Email: set up a welcome series for your email subscribers
Why?
Email welcome series are a really effective way to engage and convert a new subscriber. And so many charities aren’t using them. When digital consultant Glyn Thomas signed up to 100 different charity mailing lists in the UK as an experiment, only two of them sent him a welcome series. 48 of them sent a single welcome email, but that’s not really enough to properly warm someone up to become more deeply involved with your cause.
When someone has just signed up, that’s when their interest is high and they’re very likely to be responsive. By setting up an automated series with a number of emails, you can share impact stories, ask them to take easy actions like sharing a piece of content, and gradually deepen their engagement.
It’s a small investment of time, that will pay off massively – once the automated journey is set up, all of your new subscribers will be automatically welcomed. You’ll just need to check in from time to time to monitor the performance.
You can also take the opportunity to set up a email journey that talks specifically about your charity’s response to coronavirus, for both new and existing subscribers.
How?
- Classy.org has a nice article on how to build a good email welcome series
- Digital Charity Lab’s email marketing for non-profits online course has a sample plan for a welcome series
- Forward Action’s fantastic blog series on coronavirus digital mobilisation explains how to plan a coronavirus email series
I’ve found the technical instructions on how to create email journeys for some of the more popular email platforms: