Newsletter: 7 Clever Cause Activations for the Fall 🍁; How to Warm Up Cold Email Subscribers 🥶 ; Chobani Launches New ‘Charity Flavor’ with American Farmland Trust 🚜
This past week, I got a great question from a reader asking when and how to clean your email list. You know I'm a big believer in email and newsletters - and with good reason. Campaign Monitor just came out with a report that showed "across the board, donors prefer email. Nearly 42% said they prefer to hear from a nonprofit via email from the organization, and 20.5% said an email from the organization would inspire them to give again."
Email works, people. Now on to the question!
Q. I look forward to receiving your email each week! Any recommendation for email list cleaning services and when to remove the disengaged constituents that don't open the emails?
A. I'm aggressive in deleting people from my newsletter email list. If you don't open my newsletter for six weeks in row, I delete you from my list! You probably don't want to be that aggressive. Nonetheless, I would come up with your own criteria and delete subscribers from your email list at least every three to six months.
There are a lot of good reasons why you should delete inactive subscribers. Mine are motivational. I like keeping my open rate above 50% and only serving an engaged audience. This article lists several more good reasons to keep your list lean and mean!
A couple things to keep in mind.
First, your ability to identify and delete cold subscribers will depend on your email service provider (ESP). I use ConvertKit and it's very easy. Other ESPs make it harder because they get paid based on the size of your list. The bigger the list, the more you pay. So they make it hard to delete cold subscribers. Not cool, right? Thankfully, it's easy to switch providers! I can recommend others.
Second, you can try to reengage cold subscribers. Start by sending them an email (ironic, right?) with a subject line like: "I thought we were friends? 😞" Then you ask them to confirm their interest in staying on your list. If you don't hear back, you remove them. I've tried reengagement campaigns, but they haven't worked very well. Your results may be different. If you'd like to try it, here's an article to get you started.
Good luck and let me know how it goes!
P. S. If you need help with email, and especially your email newsletter, I'm here to help.
✍️ Partnership Notes
1. Newsletter subscriber Ryan Lauer, manager of corporate partnerships for American Farmland Trust, shared that Chobani is donating 10 cents from every purchase (up to $10,000) from its new Farmer Batch Chobani Greek Yogurt Milk & Cookies to AFT. Great work AFT and Ryan! This is Chobani's second "charity flavor." The first benefited Operation Homefront. Will you be next?
2. Here's a slide for your sales deck. Consumers say that community event sponsorships are influential in purchase decisions.
3. This week on CauseTalk Radio, Megan and I chat with Tony Hollingsworth, legendary producer behind some of the most historic global issue campaigns like Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute and The Wall - Live in Berlin. Tony is back with plans to launch a massive, global campaign in 2020 called The Listen Campaign to bring attention, awareness and funds to the one billion vulnerable and disadvantaged children around the globe.
4. Need fresh ideas for your fall campaigns? Here are 7 activations to refresh you partnerships. [SPONSORED LINK]
🤑 Marketing Your Cause
1. Two weeks ago, I shared how one nonprofit was raising money from negative press coverage. This week, Search Engine Journal explains how to to use controversy to get high quality links, which can help your organization rank higher on Google search results.
2. The story on Carson King and his fundraising on Venmo was the most read story on my newsletter last week. This article talks about King's fundraiser and shares other examples of how Venmo has been used for charity.
3. Everyone talks about the importance of storytelling - and they are absolutely right! But new research shows when stories can actually backfire and make you less convincing.
😎 Cool Jobs in Cause
1. Senior Manager, Innovation, Children's Miracle Network (Salt Lake City)
2. Corporate Development Officer, Cause Marketing, Habitat for Humanity (Atlanta/Remote)
3. Partnership Development Manager, Operation Warm (Midwest/Remote)
Have your cause-related job featured here for FREE. Hit reply to this email and give me the details and a link to the position.
🧠🍌 Brain Food
1. What brands can learn about activism from the Joker movie.🤡
2. Two separate articles. One on GoFundMe. One on Facebook. Both platforms are changing fundraising, but what they are really good at is magnifying audience size and audience influence. After you read these two articles, go back and read my post on audience-building.
3. You can stay overnight on the Goodyear Blimp and give back to a good cause.
Have a question, comment, or just want to say hi? Just leave a comment below or head over to Twitter.
