O u t b o u n d ^Solution

Here are a few quick tips that will make your End Of Year a success.

1. Plan - Organize the EOY campaign within your organization. Make sure you have a shared calendar where you plan out your messaging. Being organized will prevent over-saturation of your lists and allow you to properly space out your sends. It will also prevent rushed and unpolished messages. It is important to remember that you only have a moment to make your message stand out. Sending poorly composed email will train your list to ignore you!

2. Keep it simple - You are competing with corporate holiday messages and the other NPOs trying to get your message heard. A short and simple message that is well thought out is your best bet. Now is not the time to append news and updates that distract from your ask.

3. Don't use bad lists. I know the temptation is strong but think about it this way. If you buy or borrow that list it is true that you may have more addresses to target but you are not going to see the same conversion rates and should expect a fraction of the returns. Whats worse is you may HURT your deliverability to your good addresses. By using a bad list you could end up getting your organization blacklisted and blocked during the EOY rush. Not only will your new list not make lead to donations, you could damage your inbox rates overall and end up with many fewer people receiving your ask!

In the world of email marketing your reputation is like your credit rating. You need a good reputation if you want your message to be heard. We can show you how your organization's score stacks up and use our array of tools to fix any problems.

The Presidential Election has brought up an important subject for me, the Subject Line. It seems that as the campaigns got longer the subjects got shorter. While every word of the body was groomed and strictly analyzed, the subjects were weak and sometimes even reminiscent of spam. Don't fight to land in the Inbox only to get passed over because of a weak subject line. Competition for your constituents time in today's world is extreme and no where is the fight fiercer than the Inbox. Check out these tips for getting noticed!