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The Importance of E-mail as a Fundraising Tool
E-mail has the potential to be a very important tool for your program, not only
in the area of fundraising, but also in keeping your volunteers, donors, and interested
community members informed about the difference your program is making, or the
special events that you provide throughout the year. It is also a great way to
thank donors personally.
With very minimal cost and effort, you have a direct way to target donors when
you need donations to fund a specific event, or any other type of assistance from
the community. You can do this with direct fundraising solicitation e-mails, or
through an e-newsletter that people can sign up for through your website.
Collecting E-mail Addresses
The key to making e-mail a successful part of your fundraising efforts is to
create a good mailing list to start with. You can start with a general list of
donors and others that are interested in your program. Make sure to involve everyone
in your program with gathering e-mail addresses from people in the community.
Use the following methods for adding people to your own mailing list:
- Your Website
You can begin by adding a "Subscribe to our e-Newsletter" feature to your site.
By allowing people to register for your e-newsletter in this way, you are collecting
e-mail addresses to use for that purpose and any other donation drives or events
that you put on. You can then refer people to your website's e-newsletter in all
of your marketing materials and any other print materials that your program produces.
- Print Materials
This is a great place to start collecting e-mail addresses, and gets people to
see your website. Simply mention your free e-newsletter, and include your website
address in all of your print materials, so that people can easily register for
this service. You can also ask them to send an e-mail to a specified address to
be subscribed to your mailing list. Put an "ad " of sorts for your e-newsletter
in your printed flyers or brochures. In your donation solicitation letters make
sure to include a blurb about your online donation capabilities because when they
donate you have a chance to collect their e-mail addresses. You should also make
an effort to ask for people's e-mail addresses in any form or application they
fill out for your program. Simply add an additional line to those forms. You'll
be surprised how quickly the e-mail addresses will add up.
- Activities, Events, In Person
You can also simply ask for people's e-mail addresses at events, and make sure
to entice them with a promise of your e-newsletter or event notification. You
can also hold a drawing at the event that asks people to enter with their names
and e-mail addresses, or their business cards. Also, as you go through your workday
and you meet new people, ask them for their e-mail addresses. While this seems
slow-going, you should include it as one more process for getting e-mail contacts.
- Coordination with Volunteers
Ask for your volunteers" e-mail addresses, and have them ask others for their
e-mail addresses. By distributing your e-newsletter to all of these people, your
program can reach not only donors, but also potential volunteers.
Setting Up a Mailing List Database
Once you have the e-mail addresses together for your mailing list, you need
to think about how you will manage those addresses for your donation mailing
lists and e-newsletters. There are many software programs available to help
you do just that. You may have an existing database of volunteers, donors and
other supporters of your program that you will need to integrate into your mailing
list database.
There are many free services for managing mailing lists, as well as some sophisticated
systems that allow you to track the publication of multiple versions of your e-newsletter
so that you can target specific groups with applicable information. Next, we will
review the choices available to you.
Mailing List Management Options
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Method |
Details |
Examples | |
Address book in your e-mail software program
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Easiest, lowest cost method for managing e-mail addresses. Manually enter e-mail
addresses into your address book. Simply use the "Blind Carbon Copy function (Bcc)"
in your e-mail program so that every address doesn't show up at the top of the
e-mail, and send your message to hundreds of people at once. With the Mail Merge
feature in Microsoft Word, you can quickly customize messages too. The downside
is that when you get a large list this becomes more of a hassle because all data
is entered manually, and there is the possibility that your message may be filtered
by some recipient's e-mail spam filters because of the large number of addresses
in the Bcc field. |
Eudora
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook Express
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Free
e-newsletter services |
Free web-based service that enables you to not only have one-way distribution
(as in an e-newsletter), but to also host your own discussion groups. You enter
your existing subscribers into the system, and manually keep track of the e-mail
addresses in the system. Another advantage is that they offer a piece of programming
code that can be copied to add a "Subscribe to our e-Newsletter" field on your
website where someone simply fills in their e-mail address, and the service takes
care of subscribing them to your e-newsletter. Another advantage is that unsubsribing
becomes an automated process. The disadvantage is that there are frequently advertisements
included in your outgoing e-mail, and your e-mail comes from their domain name
instead of yours.
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Coollist
Topica (Exchange)
Yahoo!Groups
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Paid e-mail messaging services |
These companies offer a wide range of services that include e-mail messaging.
Many of these companies offer other services such as donation processing, event
registration, and surveying of your members. There are many benefits to using
one of these companies, such as automatic subscribing and unsubscribing, easy
removal of bad addresses, customization and targeting of the message, HTML formatted
e-mails, and tracking of delivered messages. The downside is the cost - per 50,000
messages and up, and you may be paying for features that you will never need.
You'll also have to learn a new system. |
ListBuilder (Microsoft)
LocalVoice
SparkList
Topica (Email Publisher) | |
High-End
E-mail Messaging Services |
You get all of the features of the lower cost messaging services, plus database-driven
services such as personalizing the messages you send out, trackable URLs within
your message to see how many people follow a certain link, real-time reporting,
and hosting on another site so that you can use their password protected site
to manage your account. The drawbacks include the cost - a setup fee of a few
thousand dollars, and then a fee per thousand e-mails sent. |
ClickAction
Donorlink
MessageMedia
Responsys |
Keeping Your List Up-To-Date
You can treat your existing off-line database as your master list, and your mailing
list (managed through one of these methods or services) can be periodically updated
from that list. The most important point here is that you have the most current
information available in your mailing list so that you don't end up sending your
e-mail or e-newsletter to a bad address or, worse yet, sending it to someone who
has just unsubscribed. Most services that are available to help you manage your
mailing list allow you to do regular imports and exports of data, by providing
a format of the data that is easily integrated into your master database. So when
you collect a new e-mail address (via mail or an event, etc.) you will need to
make sure that information gets exported from your master database to your mailing
list database. Another key is to add some kind of code to your master database
that signals someone who has unsubscribed to your e-newsletter so that you even
though you have their e-mail address they wouldn't be added back on to your mailing
list when they just unsubscribed. You will also need to decide if unsubscribing
from your e-newsletter means they won't receive donor solicitations. If you still
plan on sending them direct donor solicitations, then you will need to keep track
of this in your database as a separate item. You can have a separate field for
e-mail, e-newsletter, and e-solicitations.
With each of these options it's a good idea to have a simple subscription process.
Keep the amount of information you require to a minimum. The easier it is to sign
up, the more interest you will get. The system you choose should provide you with
the HTML coding you will need for your website. It should look something like
this once it is on your site:
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