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Denise Moorehead, Third Sector New England

[Ed. note: This article is part of NTEN's Member Appreciation Month spectacular. The most popular pieces will be featured in our newsletter. You can read all the details here.]

As a nonprofit professional, you appreciate the fact that email campaigns are an affordable and effective way to reach as many clients, donors, members and media as possible. You use e-newsletters to keep your members, supporters and volunteers up-to-date on your program developments and related issues. You've developed e-advocacy tools to rush public policy action alerts to supporters who can advocate for fair and ethical local, national and global policies. And you use e-commerce and online fundraising to bring in the funding needed to ensure long-term program and advocacy effectiveness.

But is your message clearly and effectively communicating your organization's needs? Even more important, is it meeting the needs of the email recipients that you hope will 1) open and read the message, 2) consider acting on it, and 3) take the action that you request? If you can answer with a resounding "yes" for each e-communication sent, congratulations! For the other 99 percent of us, read on. You need to elevate your email correspondence to the next level.

Define Your Purpose

To improve you e-communications, you will first want to clearly outline the purpose of each email marketing effort and determine how it fits into your overall marketing strategy -- and e-marketing strategy. "Email marketing," as you may already know, is a rather broad term covering a range of electronic mail communications. Too often, we forget that each message exists within the framework of all communications that our constituents receive from us.

Each message must build on the last one or, at the very least, not contradict or dilute the others that you are conveying. So you need coordinate your communications for consistency of message, and you want to use the most appropriate vehicle to convey the intended message. Taking these simple steps will help your organization move in the right direction with e-communications. The table below can help you determine which elements need to be present in your message for an effective email campaign.

Here are some pros and cons of the various email formats.

Email Newsletters

The e-newsletter involves a little more commitment than a standard, immediate action-driven email message. It needs to be more informative and useful to your readers than a direct marketing email (see below). Email newsletters need to be sent with regular frequency to be effective, and that's where the challenge begins for many nonprofits.

An ongoing e-newsletter deadline, which comes around with almost time-bending frequency, can soon overwhelm organizations which have promised a newsletter frequency to their members that is too high. The best advice for any organization sending email newsletters is to start out slowly. A monthly or even bimonthly email newsletter would not be considered an over-aggressive frequency.

Another popular rule: Newsletters are not a direct marketing tool. If you are trying to pitch volunteer service, direct and immediate action, or donating, ongoing challenges with maintaining the size of your subscription list are in your future. In other words, you risk a high unsubscribe rate if you promised to send email newsletters to customers and start sending email advertisements instead.

Announcements: Something New

Nonprofits without monster-sized promotional budgets (and that's just about all of us, yes?) should be using email to announce almost anything new about mission or service. Are you adding a new service? Let your clients know with email. Did an industry veteran leave the private sector to join your cause? Put it in a special email announcement. Are you having a special open house or celebration? Email your members and supporters with the announcement immediately.

This approach usually requires a little creativity, but it also continually keeps your missions, message and services in the minds of your clients.

Advocacy Action Alerts

Sent to people who have opted-in (subscribed) to your action alert(s) list, e-alerts are tightly packaged pieces, with a standardized format. You begin the alert with a short summary of the issue, no more than two to three paragraphs. You should provide a sample message to be sent to a specific legislator, government official or corporate head, and include a background piece so that your advocates can craft their own message instead. This also helps those not familiar with the issue to determine if they wish to be involved. Action alerts also need to include multiple ways to send the message, in case someone wishes to send a letter or make a call in addition to sending the message via email.

Printable Email Coupons

If you sell mission-related items, clothing, giftware, books or even gift memberships, email coupons can be a real boon. They are typically issued either as an online coupon code, which can be used on a website ordering form, or they can be in the form of a printable coupon. Printable coupons can be simple .PDF files made with Adobe Acrobat, or they can be web-based, HTML documents composed using minimal design features, for easy printing.

Common elements of a printable coupon include your organization's logo, specifics of your offer, your phone number and street address, the URL address to your website and an expiration date.

Constituent Surveys

A final unique format of email campaign is the customer survey, using email to invite supporters to participate in a short survey about their recent experience with your organization. Your email can be used in conjunction with a powerful online tool called SurveyMonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com), which easily builds surveys that you can use to gauge existing service performance, a new service, solicit client service feedback, and more.

Make It Good

Define the goals of your e-communications ahead of time, and format appropriate email messages that will best help you achieve this goal. Choose goals that will give your supporters a reason to frequently revisit your website for new program information, new services, program accomplishments, sectorwide news, new staff and more.

Don't slap your message together and send it out at the last minute just because you're meeting an email newsletter deadline. Prevent this by not over-promising the number of emails you'll be sending. Take it slow at the beginning, because email message deadlines have a tendency to sneak up quick, and having them coming at you back to back to back can be cannibalistic to the precious time you need to run your organization.