1. Write to your mission statement. Are you a veteran’s organizations reporting local current events, which require a steady update of information or are you a worldwide organization that only has new information every few months? Is your content relevant to your readers? When you identify specific interests, are you using triggered mailings? Remember that triggered mailings cater to the immediate interests and needs of your email recipient; your email responses become more effective because they are timely and more relevant to the receiver.
2. Write to your audience. Your newsletter content should be relevant to your reader, if not; it will probably be deleted and forgotten. When addressing your audience consider their point of view, their importance to your organization as supporters and contributors and their time.
3. Email your subscribers on a schedule. If you have content that cannot wait until the next scheduled mailing, send a special edition or announcement. Your readers will appreciate pertinent targeted mailings, therefore emailing more newsletters than planned, filled with good content is entirely appropriate.
4. Use advanced email-marketing tools. Address each newsletter to your specific donor; send them content specific items that capture their interests. Email a survey and ask them what issues concern them, what type of content they enjoy reading, how often they would like to hear from you and so on. Include refer a friend link as part of your mailings; your readers will know other people interested in your organizations work.
5. Position your mailings to encourage your readers to take some action that your organization needs. Ask your reader to take the next step in a simple concise way: ask for a donation, needed volunteers, time, their support or their expertise.
6. Use the same “from address” in all your mailings and pay attention to the subject line. Compose your Subject Line with a goal in mind, to have your subscriber’s open your email message and take some action.
• Tell them something significant, valuable, or timely, so your subscriber feels your email is something they do not want to delete or skip.
• Do not underestimate the competition. Set your email apart from the other newsletters and junk mail your subscriber may be receiving by composing a subject that will prompt them to open your email immediately.
• Do not mislead your subscribers. People signed up for your newsletter because they want to hear what you have to say, you do not have to exaggerate or over promise. They know who you are. Compose content with the individual reader in mind. No matter how many subscribers you have remember your newsletters are being distributed to individual mailboxes, take advantage of this intimacy and write to the person not the group.
7. To reach your maximum reading audience with messages delivered in their desired readable format, HTML or plain text, send Multi-Part Mime Messages in a single email Limit images, including image size and the number of images used.
8. Check your content, test your content for spammy phrases, logic flow, spelling and grammar.
9. To facilitate collaboration between hosting services, web applications and interaction between members take advantage of Social Networking opportunities. Use Micro blogs on popular Social Media sites to maintain a presence on multiple social networks at the same time. Include easy-to-share-this- content by including social network links in each email newsletter. Update your twitter account automatically to include a link to your latest email newsletters by incorporating your email newsletters in your current blog.
10. Administer your email newsletter as an expert. Using a professional Email Service Provider, like Dundee Internet Services, manage your newsletter members, content and deliverability. Have at your fingertips the most current, advanced email list technology available with results you can count on.
For more information about a cost effective way to create and distribute your non-profit email messages, contact Dundee Internet Services, Inc.
