A while back I wrote about running a super delightful email program.
Let’s talk a little bit more about what pretty never gets mentioned at fundraising conferences or LinkedIn posts: enjoying the work we do while giving subscribers something special and useful. We’re so obsessed with ROI and the 0.1% drop in benchmark click rates that we lose sight of who we’re serving and why.
So, for your stern and serious review here’s more about the potential for enjoying both the work of producing and the act of receiving email.
Culture.
Email can and should live in a state of positivity. Joy, fun and positive impact on people are rarely words used to describe an email program, it’s staffers or readers.
I know many of us are doing VERY SERIOUS WORK and EVERYONE IS BUSY.
But too often email – and much of nonprofit communications – lacks heart and soul. We’re either speaking as an official organization or so clinically data driven that our efforts to put the link in the spot that will increase clicks 0.1% is more important than content or impact.
To put it another way, if you and your team don’t enjoy email then your supporters won’t like it at all.
Leadership.
The email program is leaderless in most organizations I’ve encountered. Maybe comms runs email. Or development. Or digital. Or a fundraising consultant. Or some combination.
This usually means that the email list – and the people on it – are viewed as statistics: clicks, conversions and pennies or dollars on the way to positive ROI.
Your email list is, in theory, your supporters. It’s important.
Hire, support and train people to lead your email work who have the experience, passion and skill to care about the list, its people and the impact it has on your organization and its audience.
Be willing to experiment. And to kill your darlings.
Email is a great place to try new things. You can segment your audience and test new topics, designs, CTAs and more. You can try explore new audiences and new email products.
But you can also get complacent and continue something for no reason other than it’s expected (or, worse, because it’s your thing).
Too many organizations hold onto inactive subscribers too long (or forever).
Many email newsletters offer “a great way to get our stories out to everyone” have opaque goals, murky metrics and may do more harm than good.
When something isn’t working, fix it. Email is perhaps the most fertile space for evolution and experimentation in the communications landscape.
Give people some value.
Look, most nonprofits, NGOs and charities, whether big or small, exist to serve a population in need. Often (usually?) that population doesn’t include the activists, donors, members and supporters who are receiving the emails.
So in the absence of an advocate for list members, the email list becomes an internal commodity. It is a thing in aggregate, not a diverse and complex set of individuals with curiosities, interests and needs. It is measured in ROI. We spend days talking how to make it easier to click and harder to leave as though font colors are the reason people get involved in a cause.
Why not take a step back and stop asking for so much?
Perhaps give something interesting and useful to people. Teach them about the work. Entertain them (yes yes, I know we’re doing serious work here). Give them a reason to smile. Let them know how much they matter.
Newsletters can do some heavy lifting here, at least in the email space. Stop thinking of them as lists of links to your press releases and calls to action. Be interesting.
But there’s more: build community with platforms and tools people use, send people something good in the mail, call up donors and have a chat, host office hours or new subscriber meetups on the zoom. You can make it make sense for you.