Burned by social media and its tiny ROI? đź“Ą Time to make email your BFF for bringing home the bacon in 2023!
Digital marketing maven Christina Edwards explains why email crushes social media when it comes to converting supporters into donors. Listen and learn why you should centralize and optimize this workhorse channel ASAP.
We cover the ideal email frequency, metrics to track, ingredients for compelling subject lines and content, tips for cleaning your list, and plenty more nuts and bolts. Christina also shares tactical ideas for year-end campaigns.
Her bottom line says it all: “The more emails you send, the more money you make. The two go hand in hand.” So get over your fear of flooding inboxes and start maximizing this money magnet!
Ready to have a breakthrough in connecting with supporters? Christina is bringing the email excellence – take notes!
Important Links
https://www.splendidcourses.com/email
Episode Transcript
RHEA 0:00
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown.
Today I am speaking with a second time guest, my friend Christina Edwards. She is the founder of Splendid Consulting and today we are talking about how email equals money. this is particularly relevant for those of you thinking about end of year appeals.
Christina, welcome
CHRISTINA 0:31
It’s awesome to be back. I’m fired up and ready for this conversation. let’s do it.
RHEA 0:35
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your commitment and passion for email as a vehicle for money.
CHRISTINA 0:41
Yes. I’m my first, best customer slash guinea pig. everything we’re going to talk about today is how I built my own business. I’ve been a lifelong entrepreneur, I’ve been in this world for a really long time.
I had to build my email list. I had to build my client and customer list. We’re going to get into that today, but yeah, I’m based in Atlanta, Georgia, and I’ve been working with nonprofits and social entrepreneurs. at this point, I feel like a little bit of a Swiss army knife. we can talk about marketing.
We can talk it about online fundraising, business growth mindset, because it’s all kind of part of the mix for your organization to grow and finally get past those plateaus that we see time and time again,
RHEA 1:16
I hear people say email is dead.
What’s your response?
CHRISTINA 1:20
that’s how we all feel, right? About anything that’s not shiny and new, right? think about it. If somebody said jeans are dead actually, I spent probably six and a half out of seven days in jeans because they’re comfortable and I can dress them up or dress them down.
Jeans aren’t dead. How is it that we keep reinventing the jean so that I keep buying a new pair every single year, if not way more than one? Okay, email is not dead. In fact, it is the backbone, I believe, to a successful organization that is fully funded and growing year over year. I wanted to say online, I’m like, forget online, a successful organization, period.
It is the backbone to it in a way that social media is not. let’s talk about
RHEA 1:58
we’re out here trying to do all the things, right? I can hear my Harriet executive director. She’s like email, social media, whatever. I’m not going to do your TikTok dances. What is the relationship between social media and your email list?
CHRISTINA 2:10
when I first got in to the online course business, I have several courses now. I started with really an online fundraising influencer marketing course. it was my social media course and that’s rocket and rolling and we’re seeing amazing results. But what I noticed was I was like y’all ain’t emailing y’all are sitting on a gold mine over here and the two aren’t even friends they’re not even connected.
You’re thinking about your email as some sort of place to like clunk thank you letters once a quarter or some sort of weird long program update. And the two are not interconnected and they need to be and that’s why I built the email course. I like to think of social at the top of a funnel. So if we’re picturing like an upside down triangle, top of funnel is social.
Social is how people hear of you, That’s, we’re on our phones all day. Me too. And that is how we hear of you, but email. Email is where you want to drive people towards, from social to email, because email is where the money happens. All of the for profit businesses will tell you this. Go stop somebody who is past the million dollar mark, whether they’re an e com brand, whether they’re in any sort of brick and mortar online business.
Ask them, do you get most of your customers through social or through email? Even one of my favorite friends, she’s past the million dollar mark in her e com business, her online business. In social media, and she’s like, Christina emails where the sales happen. She uses social media to bring people to her email list.
When she runs campaigns, she runs them on email. And that’s where the revenue comes in.
RHEA 3:29
I love that so much. I always think about it. If social media is the little freebies that you get at Costco, email is where you buy the meal, email is the thing that sells it.
CHRISTINA 3:38
That’s perfect.
Yeah. It’s the little containers, the toothpick in it. That’s social and emails where you get palette of whatever was in the container.
RHEA 3:45
let’s talk about this because I just published interview with Sean about Facebook fundraisers. And I think people think that social is where you do Facebook fundraisers and so forth.
what do you mean when You’re saying that the money is raised on social,
CHRISTINA 3:57
which I love Sean. I listened to that and I was so excited. He taught me something in that interview. He said, Facebook is now giving you the email addresses. yes, finally, because that was my number one beef with that piece, what he said, and go back and listen to that.
If you haven’t is that. He talked about email almost being an advanced level to nurture all of those people who come in through the Facebook fundraisers, right? let’s say you get a hundred new donors through this Facebook fundraiser and we see a lot of churn through Facebook fundraisers, right?
Because they’re not really being nurtured. he’s right. They’re not being nurtured. you have to wait for your Aunt Debbie to do another Facebook fundraiser next December. To get 100 new people, right? When in fact, what I want you to do is I want you to use Sean’s strategy a hundred percent, and then I want you to bring them over to email and nurture the heck out of them.
in a way that’s scalable. So instead of picking up the phone, instead of writing a bunch of handwritten notes, those are amazing too. But you don’t have to do that with email. We can create automations. We can segment people out, those first 30 to 60 days. Or the honeymoon period. It is dating. If you go out on a date with somebody, they don’t call you and they don’t text you and you thought you hit it off. It sucks. Like they’re no longer top of mind. And if I make a hundred dollar donation to your organization, I don’t hear from you. That sucks. But if you can guide me over to email and start nurturing me over there, suddenly that sweet spot, that honeymoon period, it’s really important.
RHEA 5:13
I’m going to take a little detour on social media, and then I want to talk all about Nemo. But I think what I’ve seen a lot is that people get really seduced by the, vanity metrics. how many likes did I get? How many comments did I get? convince me I’m wrong.
that doesn’t mean anything
CHRISTINA 5:28
to Meaningless. And, in fact, I have an entire digital marketing course, and the way that I teach it is I tell them, onboarding, first thing I tell them, stop creating so much content. Stop it. Stop it. If you’re spending five hours a week, I actually got on the phone with somebody today, and they said they spend four hours a week with content.
I’m like, oh my god, stop. I would rather, as it pertains to your social media, go create some partners. Go create digital ambassador program, leverage the visibility which is really what a Facebook fundraiser is doing that Sean’s talking about. Go start working with influencers. And I want your actual content from your own organization to be minimal.
Why? Because 1 to 10 percent of people who follow your account are seeing it. That is a fraction. If you have a thousand followers, it’s a hundred people on your best day that’s seeing that content is not a good ROI of those five hours spent. So you need to put a little bit of content on there to keep the lights on, but go make some partnerships with influencers and ambassadors.
That’s how you grow online, by the way, that’s the ticket. And then go start running some campaigns on your email list. I’m with you all the way. Those metrics don’t really matter. The metric that matters to me are more like conversions, right? are we actually seeing people go to your website and take action?
RHEA 6:35
let’s talk about email nurture sequences, because I think a lot of people It’s like a new concept for them because a lot of times what I’ve seen is there’s a website and it’s join our newsletter and maybe I joined the newsletter, but then there’s nothing there that invites me and it’s like showing up at a house party and not knowing anyone and then having everyone ignore you.
what do we mean by an email nurture
CHRISTINA 6:54
an email nurture sequence can be three to five emails. It’s welcoming people into your front door. imagine I show up to your for the first time. I know no one. Can you introduce me to some people? Can you show me around?
I don’t even know where the kitchen is. Walk me in. And a nurture sequence does that. During that honeymoon period. instead of waiting till next quarter to get that newsletter from you, you do it during that sweet period where I actually remember the name of your organization and I’m interested.
If you’ve ever downloaded a coupon for free shipping, like I have from some random store. They put you typically through a nurture sequence. They’re like, wait, were you sure you didn’t want to look at that sweater? How about this hat? What about this? You’re getting a quick clip to welcome you in.
And I like to remind people, assume most folks are starting at zero. I don’t know about your organization. I don’t know a ton about the sector you serve. I’m interested, but don’t assume I’m on, chapter seven of the book. Assume you could start with some of the foundational pieces about the work, about your organization, about your mission, some of those things.
RHEA 7:51
Okay, let’s talk about some of the cardinal sins that I’ve seen, and I’m sure you have as well, which is, what I’ve heard is a lot of people are like, oh, but I don’t want to send out too many emails to get unsubscribed. first, let’s break that apart. What is too many? And why are unsubscribes not a problem?
CHRISTINA 8:07
Okay, I’m still yet to meet the non profit that sends too many emails. I haven’t met them yet, and I’ve met a lot of you guys. y’all haven’t hit the too many mark. I would say if you’re treating it like Twitter, like X, like live feeding emails, that’s too many. You want a quick clip in the beginning because guess what? I’m not opening all your emails. I’m not reading all of them. My kid walked into the room. I got distracted, the phone ring. I got a text message. I had my phone up now. I forgot it, right? You need to send more emails. don’t be scared to send more emails.
Don’t be scared of that unsubscribe button because I’m going to go back to the dating example. I’d rather know you’re into me or not, and I’d rather not pay to have you on my list, because it does cost money to have your CRM keep a bunch of leads, a bunch of subscribers in your world. And if they’re either not opening your emails or just not that into you, so they’re not even caring, then you actually want them to unsubscribe.
People really micro focus on that. And again, we’re gonna use round numbers, a thousand people. And let’s say you have three people unsubscribe in that email. That’s fine. not a problem. Nothing’s gone wrong. I rarely find an organization that’s having just globs of unsubscribers to where that would be an issue worth looking at.
RHEA 9:12
Okay. But here, let me ask know if it’s a problem of, they’re just not that into me and that’s fine. Say crappy content that people
CHRISTINA 9:19
don’t want to read. I would actually say most times it’s crappy content people don’t want to read.
That’s my tough love is most of the time what I’m seeing in the industry are these long form newsletters that are like newspapers. and they’re boring it has an ominous. Entity that is the voice. I’m not connected with it, it’s not interesting, that’s why I’m deleting it or sticking it into my I’m never gonna read folder.
It’s typically that, versus wow, you’ve said something really controversial or you’ve said something that I really don’t agree with and now I’m hitting the unsubscribe. Rarely is it that. You’ll know if you’re, in that camp because you’re gonna get replies from people who say how dare you write about that thing, I disagree.
Most likely It’s more of a content issue.
RHEA 10:00
Okay. Let’s talk about this because this is my pet peeve with most nonprofits. And look, y’all know, I love you, but real talk. It is really boring and they’re long form and actually go back. Cause there’s something you said that I want to hit What is the right amount, right?
think that may differ, My opinion once a month is too few, once a week feels about right. Once a quarter is I’ve forgotten your name. what’s the right cadence in your opinion?
CHRISTINA 10:23
That’s right. you’re right on track. once a month used to be me pushing people on their frequency.
Now I’m like, no, that’s not even enough. Once a month is not enough. At minimum, every other week. A nice cadence is once a week. And I want to give you the caveat. If you are running a campaign, meaning a fundraiser, More than once a week, which usually makes people feel sweaty if it’s not giving Tuesday.
Let’s say you have a campaign in April and it lasts a week long. I want to see a lot more emails that week, which most people get very uncomfortable with. But again it tracks the more emails you send, the more money you make. The two go hand in hand.
RHEA 10:56
let’s talk about the right combination versus promotion, right?
the other mistake I see is that. Nonprofits ramp up the emailing when there’s masks, but they haven’t actually warmed up the audience. So again, that’s jumping into a party and asking people to marry you talk to us about how do we think about the warm up period before we do a solicitation?
CHRISTINA 11:15
this may be a little different from what you hear, but in general, I think we are a distracted world. we have a lot of people, and Gen Z, who, when they find a cause that they care about, they want to donate yesterday. They want to get involved yesterday. And if you are nurturing too long, you’re missing it.
I actually think if I think of a sales funnel, I think there are some people who want to fast track through that. funnel, I want to help now. And if you’re just staying in that 80 20 rule of I got to nurture, I got to nurture, then you’re missing those people. I actually am fine with you having quite a few soft calls to action in your nurture emails.
And then in general, yeah, you should ramp up in your more campaign specific emails. But a good welcome will handle the, that who the heck are you? Why should I care piece? And is what you do valuable? Does it work? It should answer those questions so that when you write your update on a Tuesday and you have maybe a story about a Zoom call that you want to share that really stuck with you.
Or maybe you picked your daughter up from school a little early and you want to loop that into something that happened to you, that you can have a PS in there. You can have a call to action that’s Hey, I’ve been working on this monthly giving program launch. Take a look at the page. What do you think?
you can weave in we are fundraising without being all hands on deck fundraiser. I want both.
RHEA 12:28
Okay. Let’s talk about content and personality because I find maybe it’s me most nonprofit newsletters emails they get are completely devoid of personality. There’s no strong brand.
There’s no strong brand voice. how do we get over our fear of having a strong brand voice, a strong brand personality?
CHRISTINA 12:46
We could take a whole episode on this, but essentially one, you’ve got to be willing to not get approval from everyone. Meaning I had organizations go through my course and it’s normally we send all of our drafts of our emails to our board members and it’s stop it.
No, no, no, no, No. that’s the first thing is you can’t be in like approval city on your content. You need to be clear on your voice. a good brand voice will help you with that piece. You’ve got to be willing to say things that are true. That means that some people may not agree with it.
That means that some people you need to use words that are words you would use and not everybody would use. It’s what’s relatable in your life right now versus an ominous brand that, has no actual human feelings, right? I want a little peek behind the scenes.
I want to peek behind the curtain. It doesn’t have to be this Super duper vulnerable. it doesn’t have to be that, but it can loop into what are you working on? What’s going on? What is life look like in the organization? That’s much more interesting than these long form kind of sterile pieces that we typically see in our sector.
And when I built my course, it was really hard I wanted to use lots of examples and I had to pull from the for profit sector because I was like, y’all, This is not good.
RHEA 13:56
think we definitely need to up our game here, but the other thing I see is such a cardinal sin, in my opinion, is they’re too long and they’re too jargony.
And I’m like, first of all, if it’s not scannable, I’m not reading it. Secondly, almost insecurity of need to reaffirm that we are competent and smart and we’re going to use big words. You’ve lost me. If you are writing at above a, third Everyone says, it’s I don’t want to dumb it down. I don’t want to talk down to my audience. This is not dumbing it down. This is making it accessible.
CHRISTINA 14:23
I couldn’t wait to graduate from college. I couldn’t wait to get out of the classroom. I don’t want to read an email that sounds like I’m being lectured to. And when we’re formal, that’s what it sounds like. When we’re talking to each other as we are right now, it’s much more conversational.
It’s much more approachable and relatable. My son is actually in third grade. So he’s the perfect example of this in real life. I was observing his last baseball season. They lost a game and I was listening to his coaches try and give this just muddled, inspirational speech to the team. it was full of cliches and isms and things. I could see the kids, they had no idea what he was talking about. It was get out there and put your best foot forward. They’re like, put my foot forward. what? say what you mean talk like we’d all understand. And it’s a good reminder in your emails too.
And that means not necessarily that you’re using generic language, but that you’re using words that you would use. if you get stuck and you’re like, is this too formal? Pretend like you’re talking to a friend or actually say it out loud. That can be very helpful in writing. If I read it out loud, I’m like, I wouldn’t say it like that.
Then I’ll actually go back and rewrite.
RHEA 15:24
Let’s say I’m listening to you. I’m maybe an ED or a DOD. I’m like, yes, Christina, I totally agree with you. We need to up the volume. What do I write about?
CHRISTINA 15:34
The best news I have for you is those long monthly newsletters are just going to chop them up now.
instead of give me 22 program updates and a blog post and a letter from the ED and the blah, blah, blah, and the upcoming event. Stop it. And you can actually parse those out into different content pieces. Some of them probably don’t need to be emails at all. I want to really inspire you to find, for those of you that have larger teams, even just a team of two or three, who’s maybe the person on the team that does like to tell stories, that does like to write.
And they don’t have to be the ED. I actually want to hear from the comms person. I want to hear from the intern. I want to hear from the program staffer. let them have a Tuesday, once a month that they do a spotlight. I have some organizations where the ED has really leaned into finding their unique vision and they actually went back to their why 20 years later, they wrote a story a few months ago about why they founded the organization and what’s next.
And all of these people had no idea. It was so fun to tell that story. So almost like your entrepreneur story. Or you can have, our comms person who’s really more of this is her zone and the ED is out there fundraising and doing the more operations thing.
let them take the driver’s seat too. Whether or not you have somebody on the staff, that’s I like writing, I’ll go for it. Or we would just want to do more kind of bite sized updates and pieces in the stories.
RHEA 16:47
Okay, a couple of things I just want to talk about.
subject lines are often an afterthought, but they should actually be the first thing. Was it David Ogilvie who said that if you have, what was it, a dollar, he would spend 80 cents of it on the
CHRISTINA 16:58
headline. subject lines. are everything.
They’re everything to, if you think about social media, that it’s that first line on a social post. That’s your hook. Your subject line is the same thing. It’s your hook. It’s, is this interesting to me? a lot of times what I see in our industry is I see subject lines that sound like fall news. blah, blah, blah, program update, or your invite to event, or event tickets now, and what we want to do instead is we want to create subject lines that spark curiosity, interest all we want that subject line to do is maybe give me a tiny appetizer of what’s inside, or curiosity to open it.
That’s it. you don’t need to give me a super long subject line, we just want to make me take the next step instead of not reading or deleting that I’m going to open it.
RHEA 17:41
And for those out there quick tip I’ve used a chat GPT to create really compelling headlines, right? GPT knows a lot of stuff.
He doesn’t want to know about what works out there
CHRISTINA 17:51
in the world. Chat GPT is my Assistant. this is coming from somebody who, I have a regular assistant, but is my writing assistant. Even though my writing sounds like me, I promise you, but if I’m stuck on the end of a sentence or I know I’m close to a great subject line or a headline for something, I throw it in chat GPT and I ask it for 10 other options and I’m like, you run with this.
It’s so helpful. A hundred percent.
RHEA 18:13
Yeah, totally. Okay, couple more questions. I haven’t. We have some folks in the audience who have questions. What metrics should we be tracking? Because I think we can also get a little OCD about our open rates, which I put through rates what are the things that we should be paying attention to as we’re building our email list?
CHRISTINA 18:28
this is a little bit more nuanced because the first thing I want you to pay attention to is to write way more emails and list build write emails that you would be excited to read. It’s almost like content first before you go super crazy into the metrics. Number one, don’t sweat the unsubscribes.
I promise you don’t sweat it. You will get unsubscribes if you’re doing it right on every single email. I do. It’s okay. don’t sweat that open rate is Worth noting iOS privacy changes have made that a little bit more unreliable. I do like to see an open rate over 40 percent or at least 35%.
That’s what all of our students have. I like to see that click through rate matters. But my favorite rate is your reply rate. So meaning it. You send an email to 10, 000 people, just a regular old e blast, how many replies are you getting? And I don’t mean the out of office responders, real life human replies.
Because that’s what we see with my students, is actual reply emails. And my favorite ones are the reply emails that turn into major gift meetings, because a great Email strategy can literally go to, Ooh, we need to meet. Wow, I didn’t know you were doing that. Oh, tell me more about blah, blah, blah, right?
It literally can turn into beating. your reply rate’s really important and you can prompt people to actually reply to you in your content.
RHEA 19:38
What do you do if our open rates are not where we want it to be, if we’re below the 40%?
CHRISTINA 19:42
Start with your subject lines. want to do a little bit of triaging as far as is your database super cold, meaning do you have just a huge chunk of people, maybe you’ve been emailing quarterly and there’s just a lot of inactive subscribers that you maybe need to put through a bye bye series or an engagement series.
it could be a couple of different things. Are your email subject lines boring and we just need to turn up the volume. There’s a couple of different ways we can do it there. if it were me, I’d run people through a short term re engagement series, and then I would clean the list, and then I’d bring my email subject line up to more interesting, and you’d start to see that improve.
RHEA 20:21
I can feel people sweating right now, which like, what? Take people
CHRISTINA 20:24
Off my list? I know. But again, you’re paying for them. Any CRMs charging you per lead, right? So you’re paying for those subscribers. You want to export, you can back it up. You can do some fun things with Facebook ads later with that list.
they’re usable, they’re useful. Those people can always come back. think about all your exes. Do you want your, all your exes on the couch who don’t want to hang out in the room with you? They’re not reading your content. You’re like, it’s okay. You can say goodbye to those people and welcome in a lot more of the new right people.
RHEA 20:50
do you recommend doing a list cleaning?
CHRISTINA 20:53
[00:20:53] Christina Edwards: I used to say once a year or once every six months to calendar it in. That changed. If you go through and follow what I’m teaching and what you’ve basically said to in your frequency, you’re doing natural list cleaning year round.
Why? Because you’re sharing content regularly, you’re sharing it frequently, either once a week or once every two weeks, and you’re running campaigns where you have even more content in those campaigns. people are naturally going to hop on and hop off that way. If you saw a decline in maybe your open rates or something like that, you could do a true list cleaning sequence.
I’d say once a year.
RHEA 21:25
Kind of a technical question, but I know one of the things that trips up people a lot is that their emails end up in spam. or are flagged as unread. What would you recommend to keep people’s Email in the inbox versus going to spam and actually side note, one of my board members was like, your emails are going to spam.
Can you fix that? And I was like, listen, if I could fix that, I would be making a lot more money than I have now.
CHRISTINA 21:46
I don’t think there’s a whole lot you can do on your end, other than being careful with your subject line and even maybe your preview text too, of like spammy words and emojis. even I’m careful on using the word Free, sale, like some of the words that may be naturally spammy words.
I will use them occasionally, but just to make sure go look at your spam folder after this and see what’s the trend. Sometimes it’s a bunch of emojis, things like that, so I would be mindful of that. That is why click throughs and replies matter. Because then that subscriber is telling their own CRM their Gmail, their Outlook, whatever.
Hey, I care about this person, I care about this organization. I want their mail. And then if you saw a whole group of them, you could certainly email them and say, Hey, we’ve noticed, and you could do this in a list cleaning series. You may or may not be receiving our email. Our CRM will tell us, right?
Can you hit reply or can you click this link to let us know you’d like to stay on this list? Or can you primary inbox us? You can ask for those things and just say help me help you thing. there’s not one sure fit way, but those are some ways to get started.
RHEA 22:50
A couple of things that I was thinking about as we were talking, and this is just something that I feel like blows people’s minds.
I’m not sure why is. When I’m creating content as a nonprofit, I have to be thinking about what value am I creating for my reader, and I think sometimes we don’t think about that because we think we’re in this extracted mode of I need to get something from them versus what am I giving to them?
what are the kinds of things that we can give to our reader? What’s your value you can create
CHRISTINA 23:14
for them? At the time we’re recording this The news is heavy, And when I get an email from a non profit that is celebrating a win, no matter how small, that makes my day brighter.
if you sent me five sentences, a short email that was sharing a win, maybe for a client, right? Or something like that. Somebody who went through one of your programs, that would brighten my day. You might think of that as a testimonial, but really honing in on what does a win look like?
And even the small wins. And then even identifying, this may sound like a small win, but it’s a huge win and here’s why. That would brighten my day.
RHEA 23:45
I know everyone out here is thinking about their end of year, right? Is there a recommended number of emails that you would suggest as a sweet spot for the end of year?
Is there a particular schedule? We all know that last week of December is a hot time. from my perspective, I was always a little unclear about. Too early versus too late. it feels like October is a little too early, but then November, you’re in the thick of it.
What would your recommendation be?
CHRISTINA 24:08
I would say give yourself the grace that to your point, there is no exact right answer. last year I ran a Black Friday sale and the one lesson I learned from that sale was run it the week before, Christina. Run it the week before. Don’t actually do the Black Friday sale the week of Black Friday, I think that everybody and even your audience’s preferences change. What was their preference last year might not be their preference this year. come up with a plan, be willing to add in, couple of extra emails, maybe in December, if things are not quite going your way, go and check your open rates.
If we see a decline, maybe we want to add a couple emails, switch out the subject lines, things like that. I like to see a pregame. I do like to see you warm up and start seating those people like, Hey, something’s coming right. Start to talk about that. That pregame should be three emails, something like that.
And then depending on your campaign, I have clients that are running. Month long campaigns, others that are doing short little campaigns. that depends on your frequency for sure, too. that last week, especially those last three days matter. Much like Giving Tuesday, there’s two camps. There’s people who are like, it’s so noisy, it’s so hard to get anything on Giving Tuesday, or the last few days of the year, it’s too many.
Don’t do that. Don’t subscribe to that. Get in the arena. Send lots of emails. I took a screenshot last year because it was cracking me up all of the emails the last week of December. 20 different organizations. They all had the same three versions of the same subject line.
And I was like, you guys, it was three days left, think about what’s your flavor, what is within your brand voice, what’s interesting, unique, right? That would make me want to open your email versus the other 20.
Now, granted most individual donors are probably not getting 20 different emails like I am, but think about how are some, ways that I can stand out in inboxes that’s different from our sector.
RHEA 25:48
This is the stance I’m giving Tuesday, because I feel there are two camps.
One is that you got to do it because everyone’s doing it. And then there’s the, I’m not going to do it because everyone’s doing it.
CHRISTINA 25:57
I’m standing in the get in the damn arena camp for sure, but do it your way, break some rules.
get in the arena, everybody’s doing it, you need to do it too, okay? But I want you to do it differently, I want you to do it in a way you don’t feel like where’s Waldo among a sea of red and white striped shirts. For me, I like to stretch out Giving Tuesday for my clients. I like their Giving Tuesdays to be more than one day.
I like the actual Giving Tuesday to be just all hands on deck, big day, but to stretch out the campaign for sure. go secure a donor match. It is important. I also think about who gives on Giving Tuesday, I am not the makeup of somebody who gives on Giving Tuesday because I give like all the damn time.
I think about maybe my neighbor across the street where they’re like, Oh, giving Tuesday. What a fun day. That’s their day. That’s their Superbowl. get into their Superbowl. If you sit it out, then they missed it, right? There is a huge group of people that only give, I think it’s 63%, only give on Giving Tuesday.
So speak to them on Giving Tuesday. And then all the other days of the year, we can speak to other people. it’s a different audience to get in front of. It’s not the people who are thinking about your organization year round. It’s like a new, fresh audience.
RHEA 27:02
Okay to your point about Giving Tuesday and the people for whom this is their thing, what are some basic ways that we can segment our list?
when I talk about segmentation, I get the deer in the headlights
CHRISTINA 27:12
I do too. some really simple ways would be if you could pull a list and say who are the people who gave the last three Giving Tuesdays and come up with them and call them a segment.
Meaning in the last three years, these are the folks that gave on Giving Tuesday. Boy, do you need to email them. That’s a segment that’s really important. Now you’ve got maybe your wider audience that hasn’t, I would send them some emails, but not as many as the Superbowl people.
That’s their day. Also want to maybe pull out or mark in that segment some of those major donors that maybe this isn’t their day, right? So you want to focus on them for some more higher dollar asks, or maybe you’re going to reach out to them to become a matching gift. that’s a good place to start is who are the people who have given before?
And make sure you have them tagged and segmented too. They’re the people who should get the most emails. They’re the people who should become peer fundraisers, perhaps. Those are the people who are most excited about the day. The
RHEA 28:02
thing I just want to add, I know I’m a broken record, but I’m just going to say it again
You need to also tell people what you did with their money. I think our retention rate is like 40%, which is terrible. a big part of it is that we don’t send that next email
CHRISTINA 28:15
last year, one of my clients, they stretched out their Giving Tuesday campaign for a week. I can’t remember, something happened. It took them off the eight ball of that, Of the thank you. That’s okay. And what I said to them was, Send it this week. They sent that thank you email about 14 days after the campaign ended.
So about two weeks. And guess what happened? We sent the thank you email and they said, here’s what we did with your money. Here’s the latest. they had a big goal that year to double the previous goal. And they came in close, but fell a little short. And guess what happened after they sent that email?
Boom. More donations. not only did they thank their donors, but all the people like me who are competitive are like, I want to help them make that goal showed up. and actually, he said, but they had people respond to go, Oh, we missed it. We totally missed it.
Where can we donate? there is no rule. Oh it’s too late. Oh I missed it. Yes. There’s best practices. And then there’s real life where maybe you send it two weeks later, but close that loop exactly of what you did with the money.
RHEA 29:06
And I also just want to underscore here that the automated receipt is not sufficient.
No! They’re like, oh, but it’s automated. that’s not a thank you.
CHRISTINA 29:14
Oh yes. Thank you for saying that. No. the email is from a human to a human with feelings and a story and emotion and a total amount raised. And it feels exciting.
It feels like you and I talking on the phone. It should feel like that.
RHEA 29:26
I’m curious about how you would recommend using video because I’ve started to get a couple of emails with a little video click, which seems really nice, but wondering.
CHRISTINA 29:34
if you’re into video, video is an amazing way to show gratitude to, and you could do it at scale by doing a more generic video where you’re like, oh my gosh, thank you guys so much.
Here’s what we’ve done. I’ve had EDS. I’ve had other staff members do something like that. And it’s worked really well. You can also do personalized videos where you call out the person’s name in it. I have a camp of students who are Paralyzed by video and it feels too hard and I don’t want them to even consider it.
I just want them to get that email out there or maybe some other social posts. you get to do the version that works best for you and your team. But if you’re comfortable with what I would call the talking head video, just first person you to the camera Loom is great for that. Your iPhone’s great for that.
There’s lots of options. Okay,
RHEA 30:15
we have time for one last question. Shea has a question about email marketing platforms, Shey.
SHAY 30:21
Hi, I find that everyone is always looking for the new, best, most efficient and UI friendly email platform and I was just wondering if you have any opinions or how we can best figure out which platform would serve us the best.
CHRISTINA 30:23
I’m so glad you asked this question because we did not cover it and I do have a strong stance on it.
Okay, you’re right. Everybody is, and I think this speaks to the beginning part of the conversation, which is, but email’s so boring and old and blah, and it’s yeah, we are constantly, even when it comes to email, what’s the best tool to use? What’s the newest, most innovative, most tech friendly tool?
I will tell you, because we were talking about spam and deliverability, the best emails are the most basic ones. I always say, if it looks like a vanity fair article, it’s too designed. It should look like plain text. You can drop in, a button photo or a single video, but it shouldn’t look like a graphic designer did it.
So for that reason, I love convert kit. Convert kit is my go to. It’s what a lot of online business owners use. It’s very affordable. Other reason why I like it is. The deliverability and also for the automation. So we talked a little bit about automations and segments, and I find it’s pretty easy to use and pretty easy as a visual learner for me to understand of what’s going where and what’s triggering.
So if somebody joins your email list, they can go through that email welcome series pretty easy. So I like convert kit for that, everybody has their favorite. And a lot of people say my CRM connects with this one, then use that one. Whether it’s MailChimp, constant contact, we see a lot, totally fine.
I’m not as much a fan of the flow desks and that of the world because they’re so designy. And even my own eye is getting distracted by the graphics and this and that and the flashy things that I’m missing the actual content and the story that you’re trying to tell. Oh,
RHEA 31:59
such a good point. And actually, what I would say too is for anyone out there, you actually do need an email platform, Sending emails out from your personal email, you don’t get any data. I have a question coming in from Jessica. Email analytics, if you’re not using an email platform. The answer is you should be using an email platform because they’re quite affordable. without it, you’re flying blind.
CHRISTINA 32:18
And is.
An asset. Your email list is an asset in the way that your social media followers are not. I’ve had too many influencers and too many thought leaders and friends who have lost their hundred plus thousand Instagram accounts and just been locked out and that’s it. And that’s the end. That was where their audience was instead of building them on an asset that you can export and back up into a CSV file which you can do with your email list.
So your email list is as you pitch corporate sponsors, as you pitch some of those higher level folks, your email list is an asset. 100 percent go get you an email marketing platform, very
RHEA 32:52
affordable. They’re very affordable. question coming in and saying, do I think a single person organization should be using an email marketing platform?
You are a single person business and you need it. That’s right. Yeah. Unless you think the numbers aren’t important to you, in which case then I guess don’t use an email platform.
CHRISTINA 33:06
this is why I hear I don’t have enough time because you’re sending what BCC emails or individual emails, you want to build a business and organization that is scalable and it starts with taking your first 50 subscribers, your first 25 subscribers and sticking them on an email marketing tool platform.
Yes, do it.
RHEA 33:22
And we live in a beautiful world of technology where this is all possible for very little money. That’s right.
Christina, anything that we have not covered that you think is important for folks to know as they head into end of year and they’re thinking about their email?
CHRISTINA 33:34
lEt me see here.
We’ve covered a ton of ground. I think the first thing I would do is just give yourself permission for it to not be perfect. When I first built the course, that was one of the things I just didn’t realize was a sticky point for a lot of people. And then I remembered, Oh yeah, it was. Sticky point for me, too.
what I mean is we get a lot of emails that are stuck in draft mode, or we get a lot of emails that you’ve written, but you just want your colleague to look at it, your board member to look at it. You’ve got to just have a process. I spell check it. I run it through Grammarly and then I go do not ask for a bunch of feedback and a bunch of opinions, right?
You want to make sure that your voice, your story is getting out there. Horse that it’s in line with, the integrity of your organization, but don’t ask for a bunch of feedback because that’s when we get in that perfectionist loop. nOt only that
RHEA 34:16
you get into the board, Because if everyone has an opinion, you know what they say about everyone. That’s right. That’s right. It tends to be board members who want to water down the personality. Yeah. They’re offending. They’re afraid of, liability, you have to claim an edge.
Otherwise, you are boring. I had Mitch on the podcast who talked about Pink Sherbert. we should all try to be like Pink Sherbert. Some people hate Pink Sherbert. Other people love Pink Sherbert. There are very few people in between. So be Pink Sherbert and not Randall.
CHRISTINA 34:44
And think about it, you’re reading the pink Sherbert emails. Those are the ones you look forward to the most, just from the consumer side, right? that’s a hundred percent true. It’s like the ones that have a little, an edge, a little something, a little sass in it, like that’s what’s speaking to you.
And that’s what we want to from your organization.
RHEA 34:59
Fabulous. All right, Christina, Frank, I need to make sure to put your information in the show notes. Is there anything else that we didn’t cover that you feel like we
CHRISTINA 35:07
should? Yeah, come hang out with me if you’re curious about the course, I have a free webinar all about email, so you can go to splendidcourses.
com forward slash email to go find out more about
RHEA 35:17
that. And we will make sure to put that in the show notes for folks who want to hang with you, but you know what, folks, you heard it here, Christina says it, I say it, focus on your email list as an asset.
CHRISTINA 35:26
You don’t have to go dance on a bunch of TikToks, that’s the best news ever, we promise.
RHEA 35:31
I’m too old for that. Alright friends, thanks so much, and everyone, happy end of year. If you enjoyed this, please like, share, and comment on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Have a good day. Thank you, Christina. Thank you.
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