You probably spend a great deal of time creating and perfecting your fundraising emails. What if some of the donors and volunteers on your mailing list never even receive these fundraising appeals? It could happen. According to a 2015 Nonprofit Email Deliverability Study, one in eight nonprofit emails go straight to spam. Since you don’t want your hard work to go to waste, it is critical to find out why some of your emails aren’t delivered. Here is some advice on how your nonprofit can minimize spam rates:
Keep a balanced text to image ratio
Although it’s good to include images in your fundraising emails, you should avoid including too many of them. The Media Online recommends a 60/40 text-to-image ratio. If you overload your emails with too many pictures, they will likely get filtered as spam.
Engage with your subscribers
If you want to see how many subscribers are actually reading your content, you have to engage with them. One way to do this is to ask your supporters an open-ended question at the end of each fundraising email. For example, if your organization helps high school students obtain scholarships for college with the help of scholarship management software, ask your readers why they think some students don’t apply for scholarships. This will encourage a lot of your subscribers to reply to your fundraising emails and give their opinions. If you notice that very few supporters respond to your emails, it’s likely that your messages aren’t reaching their inboxes.
Don’t send emails too frequently
Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. If you received emails from an organization every other day, you would probably get tired of them and filter them as spam, right? That’s likely what your subscribers are doing if you send them emails too frequently. Nonprofit Marketing Guide recommends sending fundraising appeals once every quarter. If you don’t overload your subscribers’ inboxes with frequent messages, they will be more likely to actually read your emails and donate to your cause.
Personalize emails
If you take the time to personalize your fundraising appeals, your subscribers will trust you more and be less likely to flag your emails as spam. For example, you could thank your donors for last year’s gift in the first paragraph and explain how the donations were used. If your supporters see that you care about them as individuals, they will feel appreciated and read your fundraising emails.
