Add Social to Your Email Marketing to Boost Your Nonprofit Audiences

“Don’t cross the streams!”

That’s good advice when working with nuclear ghost-catching equipment strapped to your back, but it took breaking that rule for the Ghostbusters to defeat the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Crossing your social media streams and email marketing so your audience can move easily from one to the other will help grow your nonprofit organization’s reach on both channels.

Using Constant Contact’s new email social block, you can start promoting your social channels and build an audience that will spread the word about your nonprofit for you.

Connect email to social and build other audiences

Building an email list builds an audience for your nonprofit organization, but building a social audience helps to support your email efforts. The more you build up your social channels, the more likely you’ll be able to drive traffic to sign up for your email list, and vice versa.

Social and email should work together to grow your organization’s reach and audiences. Adding social links to your email helps potential donors or volunteers find your social platforms, and also helps them share your email with their social network, reaching new people that may also be interested in your cause.

Give readers a backup option call to action

Adding social media buttons to your email not only brings your channels closer together, it also gives readers a third option, something other than clicking through to your site or closing the email. Even if they don’t click your call to action button to sign up as a volunteer or donate, they may decide to look at your social media channels, giving you another chance to target them later.

When designing your email, place a social media block below your call to action button. You could also add a small banner that says, ‘Spread the Word to your Friends,’ above the social links to provide context and help push them to action.

Direct readers to a specific action on social

Like deciding what to write in your nonprofit email, your social links should be specific and point readers towards a single action. Your social links should either direct readers to follow you on your social channels, or help them share your email message on their social media channels with a share button.

If you’re promoting your fundraising event in an email and the reader decides not to donate or sign up to volunteer, linking your social media channels can help them stay up to date with reminders to get involved later. If your cause needs petition signatures, as another example, it may be better for readers to share your email message on their own social media channels, to build your audience and spread the word faster.

Help your email and social media marketing work together


Combining your marketing efforts on social media and email will help grow your nonprofit organization’s reach on both channels. With a bigger reach, you’ll have more firepower when promoting a fundraising event, getting signatures for local causes or zapping the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the streets of New York City.

Source: https://blogs.constantcontact.com/
Image Credit: Constant Contact

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Email Marketing Not Working As Well As You’d Hoped? Here’s Why:

Does your email marketing strategy include only sending emails when you need something in return – like a sale, or a sign up? This is the type of thinking that we see commonly when small businesses are just starting out with email marketing.

Do you have that one friend that only calls when they need something? We all do, and this is how customers can feel when you’re only asking them to buy something.

By sending emails that are really only trying to hard sell customers, you are not giving your business the best chance to successfully market to them. Your contacts can easily become fatigued with this type of communication and lose interest.

Instead, you should think about how you can send on a consistent basis and balance sales emails with content your customers will value.

What does “valuable content” mean?

Valuable content is information that your customers will find helpful, and that pertains to the type of business you are running, including your services, products and industry. This content should be offered to your customers when you communicate with them, and without expecting anything in return while also providing them an opportunity to buy if desired.

Just like wine and cheese or chocolate and peanut butter, asking a customer to make a purchase pairs very well with valuable content.

Here are some examples of emails that would include valuable content:

• A dog grooming company could create a guide on how to de-stress your pup.
• A yoga studio could let you know about upcoming retreats in your area.
• A wine store could send an email about the top five reds to bring to a dinner party.
• Circling back to the “wine and cheese” reference, content and selling compliment each other when implemented into your email marketing strategy.

Additionally, you are probably going to buy that wine from that specific wine seller because you know they have it in stock, they are the experts, and you trust them. They didn’t specifically ask you for a sale, but they did encourage it with their valuable content.

When emails are paired with valuable content and an option to purchase, there is a much higher chance of actually getting that purchase, along with building trust, and your reputation as an expert in your industry.

Do not fall for this email marketing misconception:

The major misconception we see is that you only need to send an email when you need a boost in sales. If your customers are not getting emails from you consistently, you risk them forgetting who you are, causing your email marketing results to plummet.

Whether you schedule ahead of time, map out a plan for your entire year, or use automation, make sure you’re sending regularly. Consistency will set the stage for your email marketing performance.

When you communicate on a regular cadence, and especially when those communications contain valuable content, you’ll be viewed as a dependable source to your audience. They’ll start to expect the next campaign, and will become more engaged with the valuable content within, boosting revenue organically.

When you’re sending emails with content that your customers actually want to learn about, then they’ll become excited about seeing your emails in their inbox. And once you establish a regular cadence, those same customers will be anticipating the next one.

See the results you’ve always hoped for

The truth is, if you balance your sales emails with valuable content on a consistent basis, you can get the email marketing results you’ve been hoping for all along. When customers recognize your emails in their inbox, they’ll think of you first when they are ready to buy.

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Source: https://www.business2community.com
Image Credit: N/A



ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

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Don't Let These 2 Myths Block Your Email Marketing Success

For entrepreneurs who use email marketing, getting your messages into the inbox is critical. But some common misconceptions about email marketing reveal that the real challenge isn’t about getting in the inbox at all. The secret -- if you want to call it that -- is creating email content that people actually want to read. It’s that simple.

Below are the two biggest myths about email marketing. By shifting the focus to sharing content that receivers won’t think twice about opening, we’ll squash each myth once and for all.

 

Myth 1: Everyone wants my email marketing content.

We like to think our content is what everyone wants, but that’s just not the reality. Just like this very article you’re reading, not everyone will find it irresistible, and not everyone will think it’s valuable to them. Newsflash -- some people can live without your marketing emails. That’s ok. Your objective is to please those who can’t live without it, and find more people like them.

Here's a tip. Really take the time to get to know your audience. Survey them, and ask for feedback on a regular, but not annoying, basis. Find out what challenges they’re facing, or ask them what product features or new service offerings would be beneficial to them. The more you know what your audience wants, the more you can deliver it to them.

Myth 2: My marketing emails aren’t showing up in my subscribers’ inboxes.

It’s not that emails aren’t getting through or that they’re not showing up. The question is where are they showing up? Inbox filtering -- common with Gmail and other popular email services -- may cause your marketing and promotional emails to get auto-filtered into a "Promotions" or "Social” folder.

Consider this. You have to have personal engagement to show up in a reader’s primary inbox instead of being placed into one of the filtered folders. Engagement for email marketing is slightly different than person-to-person emails where the focus is mostly on interpersonal conversations. The difference with email marketing is that the goal is to get groups of people -- your email subscribers -- to engage by clicking on the embedded links that takes them to more of your content found on your website, blog or social channels. You can even give them a chance to respond to questions or customer surveys you’ve built into your marketing campaigns.

The more content you send that subscribers want to open -- and the more you provide ample opportunity for them to click through to even more needful information, feedback and promotional deals -- the more times you’ll bypass the pesky filtering mechanisms.
 

Marketing Is Better Than Social Media Marketing

Bonus tip.

High engagement from your email audience also helps build a strong reputation with email services. “As your audience opens more of your emails and engages with the content, it sends a signal to the Gmails of the world that you’re sending content that they actually want,” says Tom Kulzer, the CEO of A Weber, an email marketing provider. “This type of reputation-building is crucial if you want to get your emails delivered to the primary inbox."

Kulzer also recommends exploring the topic of reputation building before getting started with an email marketing service provider. “When considering a provider, you need to make sure they have solid reputation management systems in place. Here are five key questions to ask. If not, it doesn’t matter how awesome your content is, it has higher potential of not getting delivered to the primary inbox as you would expect or hope.”

There you have it. The top two email marketing myths put to rest simply by having awesome email content that builds quality reputation. As email marketing continues to be the highest ROI marketing channel for your growing business, don’t let these myths stand in the way of your success. 

Source-https://www.entrepreneur.com

Image Credit-Xerxes | Getty images

ABOUT WNFP

Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!