The Small Charity Email Marketing Guide

7 email marketing lessons from pro-bono Small Charity Week coaching calls

If you prefer listening to reading, you can listen to an imperfect 8-minute reading of this post below 👇

Small charities do epic work. Quite frankly, you’re badasses, and working with small teams with big dreams are the projects I thrive on. For 2023 Small Charity Week, I donated a day of my time to free coaching calls for small but mighty organisations.

These are the 7 email marketing lessons that came up throughout the day you need to know to turn your email marketing into a channel that builds community and helps you change the world.

Don't Be Afraid to Email More: Debunking the Email Frequency Myth

Email frequency came up in every single coaching call I had during #SmallCharityWeek. The major concern was that charities didn’t want to pester people, but your community has a much higher email threshold than you think, thanks to corporate brands.

I’m not saying it’s ok to spam people, but sending more emails does equal more income for organisations — don’t just take my word for it the M+R Benchmarks Study says so.

If emailing people more feels scary, I want you to use your open rate as a guide. If you send 4 general emails per year, and you have a fantastic open rate of 45%, people are only hearing from you once a year. 🥲 Put your fundraiser hat on and you’ll know that one 2-minute conversation a year is not enough to build a relationship.

Another tool to help you email more often, which improves your email health overall too, is knowing that not everyone needs to receive every email, which brings me onto point number two…

Segment and Conquer: Elevate Open Rates and Click-through Rates with Targeted Communication

Segmenting your email comms will not only help you send more emails more often but should improve your open rate and click-through rates too.

You can segment based on subscriber behaviour, like how engaged they are or if they opened your last campaign or give people a chance to tell you what they’re interested in so you can send them stories and campaigns you know they’ll love.

If you use Mailchimp:

You could use their Groups functionality (here’s a guide) to create topics to help you put people into different groups.
Or use their built-in survey tool, which lets you automatically tag people based on their responses.

If you want to be a little fancier, Typeform lets you embed questions directly in emails and integrates with most email marketing tools.

Supercharge Your Email Marketing with Automation: The Small Charity's Ultimate Asset

I think this might be the small charity email hill I die on. I know you’ve got to make a little go a long way, and upgrading your email marketing tool can feel like a lavish expense. But I think email automations are a small organisation’s biggest asset. Imagine knowing that no matter what, every day people will receive the right message at the right time — ultimately bringing them closer to your cause.

Your automation checklist:

A welcome journey for people who sign up to your newsletter directly
A stewardship journey for one-off donors — 2 emails will do
A stewardship journey for regular donors

I can read your mind, friend. Right now, it’s saying a little something like this: “I’ve got so much on my plate already, Alex and I’m just not sure I can make the time for this stuff, so why should I?”

Email can feel like the boring uncle of digital marketing. It’s old and hasn’t changed much in the last 10 years, but it is an asset to your organisation in the most literal sense. Your email database is the only digital marketing community you own.

❌ You do not own your Facebook followers, and Mark could change the rules tomorrow

❌ You do not own your Instagram community

“But email feels so boooooring”, you’ve just mumbled back at your screen with your chin up in defiance — which brings me to number 3…

Flip the Script on Email Marketing: From Boring to Captivating

Email marketing will feel like a ‘meh’ job if you only send a bog standard quarterly newsletter.

I want you to flip the script and ask yourself: how could email help you achieve your strategic organisation as an organisation?

Wip out a piece of paper and draw two columns. Write down your organisation’s goals in one column and the wackiest email campaign idea you can think of that could help you move the needle on your goal. Dream big. Get excited about email again.

If storytelling is more your thing today than strategy, think about this: you have someone’s attention for way longer in an email than you do in a social post. But only if you send really good emails, and the way to do that is through…

Embrace Playfulness: Testing, Experimenting, and Unlocking Email's Magic

You’ll only figure out what’s really working if you test and play in your emails. Because we use email to communicate formally at work, sometimes that formalness creeps into email marketing, diluting its magic. Your secret sauce is that you’re small, and you can be human, which means messy play.

In practice, that means testing topics that might feel a bit different to what you’re used to, wince and send them anyway (Shoutout to Kirsty Hulse for the ‘wince and send’ technique!) and testing more specific email elements.

Elements to test over the next 60 days:

Test subject lines with emojis vs. without
Test a different button colour
Test the CTR on different images
Test different sender names (who your email is from)

If you A/B test two little things a month 👆🏼 you’re way ahead of some of the big players.

👈🏽 **Read this**

We’re all creative and all have the capacity to play and try new things. Read Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential within Us All for some inspiration & practical help.

Amplify Different Voices: Authenticity and Connection in Email Communication

I’ve said before, but I’ll say it again: your superpower as a small organisation is that most, if not all, of the people in your team, know each other. The connection you have with the communities you support is also so genuine.

Why not let your next email come from your Community Centre Coordinator or a young person who recently took part in your programme? If you really want to shift to new power, tell your contributor they can write about whatever they care about.

Be Audience-Led Content: Unlock the Power of Email by Meeting Your Subscribers' Needs

Don’t let big agencies or consultants tell you that creating audience-led content can only be unlocked by them. One of the easiest ways to imagine yourself in your audience’s shoes is to map out what their year might look like and what support you could give them relating to your work. For example, one of the charities I coached helped facilitate mental health support for a particular industry. I asked if there was professional advice the charity could offer during the autumn to help prep people ahead of shift work in the winter.

By planning content around readers first and then adding your key events to your calendar, you're also removing the fear that you’re going to email people about topics they won’t like.

I’ve been struggling with a bit of burnout and a day of human connection made the world of difference. A special shoutout to the incredible team behind Small Charity Week. As one of you would say, you’re good eggs!