Your organization might be sitting on a mound of email addresses, collected from the most recent major event or canvasing campaign. The end goal is to convert the users of those email addresses into supporters, but a well-traveled path toward doing so might be difficult to find.

During their presentation “The New Rules of Email Fundraising” at the 2017 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington D.C., Emily Stevenson, manager of online membership at the Environmental Defense Fund, and Brenna Holmes, digital fundraising acquisition and engagement strategist for Chapman Cubine Adams + Hussey, laid out a number of basic email fundraising considerations. Among them were these six tips:
• Deliver value in each email you send. This might include how donations are being used, for example;
• Target content and customize based on what you know about the user of the email account. This might be as simple as changing a photo or call to action for one set of emails as compared to another. Also, allow users to customize their email subscriptions, but avoid doing so too narrowly;
• Track clicks, not just opens. Consider removing prospective donors from renewal emails if they do not click on the contact within the email over a particular period, typically 12 months;
• Cultivate donors. Thank them more often than you ask them;
• Incorporate social comparisons such as giving studies. Donors who are given a social comparison about how much those who live around them are giving tend to give more than control groups; and,
• Utilize match-your-gift deadlines. Such deadlines are motivational because donors feel as though their gift will be worth less after the deadline.