Step 4: Compose Email Works of Beauty

A well-written email has three characteristics: It’s personal, it’s a fast read, and it’s relevant. 

Be Warm and Friendly
 Good email writing is friendly and conversational. While there are certainly times where the newsy, facts-only journalistic style can work, most nonprofit newsletters should be much more personal, and even a little chatty (that’s chatty, not catty). Speak directly to your reader by calling them “you” and refer to yourself and your nonprofit as “We” or “I.”
 
People give to and support nonprofits for highly subjective reasons. Your supporters get something deeply personal out of their affiliation with your organization as a donor, volunteer, or advocate. So why would your response back to these passionate people be institutional, monolithic, and completely objective?
 
If you find yourself in the “501(c)(3) speaks to the masses” writing mode, you need to break out of it if you want your email communications to be successful. Here are a few ways to make your writing feel more personal to your readers.
 
Use bylines. Let your readers know who is writing the article, so they imagine that person’s voice in their heads (even if that voice bears no resemblance to the real thing). Let those writers refer to themselves as “I.”

Make people central to your content. Include your staff, donors, volunteers, clients and others by name in your articles.
 
Tell stories. We remember stories much more easily than facts and figures, which means we can share them more easily with friends and family. Tell stories in your e-newsletters to engage your donors in your work, to reinforce their giving decisions, to inspire them to do more, and to encourage more word-of-mouth marketing on your behalf.
 
Include headshots or photos with people. Go beyond the text and show your readers who’s talking and who you are talking about.
 
Ensure replies go to a person. If someone hits “reply” to your enewsletter, will a real person see it and respond, or will the reader get an auto-reply about that email address not being checked? Make it the former.
 
Keep it Brief 
Email should be a fast read, but most nonprofit newsletters are way too long. If you recently switched from a print newsletter to an enewsletter, we are willing to bet the bank that your e-newsletter is too long. 
 
We like the 500 word target. Sure, we break it too in our own newsletters, but it’s a great goal. In fact, some email marketers say your email newsletters should be even shorter – just 250 words. 
 
That’s not much space. But it makes perfect sense.
 People are craving empty inboxes, which means they are skimming their email even more than they used to. They simply aren’t going to scroll through a long email, reading it word for word.

People are craving empty inboxes, which means they are skimming their email even more than they used to. They simply aren’t going to scroll through a long email, reading it word for word.
 
Hit the Mark
You can’t make someone care about the contents of your email if they don’t already care at least a little bit. If your email isn’t relevant to your reader in some way, it won’t get read at all. This goes back to Step 3 and knowing what your audience wants. Are you delivering that?

​So how do we convince our readers in just a few seconds that what we have to say to them really is relevant? With fabulous micro-content, which takes us to Step 5. 

Send the Right Amount of Email
 How often can you write interesting, engaging content that your readers will enjoy receiving? That’s how often you should send your newsletter. 
 
When in doubt or just starting out, try to send a newsletter every 4-6 weeks and adjust from there. You want people to remember you and look forward to receiving your newsletter, but you don’t want to drive them crazy with too much email.
 
If you are providing on-target, valuable information each and every time (or darn close), your readers won’t feel bugged by frequent mailings. If you don’t have enough content for a newsletter every two months, you either don’t know your readers or aren’t thinking creatively about ways to talk about your work.

Send the Right Amount of Email: Part II
 Here’s a sweeping generalization: Most nonprofits send e-newsletters too infrequently. If you aren’t sure whether to step up your publishing schedule or not, go for it. 
 
 Remember, shorter is better with email. So instead of sending a newsletter with three articles every six weeks, try sending one article every two weeks. It’s the same amount of content, but you are giving your supports three opportunities to connect with you, instead of just one. 
 
  If you find you just can’t deliver the goods, slow down. If your unsubscribe rate goes up, ask why people are leaving your list and, if frequency is the problem, back off. 
 
 It’s all about knowing what works best for your list! ​ 

Create a “Welcome” Series
 After you send that automated message that lets your subscribers know they are on your list, what comes next? It may just be the next edition of your e-newsletter. But, you might consider a different approach called a Welcome Series. 

A Welcome Series uses your ESP’s trigger function (also called an autoresponder) to send out a set series of messages, usually timed a few days or weeks apart. So, a new subscriber might get a welcome confirmation message on that first day, followed by another informational message three days later, and a third message 10 days later. These are evergreen messages – the content will be still be good no matter what day it goes out. You write these messages once, and only update the series every now and then as needed. The idea is to warm up that new supporter before adding them to your regular communications cycle. 

​If you go this route, it’s best to exclude the supporter from all other emails until the Welcome Series is complete. Otherwise, the sequence of messages they receive might not make sense.

Micro-what, You Ask? 
 Microcontent are those small phrases that readers look to first when they are skimming, like subject lines, headlines, and subheadings. Microcontent should be able to stand alone and still communicate a message because it is often displayed on its own, like an article headline displayed on a search result page or the subject line of your emails.


taken with permission from, The Nonprofit Email Marketing Guide: 7 Steps to Better Email Fundraising & Communications.Written by Kivi Leroux Miller of NonprofitMarketingGuide.com. ​