Acquiring new email addresses to increase reach and ensure longevity is at the top of many organization’s New Year resolutions lists. We’ve got the perfect wake-up call to add some weight to that goal and a few suggestions to encourage you to follow through with a plan.
In their 2015 Fundraising Effectiveness Survey, the Association of Fundraising Professionals reported that for every 100 donors gained across all channels in 2014, 103 were lost through attrition, resulting in a net loss of 3%.
For email specifically, the percentage of emails that go bad or unsubscribe every year is a bit higher at 18%.
The good news is that online platforms are making it much easier to start acquisition campaigns and onboard new names.
If you have yet to dip your toes in the acquisition platform waters, now is the perfect time. After the onslaught of year-end messaging, many organizations take a break from campaigning and acquisition in the beginning of the year. That means less competition for you in January.
Here are a few ways to get started:
Services like Change.org and care2 promote petitions that advance program goals and allow NPOs to gain high-qualit
y, mission-aligned email subscribers. If you are light on advocacy and petitions, you can always start with a strong pledge campaign. While you can create a campaign and market it on your own, investing in a sponsored campaign will help you get in front of interested audiences that are confirmed to be brand new to your file.
The best thing about these platforms is that they are 100% opt-in based models. That means people are aware that they are signing up to hear from you again and that makes them great candidates for conversion.
Other benefits include integration and segmentation capabilities. The platforms will likely be able to sync up with your CRM, allowing you to upload new names to your file as quickly as possible. Segmenting out the new group of names allows you to provide conditional content in welcome series and campaigns moving forward based around the content that inspired them to get involved in the first place.
On Change.org, multi-variant testing is also available. This gives you the ability to test headlines and imagery to find out what works best for you as far as attracting new members. You can also carry these findings over to your other year-round campaigns.
Finally, these platforms tend to have younger audiences (think mid-30s), which makes for higher lifetime value of new constituents you are able to convert to donors.
Over on socials, the leading “take action” plugin for Facebook is ActionSprout. It presents easy, aesthetically pleasing petitions and fundraising appeals to followers so that you can channel them into your email house file.
ActionSprout reports an impressive 1,500 impressions per one action-taker. They also report that 3 to 5 non-fans take action for every fan that posts, extending your reach beyond your current followers.
The plug-in captures a wealth of user data including the name, location, and email address of anyone who authorizes the application. You also receive the name and location of anyone who likes or comments on a post containing an ActionSprout link. Like Change.org and Care2, ActionSprout also synchronizes with many CRMs.
As you head into the New Year, be sure to see how you measure up against our wake-up call stats. How many new donors versus returning donors gave to your organization in the past year? How many emails went bad or unsubscribed? These answers will help you prioritize your acquisition efforts, make the argument for investment and stay true to your organization’s goals in 2016.