Did you know over 16% of emails from nonprofits either go to spam or don’t get delivered at all? Meaning many of you still aren’t maintaining healthy email lists even though we’ve been talking about this for several years now. Your email list needs to be ready for year-end fundraising which, believe it or not, is right around the corner!

A clean email list is essential for making it through the more rigorous filters inbox providers put up to handle the influx of holiday messaging.

Here are 6 things you should do NOW to have your email list ready for a successful year-end email campaign:

1. Try to re-engage lapsed subscribers.

• 6 Messaging Options for Email Re-Engagement Campaigns
• We Are Running an Email Re-Engagement Campaign and People Have Feelings
• We Want You Back! How to Re-Engage Inactive Email Supporters

2. Delete or suppress those who haven’t engaged in AT LEAST 90 days.

• Is a Bigger Email List Always Better? Nope.
• Why Deleting People from Your Email List is a Good Thing
• When to Stop Snail Mailing and Emailing People, Part I
• Should You Contact People Who Unsubscribed from Your Email List?

3. Run some list building campaigns to get new subscribers.

• Nonprofits Should Try Some New Email List Building Techniques
• 3 Email List Building Pop-Ups for Your Website

4. Think of different ways to segment your list.

• Powerful Segmentation Ideas for Year-End Online Fundraising Campaigns
• You Need to Fix Your All or Nothing Email List

5. Create (or freshen up) your welcome series.

• Email Welcome Series Best Practices
• Do You Have an Email Welcome Series for New Subscribers? Probably Not

6. Test your automation processes

Create test email accounts from various inbox providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Apple, etc) to check the subscription/unsubscribe process works like it’s supposed to and to make sure your emails are getting through and look right.

I know it’s September, but taking the time to get your email list ready now will make life so much easier in a few months!

Need more help? We have resources and discussions happening in our private community right now! Not a member of our community? Join now! It’s free.

Knowing who you are talking to in your communications—who your target audience or personas are—is an essential part of any marketing strategy, even a “quick and dirty” one sketched out on a napkin.

But it’s hard to build personas customized to your nonprofit if you don’t have solid information on exactly who is on your mailing list.

That’s where research into universal and basic human values can help. The Schwartz Theory of Basic Human Values is a universal, cross-cultural model that outlines ten broad values that steer human behavior:

• Universalism
• Benevolence
• Tradition
• Conformity
• Security
• Power
• Achievement
• Pleasure (or Hedonism)
• Stimulation
• Self-Direction 

If you dive into the research, you’ll find a tremendous amount of details, including what each of the ten values really means in terms of people’s motivations and decision-making.

To simplify this model for you so you can use it to inform your thinking about your target audiences or personas for your nonprofit, we’ve condensed the ten values into what we call the Four Values-Based Persona Groups:

• The Helpers
• The Keepers
• The Captains
• The Artisans

Now, let’s examine more closely how you can hone your messaging for each persona group and which brand archetypes naturally connect best. Remember, each value persona has defining goals and motivations. Do your calls to action and messaging match these values? 

The Helpers

The Helpers embody the values of Universalism and/or Benevolence in Schwartz’s theory. They are socially focused and concerned about the effects on others. They have a growth mindset, and therefore are interested in “gain” goals or desires. In the nonprofit sector, desire can look like hope, dreams, comfort, and anything we want to provide for others. 

Speak to the Helpers with messaging that appeals to their understanding and appreciation of others. That could be the support, love, and protection of all of humanity and nature. Or it could be the welfare of their specific communities of interest (their “in-group”).

The Helpers are the natural target audience for the Caregiver, Everyperson, and Lover brand archetypes for nonprofits. They can also work for the Innocent, Creator, and Jester archetypes. 

The Keepers

In Schwartz’s theory, the Keepers embody the values of Tradition, Conformity, and Security. Like the Helpers, they are socially minded and concerned about the effects of their actions on others. But they are motivated by “loss” goals or fears rather than gain goals/desires like the Helpers. They want to prevent losses. That can look like defending people against anguish or injustice and preserving what they hold most dear. 

Nonprofit language about fighting or stopping things from happening appeals to the Keepers. Communicate with them in a way that appeals to their desire for stability, discipline, moderation, loyalty, responsibility, respect, health, and/or humility. 

The Keepers are the natural target audience for the Innocent and Hero brand archetypes for nonprofits. They can also work for the Everyperson, Ruler, Caregiver, and Sage archetypes. 

The Keepers’ core value is Conservation.

The Captains

The Captains embody the values of Achievement and Power in Schwartz’s theory. Like the Keepers, they are motivated by the prevention of loss and self-protection against threats. But unlike the Keepers and the Helpers, they are more motivated by a focus on themselves and their own self-expression, rather than by the effect of their actions on others. 

Your messaging to Captains must answer what’s in it for them. Appeal to their interest in success, influence, performance, prestige, ambition, authority, and/or control. 

The Captains are the natural target audience for the Sage and Ruler brand archetypes for nonprofits. They can also work for the Explorer, Outlaw, Magician, and Hero archetypes. 

The Captains’ core value is Self-Enhancement.

The Artisans

The Artisans are the fourth and final persona. They embody the values of Self-Direction, Stimulation, and Pleasure in Schwartz’s theory. Like the Captains, they are motivated by a focus on self and self-expression. But like the Helpers (and unlike the Keepers and Captains) they are motivated by gain goals and desires, rather than loss or fear. They are the persona most open to growth and change.

Speak to the Artisans with messaging that appeals to their independence, curiosity, creativity, freedom, exploration, excitement, pleasure-seeking, and/or enjoyment of life. 

The Artisans are a natural fit for the Creator, Explorer, Outlaw, Magician, and Jester brand archetypes for nonprofits. They can also work for the Lover archetype.  

The Artisans’ core value is Openness to Change. 

Look Beyond the Helpers!

It’s natural to assume that everyone who supports a nonprofit is a Helper. They care about and want to support others. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Helpers are always the best personas to speak to! While it’s likely that most nonprofit supporters do share some of the values that define the Helpers, they may, in fact, be driven more strongly by some of the other values on the list. 

Think about organizations that support competition, like those related to sports or achievement awards. Their supporters are likely to lean into Achievement or even Power values, which means they are Captains. 

What about modern art, or activism for big social changes, or wildly creative approaches to solving problems?  These are likely attractive to people who embrace Stimulation or Pleasure values and are welcoming of change — those are the Artisans.  

Artisan values oppose those who favor Tradition, Conformity, or Security — we call them the Keepers. The Keepers are great value matches for many religious and historical/heritage nonprofits. But they could also work for organizations fighting to protect the erosion of current rights (think abortion rights, gay marriage, environmental protection). 

What’s important to remember here is that the more you can limit your organization to one archetype and your target audiences to one values-based persona group, the better off you will be. 

Kristina and I are about to make one of those big switches that all nonprofit communicators will likely make at some point in their careers: moving an email list to a new email service provider. That means we will need to warm up a new IP address and rebuild our sender reputation.

Shaky on the vocabulary? Email service providers (ESP) include companies like MailChimp, Constant Contact, ActiveCampaign, etc. Those companies use their own specific IP addresses to send email on your behalf (it’s like a return address). So, when you change the IP address you send from by moving your mailing list from one ESP to another, everyone wants to make sure you are legitimate and not a spammer.  This includes the company you are now using to send, the inbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc., as well as all the different “spam monitor/blacklist” companies in between.

In our case, we are leaving Keap/Infusionsoft and moving to ActiveCampaign.  We’ll share what we learn along this journey as we use the new tools, especially since many nonprofits use ActiveCampaign too. We also hope to take advantage of new features like dynamic content fairly quickly.

Only Take the Most Engaged with You When You Move Your Email List

One of the first tasks in this process is deciding which records to move and which to leave behind. We are moving only the most engaged records, about a third of our current database. We haven’t mailed to that full list in a very long time, so only moving the most engaged is a really nice bit of spring cleaning!

But next comes the part that is a little nerve-wracking: warming up our new IP address so our emails reach their destination. Anytime you start sending emails to thousands of email addresses with a new company, the various companies involved want to ensure you aren’t a spammer.  The move from your old ESP to your new ESP means you are also moving from one sending IP address to another, so you have to rebuild your sender reputation on the new IP address.

The same holds for using a new domain name. Let’s say you’ve rebranded and changed your website domain and, therefore, your email addresses. You need to warm up that domain, too. Thankfully, we’ve been sending from NonprofitMarketingGuide.com for a long time, so we are good there.

How to Warm Up a New IP Address

Rather than sending to everyone on the list at your normal pace, you must warm up the new IP address. Here is some of the advice from ActiveCampaign that we are working through and how we are thinking about it.

1. Only Send to Engaged Contacts

We are currently scouring our list in several different ways to ensure we are only bringing over people who regularly open emails. At the same time, we also need to ensure we are bringing over people who have paid for services like our All-Access Pass even if they haven’t been opening emails. While we will still transfer those names over, we will tag them and treat them differently. More on that below . . .

2.  Ease into Sending on the New IP Address

Inbox providers only want to accept so many emails per day from a new sender, so we really have to ease into it. ActiveCampaign has asked us by day of the week, week of the month, etc., what we typically send so they can help us create a plan for how many emails to send each day during our two-week warm-up period.

We are still awaiting their specific recommendations, but some plans encourage sending just 50 emails on the first day (one email to just 50 email addresses) and 100 on the second. From there, the number grows exponentially, so you can send thousands by the end of the week and tens of thousands by the end of the second week.

3. Create a Day-by-Day Plan for Your Nonprofit Email List

Since you can’t just send an email to everyone all at once, you’ll need a plan to ensure everyone does get your content eventually. Take a newsletter for example. You might need to send that content out over four or five days depending on the size of your list. So you’ll need to keep track of who got it each day of the week.

4. Make the Content Really Good

Because you are trying to build trust with all the companies involved, you want your subscribers to open, click, and otherwise interact with your emails by forwarding or replying. So this is a great time to be thoughtful about your email content. Spend a little more time on the subject line. Give them opportunities and reasons to click. Ask them to reply to a question.

5. Use Your Old ESP for the Less Engaged Parts of Your Nonprofit Email List

Depending on the size of your list, this may mean that you can’t send to everyone you normally do. Does that mean a big chunk of people won’t get your newsletter or other email? Not necessarily. You can still send from your old ESP while you are warming up with your new one.

For example, one part of our list will likely receive our weekly newsletter from ActiveCampaign later this month, while others will get it via Keap. The same goes for other one-off emails. Only the most engaged email addresses will initially receive those messages through ActiveCampaign.

So, if you see that you are getting messages from us via ActiveCampaing in mid-late April, thank you! That means you are one of our most active subscribers.

6. Watch Your Stats for Signs of Trouble While Warming Up Your New IP Address

It is totally normal for your nonprofit email metrics like open rates to be lower than expected during this warm-up process (even though we know open rates are problematic). It’s OK. But with each passing day and week, the numbers should be improving. If they are not, that’s a sign of potential trouble. You should talk to your account rep immediately to ensure that you aren’t permanently damaging your sender reputation and that it’s just a temporary warm-up problem.

We’ll share more from our experiences with this email list move soon.

More emails are sent on Black Friday and Cyber Monday than any other days of the year. We’re talking millions and millions of emails.

Email Service and Inbox Providers will be SLAMMED with retail promotions on these two days. There will be delays getting emails out and spam filters will be in overdrive!

Because there are more emails sent these days, there are also more spam complaints made these days.

You don’t need to add to the noise or get caught in the spam crossfire if you don’t have to!

I advise that you skip sending any emails on November 24th and 27th, 2023. And if you aren’t participating in Giving Tuesday, I would skip the 28th too.

But if you just have to send an email these days, here are a few tips:

• Take steps to improve your deliverability (reach more inboxes).
• If you don’t send email often, slowly ramp up the frequency BEFORE you get to Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Giving Tuesday especially if you have a whole campaign that weekend.
• Only mail those who are highly engaged so you’re chances of being sent to spam are lower.
• Emails that reference Black Friday or Cyber Monday have better click-through-rates, BUT don’t go too generic.
• Use text-only emails or leave out the banners, colorful backgrounds, and images that scream “I AM A MARKETING EMAIL!”
• Do not include more than 3 links.
• Keep your email as short as possible.
• If you use a popular ESP, schedule your email to go out earlier than normal in case there is backlog.

But again, only send email on these days if you really, really, REALLY have to!

I briefly touched on this in Get Your Email List Ready for Year-End Fundraising NOW, but email deliverability for nonprofits is not great right now. According to Validity’s 2023 Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, over 16% of emails from nonprofits either go to spam or don’t get delivered at all. That may not mean much to you, but if you look at the chart below that’s towards the bottom of this deliverability chart broken down by industry.

What Can You Do to Reach More Inboxes?

What do Mailbox Providers (like Gmail, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo) look for when it comes to deliverability? They all have their unique requirements, but all of them want you to follow these practices:

1. Authenticate your email program using Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC)
2. Make sure you have permission from new subscribers
3. Verify all new email addresses
4. Send only to active and engaged subscribers (We’ve been telling y’all this for YEARS)
5. Pre-screen all email content for spam-like factors before sending
6. Promptly remove bounces, opt-outs, and complaints from your active list
7. Make it easy to unsubscribe

See the full report for more specifics on some of the biggest Mailbox Providers.

Other Steps to Reach More Inboxes:

• Monitor your sender reputation (SenderScore.org is free)
• Boost your brand’s trustworthiness with BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification)
• Check to see if you have been blocklisted

Deliverability Won’t Get Any Easier

According to the report, Microsoft has always had strict filtering policies, but Gmail and Yahoo joined them in 2022. Antispam vendors are also cracking down blocking email senders with high spam trap volumes more frequently.

If you think you can just ignore this issue and it will go away, you’re wrong. Like I said, we have been preaching this stuff for years. Years! You have to get serious about your email program now or you will start losing out on more and more volunteers, advocates, donors, or clients because they didn’t get that email.

If you’re interested in improving your nonprofit’s email engagement, you might try a lot of tactics, like

• Playing with your subject lines
• Switching up the sender’s name
• Including photos or videos in the email body
• Adding more links or buttons for readers to click on
• Creating a mobile-first email template
• Adding an email welcome series
• Adding an email re-engagement campaign

While all these ideas are great suggestions, one approach beats them all.

Email Engagement Requires Segmentation

Long-term email engagement for nonprofits requires sending the people on your email list the most relevant content for them specifically. That means you are segmenting well, which means you break your big email list into smaller lists based on different criteria.

And to segment your email list well, you need to collect what’s called zero-party data. (Learn about zero, first, second, and third-party data here.)

Zero-party data is information that people freely give you about themselves. You combine zero-party data with the first-party data you generate (e.g., who clicked on an email, who donated this year, who RSVPd for the event)

When I talk to nonprofit communicators about segmenting, we often brainstorm many possibilities. Some ideas are more demographic in nature (e.g., someone’s age or neighborhood) and others are related to their interests, inclinations, and levels of experience, all of which can be very helpful in making your communications to those people as relevant as possible.

But for various practical reasons, you have to pare that list down. To do so, you can ask questions like

• Is this something we can really expect people to share via a web form or survey?
• Will they really know the answer to this question if we put it in the form, or will they just be guessing?
• What’s the likelihood that this particular topic we care about now will still be important, both to the nonprofit and to the people being served, in two or three years?
• Is this piece of information just “nice to know” or would it really help target the right people on the email list with the right information?
• Could asking this question actually turn some people off or make them feel bad in some other way?
• Is this information about the person whose personal email address we have, or about the organization they work for or about someone else in their family? When does that matter?

Of course, the biggest question of all is, “Will we actually use this data in some meaningful way?”

Email Segmentation Works Best When Nonprofits Combine Zero-Party and First-Party Data

Let’s assume you are already managing first-party data at a basic level. You can email people who have not donated yet this year or those who have already RSVPed for an event. While the people on your mailing list are taking these actions, you are tracking the data, so that’s first-party data (you are party one).

But combining this first-party data with the zero-party data the people give you themselves is where you can really level up your email engagement for your nonprofit.

You can gather this information as people get on your email list for the first time. Or you can gather it after they are already on your list and you are adding to an existing record about the person. The tools to collect zero-party data are similar regardless of when you use them.

• Polls (one question)
• Surveys (two or more questions)
• Quizzes
• Pledges
• Petitions
• Gated or Registration-Required Content
• Creating an Account on Your Website
• Asking for Additional Data on Various Registration Forms

You’ll often see these tools in website pop-ups, but you can also find them directly on websites, shared on social media, and in emails you send to your current list.

What to Include in Nonprofit Polls, Quizzes, Forms, Etc.

Now, what exactly do you ask in a poll or survey? What should your gated content or pledge be about? This is where you go back to the list of questions above: What do you really need to know to segment so you can send the most relevant content and what information are people willing to share? When the answers to those two questions are similar, you have a winner!

Keeping a clean email list is really important especially since email deliverability rates just seem to get lower and lower. One hallmark of a clean list is only emailing active subscribers – those who keep opening and clicking on your emails. But what about those who haven’t done those things in a while? Before you delete them from your list completely, run a re-engagement campaign using one (or more) of these six messaging options:

1. Using your most popular “in case you missed it” content
2. Asking for their topic preferences
3. Asking for their frequency preferences
4. Appealing to the personal relationship
5. Explaining your list housekeeping
6. Offering social media instead of email

Use Your Most Popular Content

In this type of re-engagement email, you remind them of all the good stuff they are missing by not opening your emails. Your best content is popular for a reason – it resonates with your audience. Find your top articles, blog posts, and videos and share those in the email.

You could say something like:

It’s been a while so we just wanted to check in.

We know you have a lot going on, but here are some helpful posts from our blog [Or wherever] that might help you:

[Include 3 or 4 links to your best stuff]

Looking for something else?

Please let us know what YOU want to learn about, and we’ll do our best to tackle it or we can point you in the right direction of another expert who can help you.

By including this last question, you can hopefully start a meaningful exchange with your reader that will get them back even if your best current content did not.

Ask for Their Topic Preferences

For these re-engagement emails, you need to be able to segment your list in multiple ways. Can you list the different types of emails you send and segment your email list based on what they want? If not, then this isn’t for you.

The idea is to let them only receive those emails they are most interested in. For example, you could ask them if they want to know more about:

• Advocacy actions
• Donation options
• Volunteer opportunities
• Certain programs

If they only want to donate, then you wouldn’t sent them the other emails. If they are clients interested in just one of your programs, you wouldn’t email them about the other services you offer.

Ask for Their Frequency Preferences

Similar to the topic preferences, in this re-engagement email, you ask them how often they want to receive email from you. Again you have to be able to segment your list based on what they want.

So ask them if they want weekly emails from you or maybe just a monthly email with the highlights.

Appeal to the Personal Relationship

These types of re-engagement emails hint at the end of your personal relationship with the reader.

We hate goodbyes.

Are you still into us?

Is this the end?

Keep it light and cute. Pictures of sad puppies or kittens can help lighten the mood. Do not get passive aggressive or try to guilt trip them into staying on your list though.

Explain Your List Housekeeping

Just straight up tell them what you are doing and WHY you are doing it.

Just checking in…

We are doing some email housekeeping and it doesn’t look like you are opening or reading our emails very often.

If you aren’t interested in our content anymore, we can remove you from our list. No hard feelings!

Just let us know…

Do you want to keep receiving our emails?

Offer Social Media Instead of Email

This should be your last option if the above re-engagement emails don’t work. In this case, you send one last email letting them know you removed them from your email list and how they can reach you on your various social media channels.

BONUS: Give Them Something

This is used quite frequently by retail businesses – offer a discount or some type of gift. Is there anything you can offer to get them re-engaged with your work like discount tickets. sticker or a tour?

Even with clever re-engagement campaigns, you won’t win back everyone. AND THAT’S OK! You don’t want people on your list who don’t want to be there. The goal is a clean, engaged email list not the most subscribers!

Are you ready to try some new email list building tactics at your nonprofit?

Every year, you lose subscribers due to emails bouncing, addresses becoming undeliverable, or subscribers opting out. That means if you don’t invest some effort into building your nonprofit’s email list, it will shrink over time.

According to the 2023 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, nonprofits still have plenty of ways to build their email lists. Other than sign-up forms, nonprofits aren’t doing much else to keep their email lists growing compared to the business sector, for example.

Everywhere you look online, you see both gated content (where you have to provide an email address to access the content) and quizzes (where you get your results or additional advice based on your results in exchange for your email address).

Yet gated content and quizzes are barely even used as email list builders by nonprofits. Just 13% report using gated content and just 7% say they use quizzes or polls.

Only a third of nonprofits report using a website lightbox or pop-up. We know, you may personally hate them, but when done well, they really do work! We strongly encourage you to give lightboxes or pop-ups a try. You can make them much less annoying these days and even customize the offer to the page they appear on.

Email is a great way to reach people directly without relying on the whims of social media algorithms. But to keep your email program strong, you have to invest time in both engagement and list growth.

On Tuesday, Kristina shared some questions to help you create personas. Personas can be really helpful in guiding you toward the right kinds of content and the right communications channels.

But what if you are a solitary communications director working at an organization that runs many different types of programs and therefore you have multiple target audiences and therefore a dozen (or even two dozen) personas? At that point, the persona exercise becomes overwhelming and can defeat the whole purpose, which is to help you focus.

In these cases, considering empathy maps or journeys can be more useful. You can use them with or without personas.

An empathy map is a visual tool to help define or supplement your persona. Empathy maps come from “design thinking” and visually articulate how a particular type of person thinks and feels. It’s often created during a group exercise so that staff can empathize with the person they are serving or communicating with.

The map typically identifies the person in the center, with sections around the center labeled to identify what that type of person says, thinks, feels, and does during the day. Some empathy maps label these quadrants in slightly different ways, such as think, feel, see, say, do, hear, pain, and gain. Google “empathy map images” to see a variety of completed examples.

Journey maps are often split into external and internal journeys so that you can see what’s happening inside your organization with your staff as your personas are interacting with you from outside the organization. They can be as simple as a flowchart or drawn into something more akin to a path on a map. In this example, the “Stages of Change” are used to identify the different stages, but you could change these to whatever path people follow as they become more aware and engaged with your work.

If you would like some support developing personas, empathy maps, and/or journeys, we are hosting a Jump Starter workshop for our All-Access Pass Holders on August 30, 2022.

One of the tips we gave in last week’s free webinar How to Write Faster at Work (recording available with our Free Membership) was stop writing to the general public. Even if you think you have the most universal cause out there, you cannot appeal to everyone with your communications. You will either water down the message so much it has no impact or you will add so many things that is becomes muddled.

Let’s say your cause is “All babies should eat.” You will have a hard time finding anyone who disagrees that babies need to eat, right?

BUT you will have some people who disagree with how you are feeding the babies. Others won’t like what you are feeding the babies. Others will think it is not their responsibility to feed babies and will resent being asked.

These people are the general public. You need to focus on YOUR people – the ones that are really interested in what you do. And these are the people you will create your personas around.

Personas are basically a description of imaginary friends who represent the groups of people that your organization is trying to communicate with. They are “stand-ins” for your actual supporters. Most nonprofits can use at least three personas depending on what you do, but we recommend no more than nine.

Start creating your persona by giving them a name, age, income and education level, family status, neighborhood, or any other kind of demographic you think will be helpful. You can even find a stock photo to work with.

Then start asking these questions to bring your persona to life:

• How does this person spend their days (where, what, when, etc)?
• What does this person see, hear, taste, touch throughout the day?
• Who does this person trust the most?
• Who else is talking to your person about your issue?
• Who is encouraging/discouraging them from doing [whatever your call to action is]?
• What values are most important to them?

Now, instead of creating content for the mythical “general public,” you will create content for these personas. You’ll reach the right people and your decisions about language, imagery, and format will be much easier. This will lead to more relevant content that produces results.

To learn how to better understand the expectations, concerns, and motivations of your audience, join us August 30th for a BRAND NEW workshop Jump Start Your Audience Personas or Journeys.