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Designing Stronger Nonprofit Calls to Action. When your nonprofit decides to build a site, you should have certain goals in mind.

Designing Stronger Nonprofit Calls to Action

This could be boosting fundraising, increasing volunteerism or any other number of mission-driven aims. The Guide to Creating Fundraising Appeals that Work. All year you’ve (hopefully) been building and nurturing relationships, telling stories about how donor support impacts your mission, and making plans for the biggest season of giving.

The Guide to Creating Fundraising Appeals that Work

End of Year. As you know, a successful fundraising strategy takes months, sometimes a full year, of preparation. And since over 20% of online giving happens in December alone, it’s never too early for your organization to start preparing the year-end appeal. This past January, Steve MacLaughlin analyzed 320 emails sent to him from 55 nonprofit organizations between December 1st and 31st of 2013. He found that the best email campaigns of December had a mix of: good offers, clear messaging, targeted segmentation, and mobile friendly messages. If your donors’ inboxes are anything like Steve’s, your end of year fundraising appeal is one in a stack of a few hundred. 10 Persuasive Tips for Writing Fundraising Appeals. What inspires people to donate their hard-earned money to a stranger’s cause?

10 Persuasive Tips for Writing Fundraising Appeals

And how do these people choose which of the thousands of noble causes to donate their limited resources to? It all starts with your fundraising appeal – it is your first and most important chance to connect with a potential donor. You have to accomplish a lot in your appeal: explain your cause, demonstrate why it’s important, and prove to your readers that their money will be best spent with you. Persuasive writing convinces people to make donations, plain and simple. If your fundraising appeal doesn’t have a clear point of view, specific asks, and good storytelling, you are not going to convince people to donate. A Detailed Look at My (Non-Aggressive) Email List Strategy.

A lot of the strategies that I implement here on SPI are a direct result of seeing what other people are doing – and then doing the exact opposite.

A Detailed Look at My (Non-Aggressive) Email List Strategy

For example, most people don’t share their income publicly online, while I have my Monthly Income Reports. A lot of people say to stick to one platform or medium and own it. 10 Smart Ways to Grow Your Email List. Email is still the best cost-effective marketing tool to grow your business.

10 Smart Ways to Grow Your Email List

These 10 tips will help grow your email list and bring more business. March 11, 2013 Quick question: Is the number-one marketing tool to grow your small business: a) Facebook, b) Google+, or c) Email ? 25 Clever Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing List. I have some bad news: Your email marketing database degrades by about 22.5% every year.

25 Clever Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing List

6 Stupid-Simple (and Free) Ways to Grow Your Email List. At AppSumo, we built the base of our business by growing our email list to more than 750,000 subscribers.

6 Stupid-Simple (and Free) Ways to Grow Your Email List

And even though AppSumo had thousands upon thousands of email subscribers, my personal blog’s email list had just 12,000. So in 2014, I made it my personal goal to hit 50,000 subscribers on my blog, OkDork.com. I tried many different plugins and strategies, each with their own merits. Tag: list building. 4 Tools to Grow Your Email List Fast. Do you wonder why you don’t have engaged readers on your blog?

4 Tools to Grow Your Email List Fast

Do people come and then leave your website, without letting you know if they would return? If your web analytics software is showing that you’re attracting more new visitors than returning ones, you might recognize that you have to work harder on engaging with your audience, rather than trying to get more traffic. Let’s take a look at those two types of visitors. You attract new visitors to your website by using social media tactics and guest posting.

“Word of Mouth” is certainly the best traffic generation source that you could desire. On the other hand, returning visitors usually need a strong reason to come to your website again. In a previous article, I have mentioned the importance of email marketing. In 2013, there were 1.23 billion Facebook active accounts and 232 million active Twitter accounts. According to the Radicati Group There were 3.6 billion email accounts in 2013. 2 tips for capturing email addresses 1. 2. Email Marketing is Changing – The Rise of Mobile and Triggered Emails. Email marketing has been used for years to keep in contact and maintain relationships with customers.

Email Marketing is Changing – The Rise of Mobile and Triggered Emails

Lately, with the increasing use of smartphones, we’ve seen the effectiveness continue to rise. However, many companies are not adapting to mobile which could have disastrous effects. Click on the infographic below to see a full sized view: View an enlarged version of this infographic » How Colors Affect Conversions - Infographic. Color has a powerful psychological influence on the human brain.

How Colors Affect Conversions - Infographic

Learn how others have harnessed it and how you can do the same. Click on the infographic below to view a larger version: View an enlarged version of this infographic » Click here to download a .pdf version of this infographic. Want to display this infographic on your site? 60-ways-to-grow-your-list.pdf. 19 Best Non-Profit Websites (And Why They're Awesome) Acumen Fund The Acumen Fund has one of the most innovative designs we’ve seen. The homepage clearly tells their story, with sections on “What We’ve Accomplished”, “What We’ve Learned”, “Where We’re Headed”, and “How You Can Help”. Each section features information told in an infographic style to keep the visitor engaged throughout their entire story.

And most importantly, the big black Donate button follows you the entire way down the page. We love this site. Resistance Is Futile: 17 Calls-to-Action You Can't Help But Click. Think about all the times you've signed up for things in your life. Did you once download Evernote? Dropbox? Spotify? 6 Ways to Segment Like a Pro. By now, you’ve probably heard marketers harping on the benefits of using segmentation to increase email engagement, build brand loyalty, and increase email open and click-through rates. Using segmented lists, you can send targeted emails based on criteria like consumer interests, activities, scores, and more. “…Most firms have moved from mass marketing to segmented marketing, in which they target carefully chosen submarkets or even individual consumers.”– Principles of Marketing, Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong, 2009 But with so many options for segmentation, it can be hard to know where to start.

What can you segment beyond sorting lists into prospects, leads, and customers? Check out the list below for a few ideas to get you segmenting like a pro: 1. While most companies are already weeding out their prospects to place on email lists or drip campaigns, you can take this one step further. 2. Segmentation can be used both before and after events like webinars or trade shows. 3. 4. 4 Easy Email List Segmentation Ideas. Blasting emails is a blast from the past, so to speak.

Email marketers who regularly deploy the same content to their entire list will likely find their list (and revenue) dwindling in the long run. It’s all about segmentation. Even the least sophisticated email platforms have the capability to segment lists. So take advantage of it. The Most Overlooked Email Marketing Strategy: Segmentation. 27 Ways to Slice & Dice Your Email List for Better Segmentation. Segmentation and Groups.

Subject Lines for Your Last-Minute Email Appeals. Online fundraising for Non Profits. 300 More Email Subject Lines from End of Year Fundraising. Effects of List Segmentation on Email Marketing Stats. Subject Line Comparison. New email marketers often ask us, “How should I write my subject lines so that more recipients will open my emails?” In order to answer that question, we analyzed more than 40 million emails sent from customers through MailChimp, and singled out the ones with the highest and lowest open rates. Then we pulled 20 from each pile, and put their subject lines in a side-by-side comparison. The highest open rates were in the range of 60-87 percent, while the lowest performers fell in the dismal 1-14 percent range.

Do you see a pattern below? Observations On the “best” side, you’ll notice the subject lines are pretty straightforward. The Secret Formula for Subject Lines. MailChimp for Nonprofits.