Insights
It seems that finding a solution to bridge the gap of not ’keeping in touch’, ’keeping email recipients up to date’ or ’sending an immediate response’ is high on the priority list for most organisations in the non-for profit sector. That is why charities who are looking for different ways to communicate with their clients, supporters, donors and volunteers are quickly embracing automated email marketing. Here are five great examples of automated programmes to give you a glimpse into the wonderful world of email automation.
You can’t just barge in there and ask for a donation upfront from new supporters - you need to establish a relationship with them first. When potential a new donor is automatically added to your list, you need to roll out the red carpet with a friendly and personalised welcome email, then follow it on with an email not asking for a donation but rather just giving them a snippet of insightful information about your organisation. Analyse if they are engaging with you by opening up your emails or clicking on the links, then send them a powerful message with a success story and a donation link telling them how they can contribute and meet your goal. If they have chosen not to make a donation, keep them in the original journey and re-engage with them a few weeks later to show how much their support is vital to your cause. If they donate, send them down a different journey that thanks them for their donation with personalisation included, to show you are aware and appreciative of their monetary support. Retention is the key to further repeated donations so you’ll use the automation programme to maintain the relationship by sending them a newsletter and/or a preference email.
We all know that volunteers are valuable assets. Volunteers need to feel that their valuable time and effort isn’t in vain but rather is recognised and appreciated. So, what better than to keep your volunteers feeling special by using automated programmes. When recruiting volunteers, it is essential that they are clear about their roles and your expectations of them, so sending them a series of emails once a volunteer signs up is a great way provide them with information and to keep re-engaging with them. First of all, you can send them out a very special introductory email welcoming them into the organisation and thanking them for choosing to volunteer with you, then a series of emails over the next few weeks informing the volunteers of their roles, your charities mission and set up, how you achieve your goals, what is expected, training offered and more.
Use automation programmes to guide your email audience into giving consent, and to keep your emails targeted for each particular request. You can easily set up privacy preference centres via forms or survey tools, which collect your supporter’s preferences for the communications they wish to receive. These preferences are automatically fed into automated programmes which trigger off emails according to the preferences they have set. The preferences are recorded on data fields and consequently stored in unique address books that relate to the particular email communication.
Analyse your email opens, and show eagerness to learn about your email recipient’s choices and interests by triggering emails based on their behaviour. A great example of this is the organisation of a fundraising event, such as a mini marathon. You can bring your sign ups into an automated journey via a sign-up form on your website and send them out a series of emails following on your triggered thank you email. Send them specific information about health, how to fundraise, how to train or nutrition, for example, when they click on certain links. Plus, no more stressing about remembering to send timely emails. Instead, you can automatically remind them of the event details, build excitement with a countdown and wish them good luck and congratulate them when they have finished - all in one automated journey.
If you haven’t had a donation, response or even an email open from an email recipient in a while, use your automation to trigger a series of short emails to remind them that you would love to hear from them again and how much you value them helping your organisation to achieve its mission and change lives for the better. Personalise your emails within your automated journey to be more targeted and show your audience that you haven’t forgotten about them and how important they are to you.
Join us on the 11th of April for our webinar with Dell we will explore how AI is already impacting people and communities, the meanings of AI safety and AI literacy, and how charitable organisations can take action on digital and AI inclusion.