typical, only 10% of the people in your donor file have given you their email address. And that list isn’t growing any larger all on its own.

Email fundraising is new, but email isn’t. So donors and potential donors don’t divulge their email addresses easily. They’re tired of spam. They’re afraid of online fraud. They’re protective of their inboxes.

So getting your donors, potential donors and strangers to give you their email addresses is tough. Here are 80 ways to encourage people to give you access to their inboxes in record time.

You can deploy some of these tactics immediately, and see immediate results. Some of the other recommendations will take a little longer.

But either way, if you set out in a deliberate, long- term way to acquire as many email addresses as possible from people who ask to hear from you, you’ll build a list of email subscribers that quickly becomes your greatest asset next to your donor file.

Aim to get the email addresses of both donors and non-donors. Advocates, volunteers, anonymous website visitors and other non-donors who sign up for your email newsletters, action alerts and other email correspondence are prime prospects for donations (just be patient).
Mention your donor email newsletter in articles and stories on your website, making the newsletter title a hotlink that points to your sign-up page. (“In our latest email issue of Darfur Digest, we described the worsening situation in southern Sudan”).
On pages that donors are re-directed to after making a donation on your website, include a link to your email sign-up page and a compelling reason for donors to sign up.
On your Frequently Asked Questions page, make one of the questions about the availability of email correspondence, and answer the question by describing the email newsletters, alerts, prayer letters, bulletins and other emails that you publish.
If your staff take part in online forums, make sure they mention your email newsletter discretely when posting their comments, as a way to encourage other forum participants to learn more about the topic being discussed.
If you run a walkathon, golf tournament or other outdoor fundraiser, make the sign-up process include email addresses so you can keep participants, suppliers, volunteers and organizers informed before and after the event.
Require your major donor officers to ask all prospects and donors if they would like to receive email updates on how their gift is being used.
Whenever you ask donors or advocates to complete a petition (offline or online), ask for their email address.
Track which issues of your newsletter, or which appeal emails, generate the largest number of donations, and then uses these same subjects or appeals when attracting new donors and members.
When hosting a fundraising banquet, invite guests to supply their email addresses as part of the event.

You might be interested in…

Handbook Number 24
75 Easy Ways to Build Your Opt-in Email List.
Acquire new subscribers, donors, members and advocates with these tested strategies.

Seminar-on-Demand 008-3
How to Attract Donors to Your Website
Presenter: Alan Sharpe.
Learn how to optimize your website to rank higher on the search engines, take advantage of You Tube, My Space and other social networking sites to drive potential donors to your website, and avoid common mistakes that penalize your search engine rankings. 56 pages of tips, best-practices and full-colour samples of effective websites. 90-minute recording of a live seminar. Delivered by mail on a CD.

Email Fundraising Must Inspire Donors to Go Online.

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 15:39:15 +0000

Sending an email with no links to follow is like mailing a direct mail appeal without enclosing a reply device or return envelope. Costly.

Email fundraising only works when you inspire donors to go online. Online is where you get their donation. Online is where you secure their advocacy. Online is where you encourage their involvement. That’s why your email appeals, alerts and newsletters must give donors something to do, and must give them somewhere to go to do it. That place is your website.

Websites alone might raise some funds but they won’t build relationships. And email letters might inform donors but they won’t advance your cause unless you drive those donors to your website to act.

The easiest way to show you what I mean is to show you how Mothers Against Drunk Driving does it. Their email newsletters are filled with links.

Down the right side of each email donor newsletter is a simple, vertical navigation bar that looks like this:

>> HELP SUPPORT MADD
By making a donation today, you’re making a difference for tomorrow. More>>

>> VICTIM SERVICES
After the crash, there’s the impact. MADD is here to help you. More >>

>> TAKE ACTION TODAY!
Learn what simple things you can do to help save lives and prevent injuries. More >>

>> FORWARD TO A FRIEND
Share the latest news with your family and friends. More >>

Why this is effective:

1. It’s strategic. MADD has a three-fold mission, Activism, Victim Services and Education. These simple, consistent links in every newsletter advance that mission by encouraging subscribers to speak out (Take Action Today!), help victims (Victim Services) and educate others (Forward to a Friend).

2. It’s donor-centered. Notice that every one of these four links speaks directly to “you,” the donor. “You” are making a difference. “You” can save lives. MADD is here to help “you.”

3. It teases. Each link tells you just enough to understand what lies on the other end of that “More >>” link, but no more. You must click the link to satisfy your curiosity.

4. It stresses action. Three of the four links contain active verbs. “Help support,” “Take action,” “Forward.” In direct mail we call this the “call to action.” It calls the reader to act. The quickest way to encourage your donor to donate, sign a petition, take a survey or simply read more is to command them to do so.

To see what this entire email newsletter from MADD looks like, visit http ://www.raisersharpe.com/z/madd.htm

You might be interested in…

Seminar-on-Demand 008-3
How to Attract Donors to Your Website
Presenter: Alan Sharpe.
Learn how to optimize your website to rank higher on the search engines, take advantage of You Tube, My Space and other social networking sites to drive potential donors to your website, and avoid common mistakes that penalize your search engine rankings. 56 pages of tips, best-practices and full-colour samples of effective websites. 90-minute recording of a live seminar. Delivered by mail on a CD.

Handbook Number 24
75 Easy Ways to Build Your Opt-in Email List.
Acquire new subscribers, donors, members and advocates with these tested strategies.

Boost Email Donor Newsletter Open Rates with Safe Subject Lines.

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 13:58:33 +0000

The last time I checked, which is to say, yesterday, the average open rate for an email donor newsletter was 37%. That means 63 percent of donors are not opening the email newsletters they’ve asked to receive.

If they’re not opening them, then they’re not reading them. And if they’re not reading them, then they’re not clicking any of the links, including the ones that lead to online donation pages. Thus, one sure way to boost your online donation rates is to boost your email open rates. One way to do that is to write good subject lines. Here are some proven methods.

1. Put your newsletter name in the subject line
With email donor newsletters, familiarity doesn’t breed contempt. Familiarity breeds trust. And trust is the single most important ingredient of online fundraising success. Donors who receive your emails need to see in a split second that your email is from a source they trust and contains a message they want.

The most predictable subject line is the name of your publication. Donors who see the publication name month after month will easily recognize it and look forward to reading each issue.

2. Put your organization name in the subject line
If you received an email today with “July 2006 E-Snapshots” in the subject, would you know for sure who the message was from and what it was about? Only if you knew the charity well. Or had a terrific memory.

If the name of your organization isn’t in the name of your newsletter, then consider putting your organization name in your subject line. This is especially vital when your email newsletter has an obscure name that only makes sense when paired with your organization name. Some examples of obscure newsletter names:

Organization: Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Email newsletter name: Bullet Counter Points Blog

Organization: Trans World Radio
Email newsletter name: E-Snapshots

Organization: World Wildlife Fund Canada
Email newsletter name: Panda Mail

These newsletter names can all be improved dramatically as email subject lines by simply adding the name of the organization. “E-Snapshots from Trans World Radio,” for example.

3. Use donor-centered keywords
If you are still concerned that jumpy donors will mistake your email newsletter for spam~, then write your subject using words and phrases that describe your mission and the cause that your donors and members support. Here are three examples:

From: Greenpeace Canada
Subject: Driftnets, dolphins and your chance to tell us what you think…

From: Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA
Subject: Supreme Court Delivers a Victory for Human Rights

From: Insight for Living Ministries
Subject: A Message from Insight for Living

Just make sure that the keywords in your subject line, even if they appeal to your donors, will not set off spam~ filters. Phrases like “free,” “prizes” and “save,” and symbols like “!” “$” and “XXX”) will trigger spam~ filters and route your newsletter to the trash folder.

You might be interested in…

Seminar-on-Demand 008-3How to Attract Donors to Your Website
Presenter: Alan Sharpe.
Learn how to optimize your website to rank higher on the search engines, take advantage of You Tube, My Space and other social networking sites to drive potential donors to your website, and avoid common mistakes that penalize your search engine rankings.
56 pages of tips, best-practices and full-colour samples of effective websites. 90-minute recording of a live seminar. Delivered by mail on a CD.

Handbook Number 24
75 Easy Ways to Build Your Opt-in Email List.
Acquire new subscribers, donors, members and advocates with these tested strategies.

Email Donor Newsletters: Improve Your Open Rates for Online Fundraising and Donation Success

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 14:43:56 +0000

One of the greatest challenges in email fundraising is poor open rates. The majority of donors who subscribe to email donor newsletters receive them but never open them.

If you track your open rates, you likely already know that roughly 36 percent of your subscribers open your emails. That means a whopping 64 percent of your email appeals and email donor newsletters either languish in inboxes unread, get deleted by overzealous index fingers, or never appear in donor inboxes because spam~ filters catch them first.

Improve your open rates today using these proven methods.

1. Put yourself in the From line.
Put the name of your organization in the From line. Readers will see immediately that your email is from someone they trust. Some examples:

From: Amnesty International USA [alerts@takeaction.amnestyusa.org]

From: Coalition to Stop Gun Violence [action@action.csgv.org]

From: MADD Online [enews@madd.org]

If you use an email service provider, such as Constant Contact or GetActive, do not use them in the From line. Greenpeace Canada’s newsletters, for example, arrive from ems@thindataworks.com. Your donors and members—and their spam~ filters—will not recognize a sender like that, and may inadvertently delete the valuable email fundraising newsletters they want to receive from you.

2. Put your reader in the To line.
Show your reader who the email newsletter is for by putting your donor’s name and email address in the To line. Don’t leave this line blank. That’s what spammers do, and you don’t want to be mistaken for a spammer. I have in my inbox, for example, an email that looks like this at the top:

From: Ontario March Of Dimes [info@dimes.on.ca]
Subject: Ontario March of Dimes Summer Online Auction
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 10:54:18 -0400
Encoded attachment: image001.jpg

As you can imagine, I thought this email was spam~, not a message from a charity that I respect. It wasn’t addressed to me. And it contained an email attachment. Any email message from your organization that looks like it is for nobody in particular or everyone in general will quickly end up in the trash box.

Another mistake to avoid is putting the sender in the To line, like this:

From: ABC Charity [info@abc.org]
Subject: Summer Online Auction
To: info@abc.org

This infuriates many of your donors, and me, too. Your donors and members, especially if they share a family computer, need to know who your email is for. And they also need to know which email address they are subscribed to your newsletter under. They likely have more than one email address. Few tasks are as infuriating for donors as asking a non-profit organization to be removed from their mailing list but not being able to tell them which email address of yours they are using.

If you’d like to see an example of a donor newsletter that gets all of these things right, review this excellent example from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, at www.RaiserSharpe.com/z/madd.htm

You might be interested in…

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Learn how to optimize your website to rank higher on the search engines, take advantage of You Tube, My Space and other social networking sites to drive potential donors to your website, and avoid common mistakes that penalize your search engine rankings.
56 pages of tips, best-practices and full-colour samples of effective websites. 90-minute recording of a live seminar. Delivered by mail on a CD.

Handbook Number 24
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Email Fundraising Serves Four Strategic Functions

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 12:47:12 +0000

Email is cheaper than direct mail but that’s not why you should embrace it.

Your non-profit organization should be communicating with donors and members by email for four strategic reasons.

1. Involve
Email, by its very nature, is interactive. Your readers expect to see links in your email messages, links that they can click. Your readers expect to be able to hit Reply and answer a question you’ve posed, or share their opinion. Email is attractive to donors and members, and your organization, because it helps them get involved.

By using “Forward-this-to-a-Friend” buttons in your emails, and message boards and forums on your website, your email messages help your constituents share information with friends and colleagues, and discuss relevant topics. If your donor file has plenty of donors who are not engaged in any meaningful way with your organization, email is a cost-effective way to make them more active, with their happy cooperation.

2. Advocate
Email is powerful because of its immediacy. The letter you draft and send at 10:09 am arrives in your donor’s email inbox within minutes, a feat impossible using a letter, envelope and postage stamp.

Because email is immediate and because it encourages interaction, it’s the perfect medium for mobilizing your members. With email, you help your members simply and easily advocate for your cause. The more sophisticated email systems on the market let you customize each email message so that it contains the name and contact details for each member’s local, provincial/state and federal elected officials. The easier you make it for your members to act as advocates, the higher your response rates will be to petitions and other “take action” messages you mail to further your cause.

3. Fundraise
The key to raising money online is not your website but your email. Email is how you build relationships with your members and donors. Email is how you invite them (and inspire them) to donate. Your website is simply where your donor makes the donation. Some donors, of course, will chance upon your website and give a gift while they are there, but these kinds of donors are in the minority.

One exception is emergency appeals, where organizations like The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and Habitat for Humanity raise a great deal of money online from strangers. But the secret to securing second and subsequent gifts from online donors is your emails, not your website. Your website informs and educates, certainly, but your emails are the vehicle that must transport your donors there.

4. Inform
A leading cause of donor attrition is lack of communication by the non-profit. Donors who send gifts but do not hear from their charity often enough soon take their gifts elsewhere. Just as important as frequent communication is relevant communication. And that’s where email newsletters are so attractive. Because a good email system integrates with your donor database, you can customize email newsletters for the unique interests and preferences of each of your constituents.

Kathy, for example, wants to receive alerts about AIDS orphans but not refugees. Bill wants to receive bulletins about Sudan but not Senegal. Samantha welcomes updates on her sponsored child but has no interest in attending special events. Email lets you satisfy everyone by sending personalized messages to your donors and members, messages that speak directly to their known interests.

Email fundraising has its challenges, of course. Spam filters, for one thing. And crowded inboxes. But as a tool for involving donors, mobilizing members, raising emergency funds and delivering late-breaking news, email stands alone.

You might be interested in…

Seminar-on-Demand 008-3
How to Attract Donors to Your Website
Presenter: Alan Sharpe.
Learn how to optimize your website to rank higher on the search engines, take advantage of You Tube, My Space and other social networking sites to drive potential donors to your website, and avoid common mistakes that penalize your search engine rankings.
56 pages of tips, best-practices and full-colour samples of effective websites. 90-minute recording of a live seminar. Delivered by mail on a CD.

Handbook Number 23
53 Creative Ways to Personalize Your Fundraising Letters.
Build rapport, sound conversational, show interest and strengthen relationships with donors.

Handbook Number 24
75 Easy Ways to Build Your Opt-in Email List.
Acquire new subscribers, donors, members and advocates with these tested strategies.