Is it time to refresh your nonprofit’s email newsletter? We recently shared our seven tips for modern nonprofit email newsletter designs.

Today, let’s look at five email newsletter trends that will influence the way your nonprofit’s e-newsletter looks in the future.

1. Movement at the Top

We all know the power of video and animated content. It’s everywhere. So why not at the top of your e-newsletter too?

Here’s an example from Charity: Water.

You can easily make animated gifs from still photos or graphics using tools like Canva or by inserting just a few seconds from a video you are highlighting.

2. Video Newsletters

Why not go all in with video and deliver the newsletter content itself that way? The National Military Family Association does a monthly video newsletter with a very brief text summary. While we don’t see a ton of these, we think it’s a great email newsletter trend. If you can’t pull it off, at least try to add movement at the top.

3. Seeking Feedback in the Footer

We all want to know how the folks on our mailing lists are perceiving our work. Why not ask?

Placing a section in your newsletter footer is another email newsletter trend we love, as Compassion International does. Each icon takes you to a landing page. You can include a form there to collect additional data or just acknowledge the feedback. If you are technically savvy enough, you could also pass this information (which icon they clicked on) into your CRM as another data point about the individuals on your list who do click.

4. Cleaner Event Marketing

Nonprofits market a lot of events. Like a lot. 

All of those details can really clutter up an email and make it very hard to skim.

I love the more visually oriented calendar approaches taken by Insight Memory Care Center and the Triangle Land Conservancy.

We really hope this trend catches on in the sector!

       

5. Conditional Content to Increase Personalization

The biggest email newsletter trend of all? Using conditional content to personalize newsletters to each person on your list based on what you know about them.

We’ll share much more about using conditional content as it becomes more universally available in email marketing software, but here’s the basic idea.

Conditional content lets you either show or hide content that will appear in each person’s version of your newsletter in their inbox. As you build the newsletter, you set the rules determining who will see what chunks of content.

So, you could show event marketing to people who have not RSVPd for the event yet, but suppress it or show attendee-only content to those who have.

If you know certain folks like cats and others like dogs because you have them tagged in your CRM, you can show cat images to cat people and dog images to dog people (or whatever makes sense given the topics you work on).

It will look like a bit of a mess on your end because you are adding ALL of the content in the version that you build. But when it is delivered to inboxes, it will look right. We highly recommend testing the variations before sending them!

We would love to see how you are implementing these trends in your nonprofit newsletters!

We recently presented a new webinar on modern nonprofit email newsletter designs. If you missed it, All-Access Pass holders can watch the recording in our private community.

We looked at more than a decade of nonprofit email newsletter designs and compared those to best practices today, which was very eye-opening for many participants. Are you still emailing like it’s 2020, 2017, or even 2012?

Here are seven pointers we recommend for any nonprofit considering a newsletter redesign. Based on the number of webinar participants who said they wanted to implement this change, I’m sharing these in order of importance. Eighty-four nonprofit communicators participated in the polling for reference.  Keep in mind they wouldn’t have voted for it if they had already made the change.

1. Shorten, Shorten, Shorten.

Nonprofit email newsletters are almost universally too long. Shorten, shorten, shorten. If you have that much great info to share via email, consider sending your newsletter more often instead of cramming everything in.  This was the most popular change participants wanted to make, with 65% saying they would like to shorten their nonprofit’s email newsletter.

More: Three Trends That Beg for Shorter Email Newsletters

2. No Paragraphs Longer Than Three Sentences.

One easy way to shorten your newsletter is to stop with the big blocks of text! Shorten your sentences and paragraphs! Keeping your nonprofit email newsletter design short also means making it skimmable, which means shorter blocks of text. A little over half of participants, 54%, said they wanted to try this.

3. Simplify the Header.

Don’t blow the most important email real estate right at the top with a meaningless graphic. Your “from” line should tell them it’s from you, and you don’t need to name your newsletter with an enormous graphic. Keep it small. Forty percent of webinar poll takers wanted to simplify their headers.

4. Add Motion to the Top.

Everywhere you look online, we know video works. But how do you capitalize on that with email? Adding animated gifs to your newsletter can work, whether you use three seconds from a video you link to or a more traditional animated gif you create in something like Canva. Forty percent of webinar poll takers also wanted to add motion to the top of their email newsletters.

5. Use One Main Article Followed by Secondary Teasers.

Here’s another way to keep your newsletters shorter and skimmable: Prioritize the content for your readers. Give more space to the single most important message and follow that with something more akin to bullets or teaser copy. About a third, 36%, wanted to try this approach to their nonprofit email newsletter design.

6. Left Justify Everything.

There’s no need to get fancy. When folks are skimming emails, it’s too much work for their eyes to dart around left, right, and center, trying to figure out what they should be looking at. Left-justify everything so it’s easy to skim. About a quarter, 26%, thought this could be helpful with their email newsletter redesign.

7. Limit the Use of Extraneous Lines and Photos That Don’t Add Meaning.

If it doesn’t add meaning, get rid of it. We reviewed many nonprofit newsletters with extraneous lines and photos that didn’t add any meaning but were just filler. A well-placed icon can often convey more meaning than a vague photo! A fifth, or 20%, of participants wanted to consider this tip when redesigning their nonprofit email newsletter.

See our Nonprofit Email Newsletter Best Practices and Tips for more.

Nonprofit email marketing is still a great way for nonprofits to reach the right people with the right message at the right time. It’s a great tool especially when you connect your email engagement work to your nonprofit’s big mission goals. Ultimately, the most strategic way to use email is to work towards good email metrics.

But nonprofit email marketing can be complicated! In much the same way that social media is ruled by algorithms, whether and how your nonprofit email gets delivered to your supporters is subject to complex algorithms.

And we know that nonprofits are struggling to do email marketing well:

Nonprofits Still Aren’t Using Some of the Best Email Tactics

The Nonprofit Email Apocalypse is Coming

But don’t worry—we can help you build and maintain a great nonprofit email marketing program by keeping you updated on the email best practices nonprofits should follow.

Managing Your Nonprofit’s Email Marketing List

Let’s start with the most important part of your email marketing program: your email list.

Maintaining a healthy, engaged email list is more important than any particular tactic you might try in any specific email you send.

Follow these golden rules of nonprofit email list management:

1. Only add names to your list with permission. Make sure people know they are signing up or that you will be sending them email based on a transaction with you, such as completing a form, making a donation, or RSVPing for an event.

• Is a Bigger Email List Always Better? Nope.
• Nonprofits Should Try Some New Email List Building Techniques
• 3 Email List Building Pop-Ups for Your Website
• Level Up Your Permission-Based Marketing and List Building

Implementing a nonprofit email welcome series is a great way to get new people on your email list off to a good start!

2. Segment your list, which is an essential email marketing strategy to increase engagement.  By creating subgroups on your list, you can can send specific groups of people the information they care most about.

• How We Used Segmenting to Increase an Email Newsletter Open Rate to 64%
• How Long with That 64% Open Rate Last?
• You Need to Fix Your All or Nothing Email List
• Advanced Email Engagement for Nonprofits: Use Zero-Party Data
• How Nonprofits Can Collect More Zero-Party Data or Email Marketing

3. When people stop engaging, try to re-engage them. 

We have lots of advice on running re-engagement campaigns! In fact, our All-Access Pass Holders can download several pre-written re-engagement campaigns we created especially for nonprofits. Here is some additional advice:

• Six Messaging Options for Email Re-Engagement Campaigns
• Need Proof That Inbox Providers Are Checking on Engagement?
• We are Running an Email Re-engagement Campaign and People Have Feelings

4. When they stop engaging with your nonprofit’s emails, stop emailing them!

• How We Cleaned Up Our Email List and Re-Engaged Our Subscribers
• Should You Stop Sending Email to Complainers?
• Best Practices for Your Email Unsubscribe Page
• When to Stop Snail Mailing and Emailing People, Part I and Part II
• Worry Less about Spam Blocking and More About Email Engagement, Part I and Part II

Send Engaging Nonprofit Email Marketing Content

Ensure that you are emailing often enough and providing opportunities for people to click on links in your emails. People need to engage with your email (click, forward, reply to) for the email companies to see that the people on your list really do want your emails.

Did you know we offer a special monthly Writing Prompts newsletter that helps you think more creatively about the content for the following month?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Making Your Messaging More Relevant
• Four Questions to Ask to Get Your Messaging Right
• How to Connect Emotionally to Motivate Action
• Conversion Copywriting Tips for Nonprofits
• Adding Urgency to Appeals: Why They Should Do It Now
• Mind Your Microcontent: 8 Little Bits That Can Make a Big Difference in Your Next Email

Screwed something up in that email that just went out? It’s OK! Resends often have better open rates than the originals! Check out 36 subject lines and phrases to help you fix email mistakes.

Focus on Improving Your Email Deliverability

Following the steps above will help improve your nonprofit’s email deliverability. Let’s look at a few more important considerations, especially since email deliverability is down, for a variety of reasons. 

Moving Your Nonprofit Email List? How to Warm Up a New IP Address.  You definitely need a plan if you are moving to a new email service provider (for example, switching from Constant Contact to MailChimp).

You also want to work on your email list health well ahead of big emailing times of the year. In the nonprofit sector, that is typically year-end, but depending on your mission, it could be other times of year too.

• Get Your Email List Ready for Year-end Fundraising Now
• PSA: Don’t Send Email on Black Friday or Cyber Monday if You Don’t Have to

More on Nonprofit Email Marketing Trends

We frequently include questions about email in our annual Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, as do others who release trends reports.

Here are some specific briefings on nonprofit email trends:

Nonprofit Marketing Email Trends for 2023: Another Peek at the Data

5 Top Takeaways from the Nonprofit Email Report (NeonOne)

We teach a two-part webinar series yearly on the latest email marketing trends for nonprofits, so watch our training page and join our free community for even more resources. And if you have the All-Access Pass, you get access to our annual Nonprofit Email Playbook as well!

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.

What are the best nonprofit email metrics now, especially since open rates aren’t as useful as they once were?

You’ll find plenty of explanations of what all the nonprofit email measurement numbers technically mean, but what should you really pay attention to? What actually matters?

We suggest three different approaches to tracking your nonprofit’s email metrics, based on what you think is most important now. They build on each other. So work your way down the list as you have capacity.

1. Easy and Basic Nonprofit Email Metrics That Are Still Meaningful

At the most basic level, we encourage you to focus on your click-to-open rate and work to increase that over time. While email opens are still in this equation, the emphasis is on shifting your focus to clicks.

To calculate your click-to-open rate, divide unique clicks by unique opens then multiply by 100.

Now, look for trends or differences between the different kinds of emails you send. For example, what’s the difference between newsletter and fundraising emails or event invitations? Or the topics or style of the subject line?

Once you have your baseline, start to experiment.

As you optimize your emails for clicks, you’ll need to look at the text content and the design. For example, you might try using more teaser content or adding more buttons or white space around text links.

2. Email Metrics that Demonstrate Community Building and Engagement

Click-to-open rates are based on the individual emails you send. But your list health is a huge part of your nonprofit email marketing success or failure.

Nearly all email service providers help you calculate the level of email list engagement. This metric usually looks at the number of people on your mailing list who have clicked a link in the last six months. But those criteria are not uniform across all platforms. So you need to understand how your email service provider defines an “engaged” user.  For example, here is how MailChimp calculates engagement. 

Next, see if they offer any tools for you to use to adjust those criteria. Those tools are often called lead tracking. 

With this basic understanding of how engagement is calculated, you can now set your own benchmarks. What percentage of your list is engaged? Unengaged? 

How can you better manage the unengaged, for example, through re-engagement campaigns or archiving unengaged names after a certain period?  Cleaning up your email list before year-end is a fabulous idea!

What benchmarks can you set to try to reach over time (e.g., percentage of the list or total number of records at each engagement level when there are several levels)? 

3. Nonprofit Email Metrics that Demonstrate the Value of Email Marketing with Your Communications Strategy

So you are optimizing your emails for clicks and watching your nonprofit’s email list engagement. What’s next?

It’s time to think about how well your email strategy contributes to your big marketing goals at your nonprofit like community engagement.

One excellent approach is implementing UTM links, which allow you to track where your website traffic is coming from, including your own emails. Here’s our basic explanation of how they work.

UTM links allow you to look outside your email service provider and get email performance data through your website metrics (like Google Analytics).

The trick to making UTMs work is deciding which parameters to use (start with Source, Medium, and Campaign) and then creating a naming convention — or a consistent menu of options for each parameter.  You want to use the same term every time so that Google Analytics properly collates the data.  

For example, you don’t want to call your email newsletter “news” one day and then use “newsletter” the next because Google will think those are two different things. Same with campaign names: “year-end” and “Yearend” won’t be combined.  Don’t use spaces and stick with lowercase to keep things clean.

This doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Implement UTMs on one set of emails (like a series of emails in a campaign or welcome series) to see how it goes and expand from there.

What Other Email Metrics Should We Track?

Are there more things to track? Always.

Tracking overall list growth and the number and frequency of your email sends are also important to your long-term email strategy.

But you can add those things when you have time. Pick where you are above now and see what you can learn.

What About Nonprofit Email Benchmarks?

We always recommend that you benchmark against yourself. Your particular list and email strategy, including sending frequency, segmentation, and content, are the biggest drivers of your email success. However, if you do want nonprofit benchmarks, you can start with Neon One’s data as well as the M+R benchmarks

Shame. Embarrassment. TERROR! These are just three of the frightening emotions that email marketers have experienced after sending a mass email with a mistake.

Sometimes the mistake is harmless, like a small typo. Sometimes it’s a DOOZY, like misidentifying a donor, sending to the wrong list, or using inappropriate phrases as placeholder text (stupid headline here!).

One thing is certain — press send enough times and you will make a mistake. Learn from it! Sometimes the resent email performs better than the original in terms of opens and click-throughs.

When to Send an Oops Email

via GIPHY

• As soon as possible!
• When you have a
  • Bad link
  • Error in critical information (date, location, time, etc.)
  • Landing pages or website doesn’t work
  • Sending the wrong email to the wrong segment
  • Really bad formatting

Remember to apologize, keep it short, and make sure the corrected information is clear.

36 “Oops!” Email Subject Lines and Phrases

via GIPHY

I searched my inbox to find subject lines and phrases you can use when this happens to you. (HINT: Scan you own inbox to see who’s apologized to you!)

Subject Lines

1. [Oops, we’re a bit late]
2. [OOPS] I goofed! Corrected date.
3. Corrected Date
4. Corrected Link
5. Corrected Tweets
6. Corrected Version
7. Correction
8. Oops
9. Oops – link fixed!
10. Oops, a typo!
11. Oops, a wee bug
12. Oops: corrected link
13. Oops! Our Mistake
14. Oops! Site is live again and holiday card sale is extended!
15. Oops! Sorry mobile users
16. Oops! We Made a Mistake
17. Oops! We meant to say
18. Updates and Corrections
19. Whoops
20. Whoops! That was a mistake
21. With Corrected Links
22. Yikes! Corrected date

Phrases

23. An error in our system may have caused you to receive a confusing email from us. We have corrected the problem. Here’s the email you should have received.
24. Dreadfully sorry about that
25. Due to a slight hiccup
26. Due to technical difficulties…
27. Here is the correct information
28. I really do apologize
29. Many of you wrote to let me know that X wasn’t working
30. Sorry for the confusion
31. Uh oh! It seems our email system hit a technical glitch. We’ve fixed the issue now.
32. We may have sent out an email with the wrong subject line. The message is still the same.
33. We now have the corrected version on X
34. We’re really sorry.
35. We apologize for the mistake
36. You just received an email that I didn’t mean to send you

Oops Further Reading

6 Clever Examples of “Oops!” Emails

The Best 7 Apology / Oops Email Examples in 2024

Oops! Email Mistakes Happen

The Art of the “Oops” – Email Mistakes and What To Do About Them

Handle Your Oops: 5 Types of Email Mistakes and How to Fix Them

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Need more help with email marketing? Check out these other blog posts, or join our Free Membership to access our Private Community with dedicated spaces to email marketing, writing content, and more.

This post was updated July 11, 2024

Only about a quarter of nonprofits have an email welcome series, according to our research in the Nonprofit Communications Trends Reports. 

That’s a shame because a nonprofit email welcome series is a great way to get early engagement with new subscribers (in other words, getting them to click on those first emails). That signals that they really do belong on your list and want your content. And that means you are more likely to appear in their inboxes rather than in a tab or spam.

Your Best Content for Your Email Welcome Series

We recommend that you focus on five different types of content in your nonprofit’s email welcome series. You don’t have to include all five elements! But these are the types of content to consider as you draft your welcome series.

Content that . . .

• Makes people feel good: stories, ways to express their values, and knowing that others feel the same
• Is helpful to them: checklists, downloads, top posts
• Connects them with others: invitations, events, introductions to key people, social media connections
• Allows you to get to know them better: by setting email preferences, surveys, polls, quizzes
• Makes acting quick and easy: simple calls to action that directly help the cause

This type of content is great for all kinds of emails you send, including newsletters. But it’s especially nice in a welcome series.

Because I know so few nonprofits are using a welcome series, and I know you don’t have much time, I’ve written six different welcome series, each with three emails.

Below you’ll find one of the nonprofit email welcomes series templates I call the “Feel, Think, Do” template.

Folks with an All-Access Pass to Nonprofit Marketing Guide get access to all six templates and to a webinar recording on how to write a great nonprofit welcome series that will engage and retain supporters.

 The “Feel, Think, Do” Nonprofit Email Welcome Series Template

In this Welcome Series, you’ll use calls to action encouraging people to feel good, think about your issue, and do something to help.

These are fill-in-the-blank style, so replace or delete anything in [brackets like this.] I’ve written in a very conversational style appropriate for email, but you should play with the style and tone as you see fit. 

Email 1 — The Feels:

Hello [insert your merge code for first name], 

I’m so glad to see that you’ve joined our mailing list! That tells me that you really care about [fill in the blank, e.g., saving the whales, finding a cure]. 

That’s so important, because with people like you on our team, we can [fill in the blank with mission-oriented actions like protect whales and other sea life too, support research that will bring an end to this disease.] 

I want to share a story with you to show you what I mean.

[Insert the first part of a story or a video to get them to click to the rest of the story or the video. This should be a personal story that demonstrates the impact of your work and that will make them FEEL really good about supporting you.] 

Isn’t that amazing? 

I’ll write again soon with some tips I think you might find helpful in your own life. 

But in the meantime, if you have any questions, just hit reply! [If you include this, make sure the reply inbox is monitored. Replies are great for engagement, but if you don’t want replies, you can direct them to follow on social media instead.]

[Insert preferred salutation]

[Insert From Name, Title, Organization]

Email 2: The Thinking / Helpful Resource 

Hi [insert your merge code for first name], 

Since you care so much about [fill in the blank, e.g., saving the whales, finding a cure], I think you’ll find this really useful. 

We’ve put together a [guide, tip sheet, top ten list, something useful] to help you [make decisions in your own life, avoid something, do something better — whatever makes sense given the resource you are sharing.]

It may seem small, but when we all do small things together, it adds up to something huge. I’m so glad you’ve decided to be a part of that change! 

If you have any questions, just hit reply! [If you include this, make sure the reply inbox is monitored. Replies are great for engagement, but if you don’t want replies, you can direct them to follow on social media instead.]

[Insert preferred salutation]

[Insert From Name, Title, Organization]

Email 3: The Doing

Hi [insert your merge code for first name], 

I’ve got something else you can do to help [fill in the blank, e.g., save the whales, find a cure]. 

And this one is really important. 

How would you feel about [fill in your final call to action, such as becoming a monthly donor, or signing up for volunteer training]. 

When you [become a monthly donor or a volunteer or whatever based on your CTA], you make it possible for [fill in the blank with anticipated meaningful result, e.g. us to keep the pressure on governments who need to do more to protect the whales, give hope to people diagnosed with disease while funding research for a cure]. 

[Add a single line here, repeating the call to action with a link to form].

Once again, welcome to our community of people working every day to [save the whales, cure the disease].  

Please feel free to get in touch anytime with questions. 

[Insert preferred salutation]

[Insert From Name, Title, Organization]

See, it’s not that hard to write a conversational email welcome series that will get engagement as soon as someone gets on your list!

Remember, our All-Access Pass Holders get access to five more templates that take different approaches to writing a nonprofit email welcome series.

Have you checked out the new report from NeonOne called The Nonprofit Email Report?

It is definitely worth the download and read.

There are A LOT of great insights in the report, so it’s hard to narrow it down to just my favorite five, but here goes.

So you know, this report really does match the nonprofits that are most likely to be Nonprofit Marketing Guide folks. It applies to you! They consider a “small” average list to be 547 contacts and an average “large” list to be 6,602 contacts.

Here we go . . .

1. You have to see the most engaging email of the year.  It looks like so many different nonprofit emails we see! It’s not super polished. There are blocks of text and blocks of graphics, but they did so many little things right that it WORKED. The report breaks down why.
2.  Nonprofit-specific advice on subject lines and preview text. There’s an entire section of the report devoted to these bits of microcontent that worry everyone so.
3. Contrarian advice to try! According to the data, the best days to engage your donors are Wednesday and Friday (yeah, you read that right).  Time of day? Conventional wisdom holds on that one: late morning/noonish. Another one: Putting “newsletter” in the subject line doesn’t work great in the corporate world, but guess what: it’s fine for nonprofits!
4. Positive subject lines work! The top-performing subject line emotions are relief, gratitude, pride, excitement, and optimism. Yay for adding a little sunshine to the inbox. Nagging subject lines not so much. The words Reminder, Member, and Meeting have a negative impact.
5. Preview text actually works. Emails that included preview text (basically that second subject line) raised 54% more than those that didn’t.

Download the report and check out all of our nonprofit email advice too.

We shared the first sneak peek at the data from the Nonprofit Communications Trends Report a few weeks ago. Here are a few more nuggets to consider, this time related specifically to email marketing trends for nonprofits.

Just like our caveat last time, these stats are subject to change as we collect more data.  We will release the full report on January 18, 2023 and you’ll be able to find the Trends Report here.

Here’s what the survey says about nonprofit email marketing trends so far . . .

1. Nonprofits still have lots of tactics to try when growing their email lists organically. Less than a third said they used website lightboxes or pop-ups and less than 15% said they used gated content that required registration. These are two proven tactics you might want to check out!
2. Nonprofits still have room to play with email design elements. Over 80% of nonprofits have included clickable buttons in their emails and over half have included video. But only 13% have tried polls and only 6% have used countdown timers.
3. About half of nonprofits say they never stop emailing anyone, ever, regardless of engagement rate. This is just bad, bad, bad, news. I really hope this number changes in the final report but I doubt it will.  But there is good news! That is down from the 69% who said they never stop emailing, reported in the 2020 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report. That’s meaningful progress.

Agree or disagree? Add your voice here by taking the survey. We ask lots of interesting questions, not just about email marketing.

Not sure what to talk about next month in your newsletter, blog, or on your social media channels? We’ve got all kinds of ideas from our Monthly Nonprofit Writing Prompts email newsletter. Sign up now to get prompts emailed to you in advance monthly.

On the Calendar

6/1: Official Start of Hurricane Season in the US. If you work anywhere near the Gulf or Atlantic Coasts, you know all about Hurricane season, which starts June 1st and goes through November. How can you relate your work to hurricane preparedness, or the power of water and wind?

6/3: Repeat Day. Use this day to resend an email to people who didn’t open it the first time or republish a blog post that did well.

6/5: World Environment Day. It’s sort of like a global Earth Day headed by the United Nations Environment Programme. This year’s theme is Ecosystem Restoration.

6/8: Best Friends Day. Who are your organization’s best friends? Feature your most passionate supporters and volunteers.

6/14: Flag Day. Design a flag for your organization. If you serve kids or families, hold a contest asking them to draw a flag that represents your cause. Veterans groups can take a more literal view of the holiday and ask their clients what the American flag means to them.

6/15: Smile Power Day. This screams photo spread! Get the camera out and take some pics of your staff, volunteers or clients.

6/18: National Splurge Day. What would you do if you could suddenly purchase anything you wanted for your cause?

6/20: First Day of Summer. Think about ways to relate your cause to summer vacations or anything else summery.

6/19: Father’s Day. Just like Mother’s Day in May — plenty of opportunities here. Who is the “father” of your cause or organization? How can your supporters honor their fathers in a way that’s consistent with your cause?

6/24: Take Your Dog to Work Day. This one speaks for itself. Post pics of your pups or ask your supporters to share some of their dogs at work.

Other special events in June include D-Day (6th), World Oceans Day (8th), Loving Day (12th), Juneteenth (19th), and Social Media Day (30th).

It’s also:

• Great Outdoors Month
• Gay Pride Month
• Caribbean American Heritage Month
• National Adopt a Cat Month
• National Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Month
• Student Safety Month
• Zoo and Aquarium Month

Metaphor of the Month

This month’s metaphor is Travel. Think about vacations, planes, trains, cars, cruise ships, tickets, souvenirs, exploring, delays, road trips, tourists, GPS, luggage, business trips, language barriers, and maps. This year, you might also think about canceled trips, refunds, and online tours.

How can you relate these things to your organization?

Pop Culture, Events, and News

The NBA and NHL playoffs will continue through June.

Music Festivals are also starting to return this summer.

The MTV Movie and TV Awards are the 5th.

The French Open finals are June 4th and 5th, then Wimbledon begins the 27th.

The Tony Awards are on the 12th.

The U.S. Open of golf will be held June 16th-19th in Brookline, MA.

The Aspen Food and Wine Classic starts the 17th.

The 48th Daytime Emmy Awards will be the 24th.

Movies being released include Fire Island, Jurassic World Dominion, Lightyear, Spiderhead, The Black Phone, and Elvis.

TV premieres in June include The Real Housewives of Dubai, Borgen, Coroner, The Orville, The Boys, American Ninja Warrior, Roswell, New Mexico, Ms. Marvel, Queer as Folk, 90 Day Fiancé: Love in Paradise, Peaky Blinders, Becoming Elizabeth, Dark Winds, Iron Chef, Love, Victor, The Old Man, The Summer I turned Pretty, Animal Kingdom, The Umbrella Academy, The Chi, and Only Murders in the Building.

Source of the Month

People just love a good quote. You can create a blog post around a quote or simply post one to social media. To make it more share-worthy, lay the text from the quote over an image related to your cause. Goodreads has a popular quotes page, or you can simply search “famous quotes.” Just make sure you double-check your source! Lots of quotes are ascribed to famous people who didn’t actually say them.

If you would like these ideas sent to your inbox a month in advance, sign up for our Monthly Nonprofit Writing Prompts. I send this email newsletter the first week of every month with prompts for the following month. For example, I will email the prompts for July late this week. Sign up now to get prompts emailed to you in advance monthly.