Newsletter: Why You Need a Lead-Generating Newsletter 📨 ; How to Do Cause Marketing with a Car Wash Chain 💦🚙 ; Brands Supporting Hurricane Helene Victims🌀
In my last issue, I discussed strategies to help generate more leads for your partnership program. This week, I’m diving deeper into one of those ideas—adding an email signup form.
Last week, I suggested...
📧 Add an email signup form to your website or partnership page. An email signup form will capture leads from individuals and companies interested in learning more about partnerships. Even if you don’t send regular updates, this form alerts you to prospects. Remember, this isn’t the same as a “Contact Us” form. An email signup form is more passive, and your outreach should reflect that—focusing on being helpful, not pushy. While they’ve expressed interest, they haven’t requested a direct pitch, so act accordingly.
Collecting email signups on your partnership page is a no-brainer.
Still, I’d also argue that following through and sending an email newsletter can be valuable for nurturing both current partners and potential prospects.
As you might suspect, I'm a big fan of email newsletters. I've been writing this one for over a decade, and after starting my site Selfish Giving, it's been the second-best decision of my career journey.
A regular email newsletter has many advantages for partnership teams. Here are three.
👑 It builds trust and authority: A well-crafted newsletter allows you to share valuable content, insights, and expertise, positioning your nonprofit as a trusted authority in the partnership space. Regular updates help demonstrate your commitment and knowledge, reinforcing credibility with clients and prospects.
For example, check out the newsletter for Carol Cone's agency, Carol Cone on Purpose (CCOP). In addition to thoughtful articles and podcasts with the OG herself, Carol and her team curate insightful articles for their readers.
💡 It keeps you top of mind: Let me begin by saying doing things to stay top of mind with prospects is a grossly undervalued marketing strategy. A consistently published newsletter ensures your partnership program stays on your audience's radar. Even if prospects aren’t ready to partner immediately, consistent communication helps keep you in their consideration when the time is right. This will be especially true if you share relevant, engaging, and valuable content regularly.
For example, the corporate partnership newsletter from the Wounded Warrior Project has a section called Corporate Giving Highlights that shares success stories from partners and shows prospects what's possible.
🔦 It showcases successes and impact: Newsletters provide a platform to highlight case studies, success stories, and the impact your nonprofit is making. Sharing real-life examples of how you’ve supported causes or businesses strengthens your credibility and inspires confidence in future partners.
For example, Save the Children's corporate partnership newsletter, News You Can Use, showcases the organization's standout partnerships. This kind of social proof is incredibly compelling and hard for potential partners to overlook!
The bottom line is that consistently providing relevant and valuable content makes your newsletter a powerful tool for building lasting relationships, increasing engagement, and ultimately driving more partners and growth for your organization.
✍️ Partnership Notes
1. If anyone's ahead of the game, it's Molly Rhea and the For Momentum team. It's only October, but they are already talking about building better partnerships for 2025!
This article highlights three key strategies for planning effective corporate and nonprofit cause marketing partnerships. It also includes a partnership planning checklist to help you ensure success in 2025.
2. How to do cause marketing with a car wash chain. This program includes a point-of-sale component and a special kick-off event.
3. Dolly Parton, Walmart, and Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing immediate assistance to Hurricane Helene flood victims, are working together to help Helene flood victims in East Tennessee.
What are other brands doing? Here you go.
And, of course, gardeners are helping gardeners! 🌱
4. A handy list! 25 potential key performance indicators (KPIs) for sponsorship deals.
🤑 Marketing Your Cause
1. The key to getting prospects to share your content with others in their company is to GIVE THEM DATA.🔒 (🔒 = Most of this article is behind a paywall, but I can email it to you.)
I try to include data—and an analysis of it—in all of my case studies. Case studies with data pack a powerful punch! 🥊
2. To improve your data storytelling use this formula: Visual Design + Context + Data + ???.
😎 Cool Jobs in Cause
1. Manager of Corporate Partnerships & Philanthropy, KIPP DC, Washington, DC ($71k - $85k)
2. Director of Corporate Partnerships, Make-A-Wish, Charlotte, NC
🧠🍌 Brain Food
1. I often recommend that people incorporate Perplexity into their workflow as a complementary tool to ChatGPT and a smahht alternative to Google Search. Jeremy at Wonder Tools highlights Perplexity's top seven features.
2. We'll all need this over the next few weeks. Treating people with kindness, even when we disagree about the election.
3. Helena Bonham Carter reading 'I Worried' by Mary Oliver. It's short - just one minute - but I promise it will linger with you - as it has with me.☀️😊
Thanks for reading this week! As always, let me know if you have any questions or if I can be helpful in any way.
