By Erik Emanuelli

Have you ever thought about using mass email services for cold email, and then automating the follow-up emails you send to your list?

This type of setup could contribute significantly to increase the interest and engagement, guiding them through the process of acquisition and increasing conversions of your business.

Whether people who initially engage may or may not be ready to buy the products or services you offer, automating subsequent emails will be very useful to send targeted messages suited to the stage where your potential customers are, “accompanying” them towards the purchase.

There are several strategies to optimize the use of automated emails.

Today I will introduce a basic process: simple, but very effective for email marketing.

What Are Autoresponders

Autoresponders are programs that are prepared in advance and send automatically to the subscribers specific messages at certain time intervals, from the moment of their inclusion on the list.

Choosing the right ESP can make the difference between the success or failure of your email marketing campaign.

Autoresponders offer you a simple and powerful automation tool to create a series of messages to be sent to people interested in your product and/or service. A clever option is to segment subscribers in order to target each list with relevant information, based on different interests or needs.

Why Automating Your Emails

Once created, automated email flows allow to keep in touch with your audience in the medium-long term without, actually, having to do anything (aside responding to any direct requests from end recipients).

Automating emails is very effective because:

– allows you to maintain regular contact with your subscribers;

– gives you the opportunity to send targeted messages, after segmenting your audience, creating particular groups of people according to their interests or needs;

– increases your credibility. Through autoresponders, you can provide valuable content to your audience (and then offering specific products and services);

– you may track what content, titles or call-to-action work better than others (the majority of autoresponder services have the function to analyze the number of openings, clicks or cancelations);

– helps you keeping your list active, by eliminating those subscribers who are actually not interested in what you offer (these people will probably unsubscribe from your list spontaneously, saving you time and money to keep them in your newsletter).

How to Automate Your Messages

Creating automated emails is vital to have a connection with your audience and generate profits for your business over time.

After choosing the autoresponder service you prefer, follow these simple steps to automate your emails and generate conversions.

Identify the different groups of people to whom you want to send emails and the goal of your campaign. One of the best ways to segment people who are part of your list is to monitor how and when they have subscribed to your list. For example: Have they downloaded a resource on a particular topic? Or, have they requested a quote? Another idea may be to create separate lists for past clients (with who you are not in touch anymore), for people who have shown interest in your services (but may not yet be ready to buy), or for those that have actively requested information on the possibility to purchase the products or services you offer. As you can imagine, these groups of people are located in different parts of the sales process. You may want to read these 15 quick tips to improve your email marketing in this post on SmartInsights.com

Organize the content and create your campaigns. Depending on the type of content to which the various groups of people are interested, start building a collection of messages and begin creating your campaigns. Pay attention! Remember that one of the objectives of your emails sequence is to increase your credibility. It’s important, therefore, to alternate in a bal...

I personally think that entrepreneurs and small business owners are more at risk for anxiety and depression because they place so much pressure on themselves to be successful. No one wants to be viewed as a failure, so we will often work an ungodly number of hours and experience periods of isolation that can be downright miserable.

When things are going great, the sky is the limit – but when they aren’t going so great, we often feel the lowest of low. Unfortunately, these highs and lows are all too common.

Another reason I think that entrepreneurs and small business owners often have anxiety and suffer from depression is because they don’t really open up to friends and family members about things they are experiencing in their businesses, for fear of being judged. or again, being viewed as a failure. I know that there have been plenty of times when I’ve simply suffered in silence, rather than open up to others about things I am going through.

And last, but certainly, not least, a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners simply don’t take care of themselves. We are so focused on the end goal, that things like working out, eating well and getting enough sleep at night aren’t a top priority. We put our businesses first, with everything else coming in second.

And as a female, I strongly feel that all of this is compounded by the unique challenges that we face when it comes to trying to juggle home, starting/running a business, health and the never-ending laundry list of items that we just never have enough time to complete. It’s a lot to take in.

While it’s certainly no end-all, be-all solution, I’ve found that simple things like exercising regularly and eating a healthy diet helps tremendously. I then supplement this with turmeric, ashwagandha and CBD.

Social media marketing can be difficult to master because the Internet constantly changes and shifts — not just year-to-year, but also sometimes day-to-day. And let’s face it, the last thing you want is to waste your marketing efforts.

The number of people on social media grows every year. Facebook has around 2.27 billion active users now, and Instagram is the next largest social media network and is snowballing. There are dozens of social media sites, but for this article, we’ll look at the most commonly used platforms.

Although effective techniques vary, there are some big social media marketing mistakes you should avoid in 2019 and some you should avoid forevermore.

1. Targeting the Wrong People

If you spend $20 on an ad campaign and have no idea who the message is for, then you might as well light $20 on fire and toss it in a metal trash can.

No matter which social media platform you market on, your first step is understanding your target audience. For example, if you place content on your Facebook page, what is the purpose of that content, and exactly which people will you reach? Facebook allows for highly targeted advertising to specific audience segments, so figuring out who that audience is makes your marketing much more effective.

2. Spamming Your Followers

You’ve worked hard to gain followers on your social media pages. However, if all you do is post spammy sales pitches non-stop, you’re wasting your potential. People see ads all day long — from the time they wake up and turn on the TV or check their phones to the time they go to sleep when the day is done.

Understandably, people are sick of promotional material. Instead, think about the pain points your customers deal with and address those with content meant to solve their problems.

Agriculture Pest Control Services manages to address an issue — how to know whether or not you have a pest problem in your yard and information for those worried about this issue. Instead of merely trying to sell their services, they work on educating the public about the issue. If the user needs pest control for their agriculture, they’ll likely turn to Agriculture Pest Control Services for advice. This company doesn’t make the mistake of only pushing their services — they also add value for their followers.

3. Forgetting the Hashtag

Events are the perfect opportunity for connecting with consumers and driving interest on social media. Those who can’t attend the live event get updates by searching for a specific hashtag. A big mistake some event planners make is failing to create a hashtag for the event. Ideally, the hashtag is in place long before the occasion, and followers are informed about it ahead of time.

Imagine a tradeshow booth where visitors stop by and take a photo with your brand logo and colors and then upload it with a hashtag. You could even offer a prize and draw a winner based on Twitter posts using the hashtag.

4. Using Bots

As your company grows and more people follow you on social media, it’s tempting to use bots for interaction. However, this can and has gone wrong for companies in the past. Bots don’t always understand the little nuances of the English language and respond in strange ways, making it clear a real person isn’t behind the response.

Use bots to let followers know you got their message and will research and respond within a set time, but don’t use bots for an actual response.

5. Buying Fake Followers

Don’t just worry about how many followers you have. You also need to focus on the quality of the followers you have. A percentage of followers on social media are bots and not real people, which wastes your time and energy. Invest in seeking out real people through groups about your industry and interacting with those who have authority in the field.

NASA is an excellent example of a Twitter page with a strong following of about 30 million followers. However, they only follow 297 people, so they aren’t simply following people to get follows back. While ...

Google, Costco, Starbucks — these companies have dominated lists of “best places to work” for years. That’s because these companies place an emphasis on cultivating a positive corporate culture that benefits all workers, not just those at the top.

If you want your employees to wake up excited to get to work, it might be time to start paying attention to workplace trends that affect how they feel and how they perform their duties. The following lessons from successful corporate cultures can guide your efforts to create a valuable workplace environment of your own — and may be even catapult your business to the top of the “best places to work” charts.

Invest in Your Leaders

Your leaders are the role models for the rest of your workforce, so it is most critical that they represent your workplace culture appropriately. The easiest way to do this is to promote from within, like Costco is well known to do. The wholesale chain rarely fills openings with outside hires; it prefers to find dedicated and talented workers from lower levels to leverage their familiarity with the company and its culture to influence growth. By recognizing high performers within your business and using them to fill management vacancies, you can gain similar benefits.

Another solution is developing corporate culture through your leaders. You can invest in greater trainings and team-building for management, instilling in your current leaders the values you hope will guide your business. You can also choose to hire leaders with personal brands that match your desired workplace culture. As long as you are giving sufficient attention to your leaders in some form or another, you should end up with the corporate environment you envision.

Use Diverse Communication Strategies

When your startup is small, you get accustomed to communicating with your scant workforce in a certain way. If you only have one or two workers to deal with, you might just tell everyone face-to-face; if you have a few more employees on staff, you might send out a group email and call it good. However, simple ways to communicate start to fail when your business grows bigger. To maintain a stable corporate culture — one that employees understand and want to be part of — you need to diversify how you communicate.

Google works to unite its vast and diverse workforce with a bevy of communication strategies that promise openness. There are frequent all-hands meetings, where workers at all levels are encouraged to ask questions and push boundaries. The company also boasts more than 87,000 Groups, which are email lists organized around different topics. What’s important to note is that Google meets employees where they are, appealing to all communication and learning styles. Thus, no one is left out of the loop or in the dust.

Make Employee Wellness Your Top Priority

When an employee gets sick, they can’t work.This should seem straightforward, but within many organizations, leadership focuses so intently on performance that it forgets that health and wellness matter. Unfortunately, too many workplaces crack the proverbial whip, which results in lower morale and less attachment to company success — as well as untreated mental and physical disabilities.

Believe it or not, one of the best employers for PTO is flatpack furniture giant IKEA. Starting from their first day on the job, IKEA employees (full- or part-time) start earning vacation time, and that time can be used in one-hour increments instead of the per-day slices at most other corporations. Employees typically earn between three and 10 weeks of PTO every year, and they are encouraged to use all of it. You can institute a similar policy at your workplace, or you might opt for more standard PTO — but whatever you do, you must ensure that sick employees are properly cared for.

Ensure Trust Is a Defining Company Value

It doesn’t matter whether your company is traditionally professional, with mahogany wood paneling and a serif-font logo, or whether...

It’s 2019, and while the desktop version of your website is awesome, it’s time to go mobile.

It’s expected that there’ll be 2.7 billion smartphone users by the end of this year, and users are now spending 69% of their media time on their mobile device. With stats like these, there’s no time to waste. Your customers are browsing and buying products on their mobile devices, your competitors are optimizing their websites for the mobile experience – and now it’s time you did the same.

Fortunately, this doesn’t mean you need to make massive changes. In fact, optimizing for the mobile experience is fairly simple when you’ve got a no nonsense guide to show you exactly what you need to do. Let’s take a look!

Enhance the UX

The user experience will be key to the success of your website. Research has shown that mobile users are generally super impatient, which means that poor user experience will be disastrous to your lead generation goals.

Essentially, the way the mobile version of your website looks and feels will be different from your desktop version. This means that you need to make certain changes so that the user experience isn’t ruined.

For example, you’ll need to make your buttons larger and create a good amount of space between them. If they’re too close together, it will be too easy for the user to tap the wrong one by mistake.

It’s a good idea to make your fonts larger too so that your site visitors don’t have to zoom-in.

Eliminate any unnecessary information from your website and reduce the number of images you use. Switch off autocorrect for forms, too.

Keep Menus Short

Menus on your mobile website should be short and sweet. Mobile users do not want to be scrolling through an endless list of options before they find what they actually want.

It’s a good idea to restrict menu items to three at the most. If you need more, simply add a “More” button at the end which opens up a new drop-down menu for the least important options.

If you’re not even sure what your most and least important options are, check your analytics to see what content and pages users are interacting with the most.

Have Mobile Friendly Content

Mobile users behave differently to desktop users. While long form content can produce more leads than short form on desktop, you should generally go for shorter copy on the mobile version of your website.

Mobile users are in more of a hurry and like to browse ‘on the go.’ Make sure to adapt your content to their needs by making it shorter, more concise and more direct.

This also goes for your headlines too. A headline like “10 Reasons Insomniacs Find It Hard To Sleep at Night’ will be too long for mobile screens. Shorten all your headlines while still keeping them compelling. For example, we could change that aforementioned headline to “Why Insomniacs Find It Hard To Sleep.”

In short, your content needs to be super duper easy to read.

And because mobile users are in such a hurry, it’s really important that you design your website in such a way that they have fast access to the most important content that matters to them.

Use a Responsive Framework

A responsive framework will make your life – and your site visitors’ life – so much easier. A responsive framework, such as Bootstrap, automatically adjusts everything on your website – from your images to the text – according to the device that’s being used.

Without a responsive framework, you risk the mobile version of your website looking messy and near-impossible to use. With a responsive framework, the mobile version of your site looks beautiful.

Use Your Logo To Improve Navigation

Logo’s matter. A logo strengthens your brand, makes you memorable and it helps to build trust with your audience.

On the mobile version of your website, your logo should act as a link that boosts navigation by directing users straight back to your homepage. This is important because users need to be able to get back to your homepage without any hassle. If they get lost, they might just bai...

If you’re a freelancer, you’ll likely know what it’s like to find yourself in a feast or famine cycle, where you’re either swamped with work or looking everywhere for it.

But just because many people find themselves in this cycle, doesn’t mean it has to be this way.

You can grow a successful freelance business, where you’ll no longer need to worry about where the next contract or paycheck is coming from.

Scaling your freelance business to profitable and sustainable heights requires intentional work. Just like every other regular business structure, it’s difficult to move out of your current phase without a proper plan.

Here are six important steps you can start with, and how they can influence your freelance business for maximum growth

1. Consider your why

Having a strong internal motivation for growing your business is the first step towards achieving it.

Will it be hard to do what it takes to run a successful freelance business? Sure—if it wasn’t, everyone would be making six figures.

But knowing your why will help fuel your passion and desire to grow your business.

That means firstly knowing why you want to freelance. For some people, freelancing is important because of the flexibility it provides to be there for family. For some, the drawcard is being able to travel while you work. Others prefer the ability to work across multiple projects with dream clients.

These differences matter a lot. If you’re freelancing because you want to spend more time with your family, you need to ensure that your efforts to grow your business don’t encroach on that. If they do, it’ll be hard for you to sustain them—and you’ll be miserable while doing it.

Secondly, you need to know why you want to reach six figures if you can hope to remain motivated to scale your business. Otherwise, it becomes easy (and reasonable) to let gigs pass you by in favour of spending more time with your family or traveling more.

If you have a strong reason for wanting to grow your business, write it down and keep it somewhere close as a reminder. You’ll need it when your friends are going out on a Saturday afternoon and you stay in to craft new pitches to potential clients. When the daily grind feels like a never-ending hamster wheel, remembering your why will help you stay focused on your goals.

And once you know your why, it will help guide you in planning the step-by-step actions you need to take. If you’re excited about working with particular clients, you’ll want to grow your business in a way that focuses on allowing you to do that.

2. Improve your skills

It’s easy to get stuck in your own bubble when you’re working on your own, which means your skills can quite quickly become stale. And nothing will propel your income forward faster than improving your freelance skills. Before you can expect people to pay up big for your services, you need to make sure the quality matches the price. And if you’re going to charge more than the competition, you have to outperform them too.

Clients are generally happy to pay if they know the work is going to be top quality and will require little feedback or input from them, but they’ll want to see evidence that you’re worth what you’re asking for.

There are many courses out there that are specifically tailored to freelancers and can help you become an expert in your desired field. Fiverr Learn is a good place to look, particularly if you’re using the platform for your freelance gigs, as you can publish your certifications on your profile.

“Putting in that time to get better at what you do should be your first objective.”

– Jeremy Noronha, Head of SEO at Founder, Six Figure Freelancer Audio Course

Don’t make the mistake of feeling that you need to be skilled in every area of your field. In fact, specialising in just one particular skill could make you more sought after. Just as a General Practitioner doesn’t make as much as a Cardiac Surgeon, so too will a highly specialised freelance skillset warrant a higher rate.

For anyt...

When searching for an attorney, one of the main features a prospective client is looking for is the free consultation. Clients are looking to not only have their questions answered, but also obtain a more realistic idea of how much the service will cost, and get a feel for if they trust the attorney they might be working with. There is nothing but benefits in a free consultation for the client.

The same isn’t exactly true for the attorney.

How many hours have the attorneys in your law firm lost to unqualified prospects and dead-end consultations? No matter what your answer is, we know that the number is higher than you would like it to be. Unqualified prospects are a drain on your resources and your bottom line. If only there were a way to streamline the qualifying process while still driving in a trust and value message to prospective leads.

The good news is there is, and it’s called video.

Video Appeals To A Broader Market

Have you ever wondered where your leads are looking when they start the search for an attorney? The answer is into the palm of their hands. In a recent survey, 71% of respondents said that they used their handheld mobile devices to conduct their search for an attorney, or when looking for legal advice.

This is an important number because the type of content they are most likely to choose to engage in is often dependent upon the device they are using. For example, if a law firm were to offer a lengthy page of legal advice on their website, a mobile user would find this difficult to scroll through and read. When this happens, there are two things that can result.

They can skip over the legal advice and contact you for a consultation, using time and resources on questions they could have answered themselves. Or, they can back out and choose a law firm with a more engaging, mobile friendly site.

Neither of these is good for your firm.

Video is not only mobile friendly, but it has taken over the number one spot for preferred content. If you want to attract a larger lead base, video is the tool you need to be using.

So, video will bring more prospects to you, but if they are unqualified, is that really such a good thing? Well, no. But optimizing your video strategy to weed out unqualified leads before they reach out to you is a good thing. Here is how to make it happen.

Post Informational Videos That Answer Questions

When a prospective client comes to you for a consultation, they have questions that need to be answered. For unqualified leads, this time is usually spent going over details of why they may or may not have a case, and if the time and money invested is worth it to them. This isn’t exactly an effective use of an attorney’s time. In an ideal world, the free consultation would be spent discussing how you are going to win the case, not if it qualifies as one to begin with.

Your law firm can streamline this process by providing free content on your website, or through social media that answers the questions prospects have. For example:

A video series that focuses on the individual areas of practice within your firm, with each one highlighting the attorney’s role, their responsibilities and what they do not do.

Q&A about common issues people seek an attorney for. For example, auto accidents, personal injury, workplace discrimination, child custody issues, etc. These videos can answer the questions that prospects are most likely to present during a consultation, giving them a better idea if pursuing legal help is the best path.

A video that summarizes the legal process for specific niches. For example, everything that a bankruptcy client will need to do before filing, and what the process looks like, along with what qualifies a person for bankruptcy in the first place.

Short videos that compare cases with outcomes. For example, one personal injury case against another, and what factors made a difference in the final outcomes.

A video series that bust common myths. Law firms know all too well that there i...

Marketing is crucial for nonprofits and GoFundMe campaigns, but if you have spent any amount of time in the nonprofit sector, you know that this comes with its own seemingly impossible challenges. Nonprofits depend largely upon funders for money. When a person, business or organization sends money your way, they want to make sure that each of their hard-earned dollars is spent making an impact. They want to make a difference.

Most of them don’t feel that spending their money on marketing is achieving this goal.

Research estimates that for profit business spend about 10% of their budgets on marketing. For highly competitive industries, this number can go as high as 20%. For nonprofits, both numbers are pretty much out of the question.

You simply have too much to do with the money you do have to devote such a large amount of valuable resources to marketing.

So, you have an immediate need for marketing, but no budget to do it with. What are you supposed to do?

The answer is you become creative and resourceful. It is entirely possible to run an effective, budget friendly marketing campaign when you know where to turn for inspiration.

Here, we set you in the right direction.

Go For Grants

Many nonprofits are unaware that grants exist for the sole purpose of helping them market their cause. One of the best marketing grants available is offered by none other than Google.

Google offers $10,000 a month in Google Ad grants that help nonprofits get noticed. In all, they award $120,000 annually. If you have ever run a PPC campaign, you know the type of impact that amount of grant money can have on your marketing success. Google Ad grants increases your online visibility which is a sure way to boost donations and the number of volunteers that contact your agency. Want to know if your nonprofit is eligible? Check here to find out.

Earned Media Opportunities

Earned media refers to the opportunity to promote yourself through PR, or unpaid sources, such as featured local news articles, TV, radio or newspaper interviews and free engagement through social media channels. This type of marketing strategy is one of the most sought after by nonprofits, but also one of the most difficult to attain. Why? Because everyone wants it.

To make the most of your earned media, you need to make sure that you have positioned your nonprofit to be highly visible when opportunity comes knocking. To optimize earned media opportunities, ask yourself these questions.

What are you doing to reach out and get noticed in the community? Has your organization done anything newsworthy recently, and what do you have planned as newsworthy happenings in the near future?

What is your press release strategy?

Do You have a process for optimizing press releases on your website?

What earned media channels is your target audience interacting with on a regular basis? Are you finding ways of reaching them there?

Do you have a strategy for taking earned media and transforming it into a larger following and engagement in social media?

Are you using tools to analyze the impact of earned media channels on converting supporters, donors and volunteers?

Optimizing earned media strategies is a three-step process that involves identifying opportunities, maximizing the power of each, and making sure you are reaching your target market.

Understand Who You Really Are Marketing To

With limited marketing dollars, it becomes even more important to really understand where your support is coming from. You are looking for the person, or group of people, that can make decisions that will positively impact the future of your nonprofit.

For many nonprofits, this area of focus will be corporations, not individuals. The public, in general, is more likely to donate when they receive something tangible in return. For example, once a year, Girl Scouts take to cookie booths to gain financial support for the organization. In return for a donation you get a box of cookies and everything is great.

But, unless y...

Today, we stand on the brink of manufacturing revolution that has the potential to change the way we work, the way we live and ultimately the quality of life as we know it. We live in an age that is driven by information and automation, and it’s ushering us into a place where the established systems in manufacturing are shifting. Advancements in technology are changing the industry, and this is a great thing.

Line production robots have been used in manufacturing for decades, but the days of robots only performing repetitive, pre-programmed tasks are nearing the end. Factories are beginning to implement AI technology being in factories brings with a robotic workforce that doesn’t just perform mechanical operations, but also works more intelligently alongside human workers. Robots can serve a variety of roles in manufacturing, and perform in ways that will revolutionize the industry.

Local Factories Boom with Robotics

It wasn’t that long ago in our history that local, hometown factories were the backbones of communities across the nation. Then, with a rise in available technology and industry leaders seeking to lower their workforce expenses, manufacturing jobs moved in masses overseas where workers cost mere pennies on the dollar compared to what they cost here.

This was a purely economic move on the industry’s part, but it was devastating for laborers who had no other skill set and depended upon factory work to survive. Years were spent trying to recover and some never did. Today, advancements in technology and the lower costs of implementing them, are making it possible for manufacturing jobs to return, or stay, on local soil.

Task Force Tips, a fire hose nozzle manufacturer in Valparaiso, Indiana is an example of a local factory that is growing thanks to robotics. Lower costs have made it possible for this company to add robotic technology to its production line. In this article, the CEO Stewart McMillan says that new technology has enabled them to thrive in spite of wage driven competition from China.

But in the case of a smaller-scale factory, like Task Force Tips, the question is always how many local jobs are sacrificed for automation?

In this case, and for many other smaller factories, the answer is zero.

The number of workers on their payroll has remained unchanged. Instead of replacing workers, they have focused on retraining them, and transforming line workers into technicians with a valuable skill set. This is great both for the manufacturing industry and local economies that will benefit hugely from a skilled workforce.

This is the trend we will we with local factories. More of them will not only be able to remain open, but they will thrive with lower production costs. In the process, they will create a workforce with a valuable skill set that will keep them relevant and employable as the industry moves forward into the future.

Staying Competitive with Increased Productivity

What has been one of the key factors that has kept the US manufacturing industry from being as competitive in the worldwide industry as it could be?

The answer is simple productivity.

The industry has struggled between trying to balance technology, automation and the larger workforces that companies overseas could employee due to significantly lower wages. Stagnation in the use of technology, lack of skilled workers and smaller workforces has been the equation that has kept local factories from remaining competitive with production.

Advanced robotic technology is making it possible for manufacturers to once again thrive in productivity.

This happens through several avenues, not the least of which is that robotic technologies create a safer environment for factory workers.

Physical and mental fatigue of factory workers creates an environment where not only productivity is low, but workplace accidents and injuries are more likely to happen. Robotic technology has reduced the level of fatigue in factory workers by taking on many of the more st...

Emails have long been the method of choice for nonprofits when they need to reach out. As a nonprofit, maybe you are looking for ways to innovate and revolutionize this process. The truth is that even with social media at the forefront of marketing, email still has the potential to reach more people and lead to more conversions.

So, why do you feel like your email strategy isn’t working as well as it should?

There could be many reasons, but chances are, the one that is really holding you back is that your email doesn’t grab attention or contain the best content to engage the recipient to the point that they are willing to send funds your way. You can easily turn this around and begin writing emails that equal conversions. Here’s how to make it happen.

Add A Human Touch

When you are writing your email, of course you are looking to generally target as many potential donors as possible. The more people you can reach with one email, the less resources you need to spend and the more conversions are possible. Except, that in doing this, we forget who people like to give to.

Other people.

Nobody really wants to open their wallet to an automated sounding email or another nonprofit with no personal appeal. Here are few proven strategies for humanizing your email campaign.

Use your first and last name as the sender, rather than your organization name. One study showed that this strategy resulted in a 21% increase in open rates and a 58% increase in click through rates.

Rethink the template. Normally one of the first pieces of advice you get when creating a nonprofit email strategy is to create a killer cold email template. There is evidence that maybe it is time to ditch this strategy and go with a more relaxed approach. Look at this sample from Caring Bridge.

Source

Here, we see to side by side examples. The one on the left with a beautiful, professional template and then the one on the right that is formatted like it would be if you were sending a personal email. Which one do you think garnered more trust and had a higher click rate?

The one on the right.

We need to remember that the recipient is expecting to read an email, not something that looks like a blog page. Recipients are more likely to read, and respond to, an email that feels more like a correspondence than an advertisement.

What’s left to add a more human touch to? The content of course. Think about the emotions that people feel when they are helping others. Compassion, empathy and desire to help come to mind. How are you appealing to these emotions in the content of your email?

If you are using a robotic tone or industry jargon, you probably aren’t getting the job done. Emails that read as though you are speaking directly through them, using normal conversational language, are more effective at producing conversions than scripted sounding dialogue.

Be Succinct With the CTA

Here is where you get to the meat and bones of your email campaign. You have reached out to previous and potential donors because you want something from them. Now is not the time to get wishy washy with your request.

Clearly state what you want, ask for only one thing and make it easy for the recipient to engage.

This seems straightforward enough, but too many nonprofit requests are pushed aside because the organization either wasn’t clear on what they needed or they left too many options open for the donor. For example, CTA that contain some variant of “Anything Helps” seems open ended enough to invite donations no matter how small.

It also doesn’t specify what you are asking for. Instead try one of these CTAs

Make an Donation

Donate and Make an Impact

Join the Fight

Give to Our Cause

Become a Member

Complete Your Gift

Finally, Get Noticed

Let’s assume that your email isn’t the first that your audience has received today. This is a fair assumption, yes? Whether it is a business or personal account, many people are bombarded with emails throughout the day. The thing that is going to make the differe...