Email Marketing for a Charity Organization

EmailSoldiers loves working with nonprofits. In this case study, we'd like to share how we launched an email campaign for the charity foundation "ZHIVI" ("LIVE"). The purpose of the campaign was to support the subscribers' loyalty and help get donations.

Email marketing allowed us to get people acquainted with the foundation's work: how much money is spent, what it is spent on, and whom they help. The main aim was to increase trust, so that people wouldn't be afraid to donate, and to keep in touch with those who have already helped.

How We Built a Subscriber List for a Charity Organization

Using Mailchimp, we set a subscription form that offers users to subscribe to the foundation's news. The form was minimalistic and simple — we didn't need a complicated design.

The form appeared when the user scrolled through half of the page. This is a standard display setting in Mailchimp.

We chose this setting because the main page was short and had a slider. It allowed the user to get acquainted with the info and the form didn't appear too soon.

What Emails We Sent to the Subscriber List

We used three types of email campaigns: regular campaigns, automated email sequences, and triggered emails.

Automated Email Sequence for a Charity Company

We segmented the subscribers into several groups and set various automated email campaigns for them. The subscribers got them after they subscribed on the website or  made a donation. There were three segments:

• ordinary email subscribers;
  
• donators: the people who had donated at least once;
  
• regular donators: the people who had applied for an automated monthly donation.
  

In each email, a subscriber could see where their donations went and whom the organization managed to help. These reports helped increase donators' trust to the foundation.

Emails for Ordinary Subscribers

Each subscriber segment was informed about the foundation's activities in different ways. For instance, ordinary subscribers might know nothing about the foundation, so we sent them three emails sharing how the foundation worked. At the end of each email, we offered the subscribers to make a donation.

Email Campaigns for Donators and Recurrents

Those who had made at least one donation knew more about the foundation. Both the donators and the recurrents got six emails with detailed information about the people they helped. The emails also offered the donators to become recurrents, thanked the recurrents for their help and told them about volunteer opportunities.

Even though the recurrents were in the same list with the donators, they had their own separate tag that allowed us to trace what emails a person opened, so we didn't have to send it to them again. E.g. a donator got three emails and then became a recurrent. Mailchimp would start sending them the chain for recurrents, beginning with the fourth email.

Look at the welcome email for the donators.

Triggered Emails

There was only one triggered email campaign: a subscriber received an email about a failed regular payment.

To make that possible, we integrated Mailchimp with the payment system. If the payment was unsuccessful, the donator received the triggered campaign.

Email Digests for the Foundation

All the subscribers received monthly email digests where the foundation shared the news. It was a small report for those who were interested in the foundation's work.

We also created an HTML template and put it intо Mailchimp drag-and-drop editor, so the foundation's employees could send digests themselves. The template was easy to edit and displayed correctly in all email clients.

Also, we created four types of banners for each season. These banners were stored in the platform's file storage.

Curated Content Emails for a Charity Organization

We created several email campaigns and sent them on the dates important for the foundation. For example:

1. International Day of Charity;
   
2. The foundation's birthday;
   
3. World Leukemia Day;
   
4. International Childhood Cancer Day;
   
5. International Volunteer Day.

We also created emails that were sent if a subscriber kept in touch with a foundation for half a year and a year.

As you can see, email marketing solves tasks not only for commercial projects, but for charity as well. It is interesting that even such a simple-to-use platform as Mailchimp allows us to set complex communications: we performed segmentation, set payment integration, and managed to make the foundation's job easier, so that their in-house employees could send email campaigns on their own.