Let's talk about building a list with love. Seriously.

🤝 It's an organization, not a list. The word organization describes an entity that is made up of many parts. A body is only healthy when every organ is working right.

Somehow, we started thinking of our list, supporters and community as external to the organization. Their experience becomes disconnected from our success.

But every person is a potential extra muscle, kidney, heart, foot or brain -- with all the potential power every extra organ can bring.

Practically speaking: start by getting to know people. Use surveys and ask questions on all your pages and forms. Consider using site registration - or registration for various areas of content - with which you can not just track what people are doing or reading but engage people with questions and content tied to their interests and needs.

Call people (and not just for money). Invite people to low stakes meetings, zoom calls and other events where people can ask questions, get answers, work together, learn about who you are, what you do and why other people get involved.

Use - and always be updating - automations like an onboarding series and personalized and conditional content based on first party data like location, interests, actions, giving history. Show people you're listening, hear them and can respond to their interests and needs.

💜 Find people who will love you. Or at least like you. How we build email lists is a broken. Too much list building is based on thinly veiled trickery. Sign a petition, download a report, buy a thing and maybe you won't realize there's a note and checkbox that just opted you into a list.

And maybe you see the checkbox and opt in anyway.

Either way, in most cases this is the most tenuous of relationships. And you, the organization, just paid someone a few bucks (or much more) to get this email address.

Turning weak into strong(ish) ties is a project supported by everything above. Show you care, invite people in, ask questions.

But this is also about leading with value and marketing the heck out of that value.

This is where content strategy is misunderstood in most nonprofits. Sure, you should have current content with optimized headlines and rich inbound linking. And content should use heading tags well, have nice white space, be accessible and found in multiple web, email and social channels.

Look, you don't need to create content that appeals to everyone. But you do need to make valuable content available that answers questions, solves problems, maybe even entertains. And then provide that in ways and places people can find.

This is largely done today using TikTok and Instagram reels. I'm not sure how this is building email donor lists but at least it's entertaining content. It's a step in a direction.

If you're already crafting content - blog posts, articles, case studies, reports, maps, charts, etc. - then repurpose that into an email newsletter or email training course. And advertise to people who would be interested in that content. Supply the content to bloggers and influencers who can get it to their audiences and tell people about you.

But work this from an email angle. Sure, there are other channels to use, but email is the only one that you "own" and that you can more or less control.
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🤗 Go to your people. Your people are out there. They just don't always look like your current audience. Use your surveys and other first person data (see above) to test messages to more targeted audiences. Send people to events. Train staff and volunteers to be organizers.
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👋 Let your people go. I can't emphasize this enough. Sometimes the vibes aren't there and the kindest thing to do is say goodbye. In other words, clean your damn list. Your email stats will reward you, you'll better understand who cares about what and why, and your deliverability will get a boost!