Develop Email Fundraising

by Randall Mains

The primary goal of your email fundraising is to raise gifts or sell products, not deliver ministry (that’s what your e-newsletter does). E-fundraising is an entire course in itself that fundraising professionals like Pathmaker Marketing teach, but when done effectively, it can become an monthly income-producing channel for your ministry that might even rival your direct mail and telephone fundraising efforts.

But you’re not ready to do e-appeals until you’ve properly introduced your newfound friends to your ministry. Once they know who you are and what you stand for, then you can begin implementing fundraising for nonprofits and begin requesting their support for your worthy causes.

In general, the basic components of any email solicitation include your Subject Line, your message in HTML and/or text, and your Landing Page.

The primary goal of your Subject Line is to get your emails opened. The primary goal of your email is to get click-through traffic to your Landing Page. And the primary goal of your Landing Page is to get conversions on your offer (i.e., gifts or sales, leads, list signups, etc). Each component has a specific goal, but they must all work together harmoniously to produce effective results.

There are different schools of thought on basic email fundraising strategies like: short email to long landing page, or long email to short landing page, but to determine what works best with your constituents, you just need to test, test and continue testing.

In addition, there’s the landing page process of effective internet marketing, which brings to mind to importance of your understanding of landing page conversion protocol. This subject is a big one and we’re only touching its surface today, but to show you how advanced you can become in this arena, here’s a patented formula I use to improve landing page conversion:

Landing Page Conversion = 4m+3v+2(i-f)-2a

m= the user’s motivation; v= clarity of the value proposition; i=incentive to take action; f=friction elements of the process; a=anxiety about entering information. Proper use of this formula from the Marketing Experiments Corp. can significantly improve your landing page conversions.

The formula basically says that the greatest weight in the conversion process is given to the motivation of the donor to support your cause, followed by the strength of your value proposition, followed by your incentive less the friction of your checkout process, less the anxiety that the donor feels about doing business with you online. Three factors can improve your conversion rates, while two factors can decrease them.

For more assistance with your email fundraising, contact Pathmaker Marketing 623-322-3334.