Most membership organizations use the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas to raise money for the coming year. Many use email to ask their members to donate to the cause. And many organizations do this very, very badly.

I have written an e-book about writing holiday donation emails. These are the emails where organizations, especially non-profits, solicit money from their members. It is often the life’s blood of a membership organization.

I invite you to download the e-book:

Writing Holiday Donation Emails

In the e-book, I outline best practices and ideas on design, content, and strategy. If you follow the principle outlined therein, I strongly believe your total donations will increase substantially and that you will lay the foundations of trust and engagement that ensure future donation drives will be all the more successful.

There is no cost for the e-book and no strings attached. I have purposefully left it without a firewall, free to anyone.

If the e-book is useful to you, however, please consider subscribing to this blog. You can subscribe using email or RSS and you will never receive spam from me. Subscribing is the only way you can be sure never to miss a post from OnlineMarketerBlog.

I hope you enjoy the e-book, Writing Holiday Donation Emails. It will be helpful to all web writers, but it is a must-read if you work in marketing or development, especially with a non-profit or other membership organization.

Feel free to leave your success stories in the comments section below. Or leave your own holiday donation email suggestions for the rest of the community to share.

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With this post, it is my goal to suggest new tactics and options for this particular client, but I hope that the advice will be useful to your company or organization as well.

The simplest way to tackle the client’s enewsletters will be to break it down into its separate parts. I think the content over all is fabulous – personal, informative, and (mostly) on message. I am really impressed by the client’s enewsletter and only have some humble suggestions.

Would these suggestions work for your non-profit or company enewsletter too?

The “From” Address

The two things that matter most in terms of improving your open rate are the “from” address and the subject line. The client uses the President’s name and a general, but branded, email address, i.e. From: John Doe <administrator@YourOrg.com>. Using the organization’s most recognizable name is good, but you cannot rely on all recipients remembering that name, plus using a title (administrator) in the email address is less inviting. I would recommend something like From John Doe, YourOrg CEO <John@YourOrg.com>.

The Subject Line

Many recent studies have shown that mentioning your organization in the subject line gets a better response. Couple this with the conventional wisdom that a subject line should be less than 50 characters and you are left with little space to work with. The client (understandably) tried to include the most information it could into the subject line.

While I risk sounding crass, the subject line is not intended to inform, but to entice. Which is a more exciting subject line: “Conference 1, conference 2, and conference 3″ or “The 3 conferences you can’t afford to miss”? I recommend Copyblogger for some great advice on headlines. (If your searches for subject line advice are not producing, try using “headlines” – the same logic applies.)

The Body

The body of the client’s enewsletter was great. It was a two-column enewsletter with the main section on the left side. The President’s letter came first, followed by news items decreasing in size and importance. The smaller right column was used for a table of contents, interview/feature, event notices, and other various opportunities. In terms of priorities, this is spot-on.

(Forgive an aside: I once worked with [not for] a great organization that had an enewsletter problem. The problem was that the mission was broad, the workers valued, the issues timely, and the cause just. Hence, everyone thought everything – especially their thing – was the single most important thing for the enewsletter. And the enewsletter became a mangled amalgamation – a Frankenstein formed by committee. I don’t think that’s what happened in this client’s case, but it could be. If so, my prayers are with you.)

I mention this because the client has great – albeit a lot of – information. I would encourage the client to cut as much from the body as possible, despite its worth. While the information is good, it feels like a Thanksgiving dinner – a lot of juicy, heavy stuff. I don’t know what I should eat first and I get lost in the gravy. If most people spend less than a minute with your email, think about how much they would be ignoring. It’s time to break up the emails, sending more per month with less information. The benefit is two-fold: your audience is reminded of your work more often and they consume more of your information over time.

Dynamic Content

The client has a vibrant mission at both the national and state level. But when someone from Florida gets information about your Alaska chapter, it risks being a deterrent to reading. Your audience wants messages tailored directly to them.

While this client is restricted by their email vendor from sending dynamic content based on the recipient’s interests, for instance, they can lay the ground work. Create a profile page and encourage the audience to add at least their state and maybe a couple of interests. Then pull those results into an excel or CSV file and subsequently upload it to your email or CRM system (the system should match and de-dupe, but read up on it first). While you may not be able to cut the state-specific information from the general enewsletter quite yet, this will allow you to send other state-specific emails that are bound to have great results.

Images

The client used images frequently, but not overwhelmingly. Plus, I tested the enewsletter with images disabled and there was no problem – they were not big enough to inhibit readability. Well done!

Tangential Information

Always try to organize your information in some simple way. I have worked with many groups who wanted to toss in a bunch of different information at the bottom of the email (Frankenstein by committee, again), but this encourages readers to ignore it. Use bolded call-outs to delineate topics and break up the text. You can often group emails issue catagories, local action, or action type (“Please help today!”). This will draw the reader’s eye and make clear any requests.

Tangential Information (Right Column)

A right-hand column is a seemingly perfect place to list second tier or tangential information. However, you risk banner blindness. The client is stymied in this case due to their email vendor, but I would encourage others to experiment with using a pull-quote style – adding a box inside the main text rather than a totally separate column.

Anchor Text

This client was better than most when it came to anchor text. But even the small percentage of links that shows text of “here” or “more” or “click me” are wasted opportunities (this client did not do this often, but you get my point). First, search engines use anchor text to determine what your article is about, so get in the habit. But even if this is solely enewsletter content, people are going to notice underlined words in blue. This will result in more clicks, plus your metrics results will be easier to read on the back-end.

The Gist

More and more emarketers are realizing that email is still one of the best ways to reach potential supporters and it continues to provide the best ROI possible. Non-profits are especially poised to take advantage of this considering the emotional responses they can provoke and (usually) the lack of funds. This particular client’s content is great and yours probably is too – but don’t stop there.

Take-Aways

Here are a few final thoughts:

• Continue to test. Even with most rudimentary systems and email vendors, you can almost always figure out a way to test. (Once, when my system did not allow A/B testing, I rigged it to send the “A” email to everyone whose last name began with a letter A-M and sent the “B” email to people with surnames from N-Z.) It can be crude and take a little time, but wouldn’t it be nice to explain to your boss the insights you were able to garner from your list?
• I’m serious about the subject line – practice, test, repeat. Some of the most successful emailers spend as much time on the 10 words in their subject line as it takes to write the entire email. How much do you spend? (Think about it like this: not everyone will read your email, but everyone on your list is likely to see the subject line. What would you impart about your mission even if they didn’t click? Or how could you make your message irresistible so they would have to open it?)
• Send less more often. Sometimes this isn’t possible. If your organization has a tradition of monthly enewsletters, every staff member will want to be featured in it. Instead, sell them on the opportunity to toute their content in a separate email. Pare down the giant monthly enewsletter and start sending tidbits more often. Emails are snacks, not Thanksgiving dinners.

I’d like to extend a hearty thank you to the client! They do great work and I know their success will continue. I hope I was able to help them and possibly some others of you out there. I hope these suggestions help!

Here’s a viable candidate for the mistake most often made by well-intentioned marketers: they over-design and don’t do enough usability testing. For instance, have you ever opened an email only to be greeted by one huge white box with a red “x” in it? No Sweat makes some great all-union-made clothes, but their enewsletter is one big image. And images are disabled automatically by most email vendors (including Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and AOL – that’s a lot of your email audience).

Secondly, don’t forget the preview pane. Most Outlook users only view your email through their preview pane and this has two major results: emails viewed through the preview pane without enabling images do not count as opens and the preview pane blocks most of your email’s content.

Hence, advise your boss to relax a little when it comes to open rates (especially you B2Bers) and remember to design with the preview pane in mind. If your audience only sees the first 2-4 square inches in the upper left corner of your email, make them important!

I used a table of contents to good effect in a former job and we increased our open rate substantially because readers knew from the preview pane whether they wanted to read the full content of the email. And take special care to craft really intriguing subject lines and headlines.

Keep your logo prominent and small so that they know it comes from a trusted source if they can see the image and so it doesn’t take up too much valuable space if they can’t.

The art guys in your office are probably really good at what they do, but don’t forget that marketers are responsible in the end. Use their talents but don’t let them dictate what goes where. In my personal experience, I have found art directors very understanding and willing to work with me, once they understand the limitations imposed by the medium. (After all, they want their work to be seen too!) This article from 2005 still has relevant material about blocked images and preview pane hassles.

If you found this series useful, consider subscribing to OnlineMarketerBlog. I never spam – you’ll just be sure never to miss an important article. And if you are already a subscriber, thanks! Feel free to forward any post to friends or co-workers.

I will review the company’s last few online communications, their website, their mission, and their current communications strategy. I will then present whatever I think will best promote the company and communicate their story to their members or customers – probably along the lines of 1-2 emails they can use and a write-up of the corresponding strategy.

If you’re interested, email me at ireallylikerobots [at] gmail [dot] com. I will need the URL of your business and a brief description of your online efforts thus far. The deadline for entering the contest is Tuesday, April 15.

Judging the winner will be highly subjective, but I will take several factors into account, including mission (doing good for the world: good; corrupting America’s youth: bad), need (non-profits over multi-national corporations), and friendliness. The content and strategy I write will be yours to use or not use as you choose. Everything will be free, with no strings attached. All I require is that I be allowed to write about the process. (Note: I have no problem “blinding” your company if you desire, but I will need to roughly describe it, at least.)

I will work on your enewsletter and strategy during the last half of April. I intend to deliver the final product in early May. (The work will occur during my nights and weekends, so please be a little flexible.)

You know my history with online communications from my About page, as well as recent posts about Threadless and Moosejaw. I know my stuff and I’m excited to put it to work for your company. Email me and let me know how I can help. Let’s have some fun!

(And if you like what you’ve read here, please consider subscribing to the blog via Feedburner. Thanks!)

One call to action in an email is the most effective way to ellicite response. The more offers you have, the more confused readers become…

The Obama campaign was wise to streamline their message. (Besides, they send out other messages that allow other types of engagement. A donation ask after big wins builds momentum and makes readers feel like part of a movement.)

Feel free to read Why the Presidential Candidates Flunked the Email Test and let me know what you think. My full comments can be found at the bottom of page four.

Rosengren is correct in his assertion that you shouldn’t send recipients irrelevant content. But it’s also important the remember that each of these emails is part of a larger campaign. That campaign is going to be offering different information or asking for various assistance over time.

I believe it’s wiser to look beyond the one-off emails and scope out the lifecycle of the supporter throughout the campaign. (It goes without saying that this extends beyond politics. Any time you are asking someone to do something, it is a campaign of sorts.)

You wouldn’t walk up to someone and ask for money. Likewise, you want to spend a couple of emails developing a relationship – giving access or information are great ideas (and often over-looked). Create some trust, build their belief in your work, and then see if they can contribute financially. That is the recipe for success.