When I wake up in the morning, I grab my phone to turn off the alarm. (Or, maybe, SOMETIMES, hit snooze.)
But the first thing I do when I actually wake up is look through my inboxes. Inevitably, overnight, a flood of emails have arrived from various stores and businesses. It’s the usual culprits—half a dozen organizations and businesses that I hear from multiple times per week.
They’re probably promoting something. . . but to be honest, I’m not sure. Because I just delete them without looking at them.
At one point, I was interested in what they had to say. So, interested that I gave them a real email address that I actually use.
But, now, the emails come so often, they’ve become noise. I still care about their cause. I still want 20% off my next hoodie. But I don’t really care about hearing from them.
Be cautious of sending too many emails from your nonprofit organization. When you flood your donors’ inboxes, your emails just become noise.
Many organizations will only look at unsubscribes to tell them if they’re sending too much. But, many people don’t want to take the action to unsubscribe (for lots of reasons). They mark your email read or just immediately delete it so their inbox count goes down, and move on to things in their day that they care about and want to engage with.
Email can be very effective, and if you’re not already emailing your donors, start planning your first email to them today. But finding the right frequency of emails to send can be tricky. As the saying goes, “Your mileage may vary,” but done the right way, even sending one email a week won’t turn your message into background noise.
If you aren’t sure what to send, or if you want to talk about how you can use email more effectively, you can email (no pun intended) us at howdy@oneicity.com
