How to Start an Email Newsletter to Build Your Nonprofits Brand and Gain Memberships

Learn How to Start an Email Newsletter to Build Your Nonprofits Brand and Gain Memberships

Suppose you’ve got news that needs to be promoted as soon as possible. Maybe it is a new product, service, partnership, or an event that needs to be publicized to get more attendees. Whatever the case, this blog will help you on how to create an email newsletter. Online newsletters are a fast, and easy way to regularly communicate with your audience digitally.

Benefits of a Newsletter for Nonprofits

Making available a newsletter is essential to your nonprofits success. The newsletter will help grow your organization’s clientele, spread awareness to your nonprofits latest news and events and also bring a personal form of communication between you and your audience.

It’s simple, all you need is an email address list (marketing contacts– of course!) and an attention driving campaign letter of what info about your organization!

Things You Need to Create an Email Newsletter for a Nonprofit

There are multiple steps on how to prepare and create an email newsletter: finding the right CRM platform (email client software), finding out the goal of your newsletter, choosing your audience, designing your newsletter template, importing your newsletter content, constructing a subject line, creating a call-to-action, creating a schedule for your newsletter to go out, reviewing your newsletter, sending out your newsletter, and analyzing your newsletter outcome. Sounds like a lot? Don’t worry! With your first few times, your newsletter sending will become like clockwork!

What are the best email newsletter platforms for a non-profit?

To begin your email newsletter, you need to find the RIGHT email newsletter platform to use! It’s important to know your terminology! Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology that allows your organization to create, automate, and simultaneously encourage customer interaction. What a CRM system might include is marketing, sales, customer service, and support.

Worried about paying for a newsletter platform? Don’t fret! There are FREE email newsletter platforms and also the perks of being a nonprofit is, you may be able to get a price discount depending on the services rendered. All you have to do is just reach out to your service representative and ask for a demo.

Our top picks for CRM services:

  • Mailchimp – Perfect for beginners and a small budget who are looking for Marketing, Automation & Email Platform services
  • CM Commerce – Automation for E-commerce stores
  • Klaviyo – Works with email and SMS marketing
  • Hubspot – Inbound Marketing, Sales and Service Software

What are the best email newsletter platforms for a non-profit?

Whatever the goal you are trying to achieve, it will help you decide which outlets and channels to use like: MailChimp, Hubspot, or other online newsletter services or email servers like Google Mail, Outlook, Yahoo!, etc. It is important to have a service/platform to prepare you to send your newsletter from. Some sites like Mailchimp can help you review the analytics of your newsletter (open rates, click rates, and revenue rates if you’re selling anything).

What is the goal of your Newsletter?

It is important to figure out the goal of your newsletter to help you decide what route you will take when creating a newsletter.

Think: Is the goal of a newsletter supposed to drive more traffic to your website? Do you want your brand to reveal a new product, new video, service or other news pertinent to your brand? Are you sending out a mass email in hopes to recognize or recover from a crisis? Are you creating a newsletter to get more email contacts? Do you want to drive traffic to your social media?

Whatever the goal you are trying to achieve, it will help you decide which outlets and channels to use like: MailChimp, Hubspot, Klaviyo or other online newsletter services or email servers like Google Mail, Outlook, Yahoo!, etc. It is important to have a service/platform to prepare you to send your newsletter from. Some sites like Mailchimp can help you review the analytics of your newsletter (opens, clicks, and revenue rate if you’re selling anything).

What is the goal of your Newsletter?

If you have a list already, that is great! If not, the best thing to do is to start gathering potential emails by creating a newsletter subscriber form on your website or in-person communication to gather emails from your recipients.

It is important to know the behaviors of your digital audience and how they will possibly react to your email newsletter. To get this information, interview them and study any existing analytics of your audience to help you.

Ask yourself: What length should your newsletter be? Long or short? Will they want to keep scrolling? What can your newsletter provide to enhance your brand’s image? What will drive them to your goal of the newsletter?

Stay tuned for our next blog on the ten steps on how to prepare and create an email newsletter: finding out the goal of your newsletter, choosing your audience, designing your newsletter template, importing your newsletter content, constructing a subject line, creating a call-to-action, creating a schedule for your newsletter to go out, reviewing your newsletter, sending out your newsletter, and analyzing your newsletter outcome.


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