How to Craft a High Engaging Email Welcome Series for Nonprofits

So this is really the time where you need to be cultivating them . It's when they are most active and engaged .

Let's transform your mission into a movement into a movement . Hello , hello . This conversation is going to be about one of my favorite communication channels , and that is email . It is something we all check every single day , maybe way too many times every single day . Maybe it's a tab always open on our computers .

If you are like me , maybe you're also like me , and it's like one of the first things that you check in the morning when you roll over in bed . It is like , not technically , what you're supposed to do .

However , it is something that is consistently tried and true in terms of reaching the people that we want to talk with , and so I was very fortunate to meet Caitlin Bond in person at Jess Campbell's Make it Happen conference earlier this year , and I just can't believe that months , months , have already gone by since we saw each other in person , and I just have

to give like a major LinkedIn shout out to Caitlin , because I've known her as this , like email extraordinaire , and then I went on LinkedIn and did some stalking on her background .

So , from working on campaigns and email production for I don't know , just a couple brands you might know National Geographic , the Trevor Project , unhcr , canada to now running , and that's just a sample . Okay , that's just a few , I couldn't list them all You're now running your own consultancy , which is amazing Solely focused on email .

A , Caitlin , that is hella impressive . And B , you have got to love email for doing this for over a decade more than that . So A , congratulations , and B , my first question for you is what is your favorite thing about this communication channel ? You've been doing it forever . Why do you love email ?

And , yes , like you said , I'm an email marketing consultant , but when I started working in nonprofit marketing , I did all the things digital marketing for a local nonprofit here in Maryland .

Last year I decided to focus on email marketing for a variety of reasons , but the biggest reason being that all of the different channels I was working on , email was the one I was seeing the biggest return on investment for my clients , for nonprofits .

So you could actually connect the dots that from this email we raised or from this campaign we raised $50,000 from email and emails known to have the highest return on investment . It's something like , for every $1 you spend , you're likely to get a $36 return on your investment Wow , so that is really the number one reason why I chose email .

It's also the cheapest and quickest way to get a personalized message to a big group of people , so , especially for organizations like Amnesty International that I worked with , that are responding to emergencies and have rapid response campaigns , it's the easiest way to get a message to a group of people in the quickest possible manner .

just going to give it to you . Whatever you signed up for , that comes into your inbox , which I do want to talk about some open rate things with you that you've seen , that you're working through with clients .

But first I thought when Caitlin and I met and this is just the beauty of meeting in person , you just start to brainstorming ideas and she had seen my Grow your List Ads Challenge in the past . This year , because of the Monthly Giving Summit in September , I'm pushing it to October .

And just a little bit of context , the background of the Grow your List Challenge is I work with 20 organizations at a time and I work with them on building out a Facebook and Instagram ad campaign specifically targeted on lead generation .

So together we help create your lead magnet , which is a value exchange for the people that you want to attract , based upon what your nonprofit is known for , is good at , is an expert at , and so we create that lead magnet .

And then I work with you on creating the copy for your ads , the graphics for your ads , step-by-step setting up lead generation ads on Facebook and Instagram and they run . And then what happens with ? The goal is , of course , is this for to grow your email list by a minimum of 100 new emails in seven days , and it usually always exceeds that .

I've had some standouts that have 400 , 800 new emails , which is uncredible . And so what happens is , once you get the email , though , the idea is they go directly into an email welcome sequence , into an email welcome sequence . Now I coach on like this needs to happen , but the point of the ads challenge in the past has been more that pre-setup .

And then I just mentioned , hey , you should have this email series welcome set up so that this specific segment of new leads from social are immediately entered into emails from you to get to know more about who you are , and then you can nurture them over the series of a couple of weeks , a couple of months , whatever that looks like .

So Caitlin at the summit together was like why don't we do a more email deep dive for them ?

And I was like , okay , this is a really good idea because that is so important and that's really like the whole premise is , you can have new leads from ads , but if you don't nurture them properly and have a good email welcome series , then kind of what's the point ?

And so I'm very excited to officially announce that Caitlin is going to be like an additional coach in the upcoming grow your list ads challenge , which is super exciting . What this is going to look like is Caitlin has which we'll talk through in just a second .

She has this fully customizable email series welcome template that you will get access to If you're part of the challenge . She will share a video walkthrough of how you can personalize and use this welcome series template , and then she's also going to jump on a live group coaching call .

And I think this is why I do these challenges in this format is because I don't want to watch a course video . I want someone to literally look at my email and tell me what's wrong , and so that's the beauty . She's going to come on and literally help set up , review the copy for your emails , talk through that process with the people in that group .

Caitlin did I ?

But I think this was a miss before . That is really important and this all just happens due to conversation and meeting up with other consultants , so really excited for this next group to be able to work with you .

So , specifically today , thinking about a cold audience when you're working with your clients , is there like a set formula that you have that you typically follow when it comes to either like the number of emails , what each email is about ? Can you kind of walk us through what you normally recommend ? Sure ?

So this is really the time where you need to be cultivating them . It's when they are most active and engaged , and so , when we're talking about a cold audience , these are people who don't know anything about your organization . They probably just downloaded your lead magnet because it was something they were interested in , piqued their interest .

Maybe they follow you and know a little bit about your brand , but typically this is a brand new audience .

Yeah Right , typically , not so specifically , we would want to draw out valuable ideas from your digital resource , share them in the emails and tell stories about your organization and connect why you created the resource , whether it's an ebook , a guide , a recipe to why your organization exists and so these new people can make that connection .

Why does that resource connect to the mission of what you do and why was it created in the first place ? I've never actually heard it outlined like that before .

At minimum , I suggest four emails over the span of 12 days , and so you have one that's triggered right away . That's thank you for downloading . Depending on whether you have the lead magnet ability to download it within the platform or whether you're sending them a link . Either way , you want to give it to them again and say , hey , you downloaded this .

Here it is again just in case , like when they first downloaded it . Maybe they missed it or they want to save it or bookmark it on their desktop versus their mobile device .

There is the option , as Caitlin just mentioned , for somebody to immediately they're going to fill out a form , they stay on Facebook or on Instagram , wherever they're filling it out , and once they fill it out , they can immediately have access , if you choose to , to that item .

However , a lot of the times , what I recommend is especially because they're going to be working with you , they'll have this email series template ready and accessible is have this flow ready to go , and that first email on the form instead is you're going to receive in your inbox right now , immediately , this free item , this resource that you requested .

So usually that first open rate is extremely high and the click-through is extremely high because they have just asked for this item . And not only that , but it gets them used to seeing your name in their inbox . So I always try to persuade organizations to go more that route of having somebody receive the freebie in the inbox versus getting it immediately .

Yeah , that's a really good point , because then you're also realizing if you don't see it in the inbox , did it hit spam ? If it hits spam because you want this thing right that you just signed up for you're more likely to go into spam or trash and be like , oh , it hit my spam folder , I don't want it there .

So now I'm going to market as an organization . I want to be in my inbox . It's all these like weird things that you don't actually think about , but that's the actual journey that a person is going through .

, positive equation or the organization name next to the name , but you want it to be coming from a human being . What we know is that humans connect with humans , and so we want to know another individual sent this email , or they did or not . They don't know that , but it's really important to have that name . That first name is your sender name .

And also when it comes to your sender email , you don't want it to be like info at cancerresearchorg . You want it to be person's name at cancerresearchorg . Even if you have to make it up , you want to make sure it looks as legit as it can .

Now I teased it in episode 130 , and that is that I am hosting the Monthly Giving Summit , the only dedicated , free virtual event bringing together organizations of all sizes to share their recurring giving best practices with each other over two half days on September 5th and 6th , from 1 to 4 pm Eastern Standard Time .

Again , it is free to register , so head on over to monthly giving summitcom and if you happen to be out of town on those dates , no problem . There's also the option for a VIP ticket . It's $99 right now and that will be going up later .

It includes access to all of the recordings , some free cheesy pizza because I realized that September 5th is also hashtag national cheese pizza day , so I had to and you get immediate access for an entire year to the sustainers Slack group . That is a community for peers to connect , ask questions and grow their monthly giving efforts together .

So if you want to check out all of the speakers and the schedule , head on over to monthlygivingsummitcom . You can also click the link in the show notes to register . I hope to see you there . Now let's head back to the episode . Okay , great , okay , so four emails .

That also like something that might've been hidden for people is that these are sent four emails minimum sent over 12 days . That might seem like a really short timeframe . What's the science behind 12 days ? Is there anything specific towards that ?

So we want to also note that you are excluding this group of people from any other email that's going out during this time . So be sure that you're cultivating them first . You're courting them . I like to think of it as like you're dating someone before you ask them to marry you or something along those lines .

You don't want to be sending them too many emails , so if they're getting this welcome series , plus your newsletters or your appeals or whatever else you're sending out , it's a bit much so I would exclude them during that time . So email one is thank you for downloading , and then you can wait two to three days before sending email two .

And email two is going to be where you connect the why you created the ebook to the why your organization exists . So you are still connecting the dots that you did this . You downloaded this ebook . You care about whatever it is that your organization exists to support and this is why we are here .

So a good example of that is an organization that I work with , the National Breast Cancer Foundation .

Every few weeks they send out an ebook and they promote an ebook and there's a welcome series that goes out after the person downloads the ebook , and so they want to connect that ebook , whatever it may be how to be more mindful during your cancer recovery to their organization and what they do to help cancer survivors .

That email is really important to connect the dots .

What your goal is All of those kinds of things are good for email three . And then the fourth email you can consider and ask . So it doesn't need to be a donation ask , but maybe it's something else you're working on . There's like a petition that you have with the National Breast Cancer Foundation .

They have a wall that people can write on to cancer survivors or people who are going through their cancer treatment , so you can write something on that wall . So four is really where you can maybe ask for something in return .

I think people miss the mark sometimes here where they're like ask too soon , you want to be sure that you're cultivating people , you are giving them some value , and then you're asking .

It doesn't always have to be monetary , so another one could be maybe you give them a graphic and you ask them to share it on social media or to follow you on a certain channel if you're looking to grow YouTube or Instagram or something like that or to read a thought leadership piece that just came out from your executive on a LinkedIn post .

There's so many creative things that will then get them more integrated with your organization . And I think I always hear how long does it take for these emails to be donors ?

And it's like sometimes it takes time or sometimes somebody will just give instantly from it I think it just depends upon where you catch the person in their season of life and what's going on . However , the point is to continue immersing them in the storytelling of what you do .

I love that , what do you think or what have you seen from these welcome series is a strong open rate . Do you see any trends ?

to know that an actual human is interested in clicking on your email , and so within your emails you do always want to have somewhere that people can click to . That will help increase your performance of the emails . What we see , like you said , with these types of eBooks and lead magnets we see a much higher click-through rate than other types of emails .

So it does really depend on the type of email . You know , for a fundraising email , you might have like anywhere between a one to 2% click-through rate . For a monthly donor email or a newsletter , you might have a higher or lower click through rate . So you want to categorize your emails by the type of email that it is and then kind of benchmark from there .

But I've seen anything from like two to 7% being a good click through rate for lead magnets .

It can break away from email welcome series , or it can stay in that vein . What have you seen that's really like exceeded your expectations in terms of results when it comes to email .

They have about 10 different welcome series because they have one for every eBook that they release , and then they have your typical donor welcome series monthly donor subscriber welcome series but the welcome series that had the highest click-through rate and in all their emails had the highest click-through rate were ebooks , and so that was really surprising to me , and

I think it just proves that people want value and they want to see their impact . It's not always about some of the other things that we think are most important .

It can be a simple one pager , but we just want to get them truly like .

It's incredible information and so helpful to people and so , listener , you are an expert in the topic that you serve in , and so the fun part is that I get to like , kind of like break out what is that shareable , valuable lead magnet resource that's going to help somebody on the other end , and then work with Caitlin on the email side of things .

So it's a really , really fun process to work through , and so I hope this was a very helpful kind of like step-by-step even if you're not going to be part of the ads challenge that this just guides you on the importance of A sharing a lead magnet like resource and , specifically , having an email welcome series ready to go .

I know there are a plethora of email platforms . Are there any that you are a fan favorite of , and I will say I personally use Flowdesk and I think what's interesting too . On the entrepreneur side . We are targeted with very different email platforms than the nonprofit space . However , they are all should be usable .

I think it just depends upon what's going to connect the best to your CRM to let you do the most in-depth segmenting that you want .

It's an email service provider , has your donation forms , your landing pages all in one place , so you can get a holistic view of how things are performing .

Where things get broken is when you have to try to pass information back and forth and make sense of it and you're downloading spreadsheets and it's taking hours to figure out what worked and what didn't work and what segments worked and what didn't work .

Any email service provider is fine , and especially if you're smaller , use MailChimp , use Constant Contact , whatever is within your budget , but when you start to grow , look into those platforms . There's Fundraise , there's Neon One , there's Engaging Networks .

It really depends on what you can afford , but if you can find one that has it all in one so that you're able to get a holistic view of how your everything is performing and connecting the dots , then you'll be golden .

There's a button there to subscribe to my newsletter , but I send out weekly tips about nonprofit email trends , so I would love to have anybody who wants to subscribe join my list .

So , again , if anybody wants to join , we'll have the link in the show notes and you can just go to positiveequationcom and find out more details there too . Thanks Dana , thanks everybody . Thanks Caitlin . Can you tell I love talking all things digital To make this show better . I'd be so grateful for your feedback .

Leave a review , take a screenshot of this episode , share it on Instagram stories and tag positive equation with one E so I can reshare and connect with you .