Our #NPMC chat community continues to grow and thrive. Last month, the conversation was very lively, sparking much debate and between chats, community members are connecting and sharing ideas. In response to our request for chat topic ideas, Mike Ottenbrite suggested ‘email marketing’ – very much top of mind for many nonprofit marketers.

Email marketing is a relatively simple, fast and inexpensive alternative to traditional marketing for nonprofit organizations. Because email can support many of your nonprofit’s marketing communications and fundraising goals, you might use it to make appeals for donations, promote events, provide organizational updates and information about your work or your cause, recognize volunteers and donors and many more uses. Your nonprofit is likely using email to reach out to members of your community in one form or another, so where did your email strategy originate?

Thinking of email marketing as a way to engage

What happens when you plan your email campaigns or strategies with a view to serving your community? Think about your email recipients as what they are; the community you serve or aim to impact. How can you design and deliver emails that benefit them and meet their needs? Would operating from this perspective enhance the actual impact you make via email? What happens when you think about email as another way to engage, not just inform?

Of course, your email marketing must advance your nonprofit’s goals and objectives. So how can you find the intersection between the tactics and messages you know that you must deliver and the possible ways you can use email to serve your community? Will this approach take you further toward true community engagement and relationship building? This is what we’ll discuss during our next #NPMC chat.

What’s your view?

How does your nonprofit use email marketing? What information are you sending and what are you asking of your community? What are the origins of your email marketing strategy and how are the emails that you send actually benefitting the community you serve?

Join the conversation

Please join the #NPMC chat on Thursday, July 25 at 1:00 p.m. E.T. to discuss the potential of community-oriented email marketing. Don’t miss this opportunity to tap into the collective wisdom of the #NPMC community!

Marlene Oliveira

Marlene Oliveira

Communications advisor and copywriter at moflow
Marlene Oliveira is communications consultant and copywriter at moflow and founder of the Nonprofit MarCommunity blog. Having worked in the nonprofit sector since 1999, Marlene specializes in working with capacity building and grant-making organizations, advising on communications strategy, and writing stories and other content.
Marlene Oliveira

@mo_flow

Marlene Oliveira