The holiday season is upon us again! For us nonprofits, this means that ‘tis the season again for you to prepare your lovely holiday greeting emails to thank your networks or run your holiday fundraiser campaigns. In doing so, have you ever stopped and wondered whether your email campaigns are being sent out at the right time? Moreover, have you stopped and thought about whether your recipients are able to see your email properly? And most of all, are they even paying attention to it at all?
Much like managing social media accounts, running email campaigns seem deceptively easy. All you need to do is prepare content and press send, right? If you want to run proper campaigns however, there is so much more to consider in running email campaigns that just that!
To help you prepare your holiday email greetings, or even your regular email newsletters in general, here are a few foolproof tips that can help you run effective email campaigns:
Think about your subject line. I mean, really think about it.
Subject lines are what the packaging is to any commercial product. It’s a quick and visual summary that should convince your consumers to open your email in a single glimpse. With that in mind, a lot of effort should actually go into drafting your subject lines as it will heavily influence the overall success of your campaigns. To go deeper into this, here are a couple of easy tips to follow:
- Keep it concise – the sweet spot is within 30-35 characters so it won’t be cropped in mobile devices’ inboxes. So keep your subject lines short and straight to the point so your readers would know what your email is all about.
- Avoid SPAM-y looking subject lines – you all know how this looks like, but the general rule of thumb is avoid overtly click-bait sounding subject lines or those that are riddled with too many punctuation marks or words in all-caps.
Keep image sizes low and font sizes high
Remember, a big chunk of your readers or subscribers are likely opening emails over their phones rather than desktops. This means smaller screens and a different internet speed, as they are highly likely on mobile data only rather than connected on a Wi-Fi network.
Be privy to this, keep font sizes slightly larger than usual and keep your text concise for an easier reading experience while also minimizing the requirement to scroll through text. On the other hand, keeping image sizes lower allows your email to be sensitive to readers on a mobile connection, as it makes your images easier to load. If you need help with this, Canva allows users to export images in a lighter.JPG format which lends itself easily for web use.
Think about your timing
Much like in social media, your email campaign’s success also relies heavily on when you actually send it. Think about email as an extension of your recipients’ attention; send it at a busy time such as a Monday morning or over a Friday night and it’s bound to be neglected. With this in mind, think about when you plan to send it and what your recipients are likely doing at that time. Creating these scenarios in mind helps you nail down the perfect time on when you should send your newsletters over.
Remember, there is still a lot of value to be found in email campaigns. While social media is changing the landscape in connecting with your networks, not everyone may have a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account. So don’t count out email campaigns yet, most especially now since you now know how to effectively use it!
