“Email Marketing A New Nonprofit on the com Street”

My PuppyTime is a nonprofit organization; they sell handcrafted dog toys and essentials to pay for the care and keeping of abandoned sheltered dogs.

My PuppyTime, a downtown brick, and mortar organization have decided to expand into the virtual world of Social Media (SM).  Their current website is mostly informational:  who to contact, street address and phone numbers.  All efforts to attract volunteers and donors are focused on the people in their immediate neighborhood.

My PuppyTime hired a social media expert to set up a twitter feed, Facebook page, and place them on other SM networks.

My PuppyTime believes their sterling neighborhood reputation will follow them to their online Social Media presence.

For My PuppyTime, the sky’s is the limit.

Like My PuppyTime, more nonprofit organizations are turning to social media channels, as they realize this is a great outlet for them to tell their story, engage with supporters and create a loyal following of donors and volunteers, from all over.

A great beginning to attract and engage loyal following employs social media branding, coupled with a website.  To create a complete online presence, it’s essential to include email marketing, the glue that holds social media and your website together.

Social media should not be a standalone online presence solution, it should be integrated, affiliated and used to attract those aligned with your organization’s goals.  It falls in line with engagement, getting a person interested or engaged in your cause.  Social media needs to be part of your overall communication and digital strategy, circling back to your pictures, posts, blogs and website all supported by email marketing.

When email marketing takes the stage, you can ‘speak’ directly to individual members, direct your email communications to the ideal member, based on the supporter profiles you’ve developed, and the demographic data collected from all digital channels.  (There are several social media management tools available to help you develop audience personas).

When email marketing is added to the mix, the results are far superior then all the digital avenues put together. Results come from member engagement – here are a few email marketing strategies to consider when creating a social campaign with email marketing as the foundation:

• Write tweets that are easy to share, include them in your emails.
• Draw in your audience, tell them a good story that will move them.  Perhaps highlight a volunteer of the month of the month, or how their donation helped this year…Don’t share dry statistics in all your emails, (a link to a webpage would be better) people like to know that their contributions helped the bottom line, but there are more interesting things to write about besides numbers.
• Provide value in your emails for each reader; inspire, encourage and motivate them.
• Ask them a question, get them thinking and use a survey to help you focus on the issues that are relevant to them.  Entice them to fill it out by holding a drawing for free tickets to your next fundraiser event or a chance to have a profile piece on their favorite topic.
• Use all the email tools available, such as autoresponders, triggered emails, and transactional responses.  Create a campaign of email messages sent out on a schedule, perhaps triggered by an action that your subscriber performed:  i.e. clicking on a link for more information
• Do you blog?  Send out an email with a link and a teaser.
• And always ask for comments and feedback, because you want to listen to your members, and there’s no way better to improve communication than asking a question.
• And every email message should contain your social links, so your followers can find you no matter what media they’re browsing.

An email is a powerful tool, it can and does act as the cement that holds all your marketing strategies together.  Email engages people to act, and it’s easy to use, cost-effective with high-end results.

We can start you off with email marketing for $10 a month with unlimited messaging*   We look forward working with you.