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- [00:00]
Jess Campbell
Quick heads up.
- [00:01]
Rhea Wong
I'm running a free live webinar on turning Giving Tuesday into major gifts discovery fest November 11th at 12pm eastern. If you want a 30 day plan, an impact brief template, and our 72 hour sprint scripts to book leadership gifts before year end, grab your seat in the show notes. It's free. Welcome to nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong.
- [00:28]
Ria
Today is a special day because my good buddy Jess Campbell is going to be talking about your Giving Tuesday campaign. She is the queen of email, though. She's going to give us some recommendations about more than just the email for the whole campaign. So very excited. But I'm just going to hand this party over quickly to my dear friend, Jess Campbell. Jess is founder of out in the Boons. She is a marketing email genius. She's very bullish on all of the gold hiding in your email address. She's just brilliant when it comes to all the things. Jess, I'm going to just hand it over to you and you can take it away.
- [01:08]
Jess Campbell
Okay? So as you guys are telling me, if you're surviving, thriving, or somewhere in the middle, I was putting this together and I was like, okay. With limited weeks before Giving Tuesday, what would I want to know about end of year campaign season? And if I, as I put myself in your shoes, I was like, I would want the quick and dirty. I would want the do this, not that I would want, like just give it to me. There's not a lot of time to learn a lot of new stuff. And so some of what I'm going to talk about is general stuff that may or may not apply to your organization because you know your organization best, but for the most part it applies. So as Ria mentioned, I'm an email girly, but when it comes to end of year campaigns, I believe that an Omni Channel campaign is the most effective. And that's a little bit of everything. And so we're going to talk about actually more than just email today because unfortunately, in the day and age we live in, emails are just not enough. Okay, so do this, not that End of year campaigns edition. I'm just, I like email. I've been a longtime fundraiser. I do a million campaigns every year. This year right now, I think I'm overseeing nine. So I, I think I know what I'm talking about. So to kick us off, I just wanted to set the stage, set the scene. At this point of the year, we're not growing your email list. We're not so much discovering new donors. If anything, what we're trying to do is activate the folks that are already in your current audience and that could be donors on a list that could be email subscribers. But this stage of the year, we're a little too late to be seeking out brand new people who've never even heard of you or your organization or the work that you do and converting them to loyal donors. That's for a different phase of the year, not right now. And so with that, we're going to get into it. I did want to go over some best email practices. I think it's helpful for you to have a benchmark to know how your assets, your marketing tools are performing. And so this is data from a very in depth report that Neon 1 conducted in 2023. It broke open. Click and unsubscribe rates down by your email list size. So I would be curious if folks in the chat are in the more above a thousand subscribers below a thousand subscribers category. I'm guessing most of you are above a thousand. So that would be this right here, right? Greater than. Am I doing my math right? Yes. No, down. Sorry, this line right here. Thank you so much. I was like having a cross eyed moment there. So if you're and we're gonna if we have enough time, I will get to a whole section where I teach you how to improve your open and click through rates. But I would encourage you to research this data now so that you can spend the next five weeks improving this data before you start asking folks for money. Okay, let's get into it. The next, I don't know, six, seven slides are all about what you need to do right now. So the first thing is start communicating. Now how many of you are regularly communicating with your specifically email list on a weekly cadence? I know you are. I'm not looking at the chat. So actually I can't see what you're saying. But I will look later. My preferred schedule is weekly. And the reason for that people ask me all the time, why weekly? Why weekly? Like we send a quarterly newsletter, we send a monthly newsletter. And here's just a hard truth. Whether you and your nonprofit like it or not, you are competing with the targets and the apples and the Amazons of the world who send a daily email. And what happens when you send a more frequent email is you become a friendly face, a familiar face in the inbox. And what happens with a lot of organizations is I see folks saying I don't want to bother people. I'm going to send a monthly newsletter. I'm going to put one newsletter in their inbox every quarter. And then what happens is December comes and suddenly you're like, oh shit, I got to raise some money. I'm going to send 7, 8, 10, 14 emails. And people are like, who are you? And like, why do you only reach out to me when you want money? It just, it doesn't feel good. And you haven't unfortunately develop the legs to stand on in my opinion, to make a solid ask, right? Like you've just popped out of nowhere and said, hey, I need some money, give me some money. And so my strong, strong, strong recommendation is to start communicating now. And if you need help, I have a template shop. They're low cost templates. You can grab them right here. Other things that I'm doing with my clients is like for Halloween next week, instead of, of just sending a Happy Halloween type of email, I'm actually pulling statistics and data around scary stuff that's happening related to the organization. So if you're a maternal rights organization, you might talk about how the birth rate in the United States is like way down. If you are a dog rescue organization, you might talk about the rate of returned rescues that's been at an all time high post pandemic. If you are in the medical field, maybe you're talking about the absolute slaughter that is happening. As far as government funding goes, given all this happening in the United States, there's a lot of like scary, spooky things you can talk about related to your nonprofit that's a lot more interesting than Happy Halloween. So that's just one example of how. But I strongly recommend to communicate again. I like a weekly cadence. If that feels very not possible for you, try every two weeks, try twice a month. Anything is better than sending nothing before giving Tuesday. Okay, second do this is secure a match donor. We, Bria and I were with our good friend Kel in Canada earlier this year and one thing she said to me that I've repeated at least a hundred times since then is matches are magic. There is, there's something psychological, there's something motivating to the donor, you're going to double the impact. In my opinion, it doesn't really matter the amount. So if you can secure a $1,000 match donation that you use on Giving Tuesday, if you can secure a 5, a 25, it really doesn't matter. But I would suggest having one in a worst case scenario where you're not either activating a corporate donor or a major gift donor to be this match donor, utilize your board like they're likely Making gifts every year, hopefully. And if they haven't yet made their gift, put out a notice. We are using the board to activate our match component of our upcoming campaign. Use it and matches our magic. So please have one. I also like to tell my clients it's really daunting to as a fundraiser to say, okay, from giving Tuesday to December 31st, I need to raise X number of dollars. And so I really encourage my clients to spend October and most of November doing what I call behind the scenes fundraising, which is securing pledges or early campaign gifts. I set a goal at 25%. You can obviously go higher, but it's psychologically, I think a lot easier as the fundraiser to know that you're not starting at zero on giving Tuesday and climbing all the way to your mountain by December 31st. So start now and match donors can be a part of that early fundraising. Okay, so the second do this is send a combo of comms. I wrote this kind of components of a campaign right here. This is just five. There's obviously more channels emails. I recommend sending at least 10 to 12 for the month of December only. I have one client that's actually starting their asks a bit earlier. When I write campaigns for my clients, we're sending more of 14 to 16 emails. So it's a lot of communication and emails are a really powerful, effective fundraising tool. I also do a hard copy appeal for every single one of my clients. So that's a two sided letter that has a remit envelope. It has a very bright like when I say bright, like bright envelope, external envelope, no white envelopes. We use a real stamp. Hard copy of appeal traditionally is still the most has the highest ROI fundraising metric. It can be expensive. And so I say for my clients, like I have one client that's sending 2,700 pieces of mail. I have another client that's sending 300 pieces of mail. If this is your first time sending something in the mail, maybe be a little bit more conservative and see how it goes. Use it as a test. You can also send a postcard. I personally don't think those are as effective. I actually put a question out to LinkedIn and I had, I don't know, a hundred people respond to it about do I have to include a remit envelope? I was being a little bit of a cheapo and all the direct mail experts said yes, I was trying to just swap it like a QR code. And they all said just do the rebate envelope. Like just spend the extra $250 and print those Puppies. So I'm going to be doing that for all my clients. But I really recommend hard copy appeal calls. Calls are a great way to say thank you, but also to remind folks about their previous year's gifts. I'm sure this is something that Rhea teaches and talks about. I know it's something Kelse talked about. Most of the calls will be voicemail. They just will. And so having the script ready I think is important for those voicemails. But calls are powerful text messages. I've been sharing this and I'm not sure if this will be able to show up on the screen. But I think text messages like now are a really great way to say thank you or to express gratitude or say, hey, here's this impact story I wanted to share with you. So here's a fundraiser that I know. Her name is Erica Carley. She's one of the best in the biz. And she just sent me. It's quite long, if I'm being totally honest, but she sent me a text message on September 15th. And it's just this kind of impact story. Now I know she sat on her phone and like, from her phone, one by one, copy and paste with like just changing the hey, Jess. Versus using some sort of tech tool that like mass sends them out. And that's because her goal with this is to start a back and forth conversation. And I know that's more difficult to do when you use one of those tools. I also have had fundraisers like Voice Memo Me, which I personally love. I love like a LinkedIn voice memo, an Instagram voice memo, a text voice memo. So text messages are great. And then video. I think video is an amazing tool for gratitude. It's less effective for asking for money. So the ways we're using video for our clients right now is we're sending a thanks for being an engaged subscriber video. So we're sending it to people who have opened like every email from the organization over the last couple months. And then the week of Thanksgiving, we also send out a gratitude message. Just saying as we walk into a season of gratitude. I just wanted to thank you. And it's just like casual, a minute long, like short and to the point. And it's just a really nice thing to do before giving Tuesday. I'm going to keep going unless there's like a burning question.
- [13:15]
Ria
Okay, well, we have, we have questions in the chat. So, Des, do you want us to ask them or do you want to wait till the end?
- [13:20]
Jess Campbell
What do you think? Is it irrelevant? It doesn't fit.
- [13:23]
Ria
Yeah, there are some relevant questions here. So let me. Let me just get it. Okay. So Lucy has a question here about matches. Do you have any advice about best practices? Because she's tried matches before. It wasn't successful. So how long, how do you communicate it? What part of the campaign and how long do you use the match?
- [13:42]
Jess Campbell
Okay, there's a couple of different ways to go about it. When I was a fundraiser and what I, like, advised my clients, as far as matches go, is going, like, a very direct route. Like, we're running this campaign. Matches are one of the most effective behavioral tools. Would you consider being our match donor kind of thing? Like, it's more businessy versus, like, how you would maybe ask someone for their major gift donation? It's usually strategically asked, so I usually ask people who either want or prefer the recognition. So an example of that could be like a brand, like a corporate partner who wants the notoriety and wants the recognition for their gift. Another way I've done it is asking for an upgrade. Hey, you've given $5,000 for the last five, five years. Would you consider a $10,000 gift this year to activate the match component of our campaign? That is another way that I've done it without seeing how you worded it. This is a little about me guessing, but you need to be bold. Like, we're not hiding this match from a logistical standpoint. Like, physically, the text is bold, maybe underlined. There's a second button that says 2x your donation. I think you also need to communicate or visualize what double the impact mean. Right. Does that mean you go from serving 200 people to 400 people? You need to do that, and you need to do it more than once. Like, you have to ask people many times or put that language in front of people many times. They say, like, between eight and 20 times. So how long would you run the match? I would say you run the match until you reach the max. So if you, like, confirm a match donation for giving Tuesday and you don't hit it, like, continue on, continue on using that language. I always think it's so interesting, and maybe this is just me. I am a very ask for forgiveness type of person. But there's no marketing police that's coming to you and saying you said it was going to be on giving. Like, no one is coming to do that. So. And actually no one's paying that close attention, so just keep going. Is that helpful?
- [16:02]
Ria
Yeah. And I think if you think you're being bold, you probably are not Right. So this is not a time to be coy. You have to look at people in the face with the thing that you're asking them for. Okay, yep. Question coming in. You said if they're doing a first time mailing and they want to be conservative, how would you define that? Who are the people that we should be sending hard copy to versus the email?
- [16:25]
Jess Campbell
I think it's more. You need to decide what your budget is. So if you're like, I have a thousand dollar budget, then you need to work backwards and mathematically figure out that means I can send it to 300 people. And if you can send it to 300 people, then you go through your data and you figure out who are my 300, like most likely to give donors. So for example, one of my clients, I asked them to run a report for everyone who's given in the last three years$100 or more. And then I said, what's that number? And then they told me their number and I said, based on your budget, I think you can go higher. So then let's bring that a hundred dollar threshold down to 50. And then that gave them more donors to mail to. If that number would have been too big, I might have said, okay, pop that number up to 150 or $250 so you can play with the data to figure it out, you know your budget. And it's going to depend, the printing costs are going to depend on so many factors, location, what they're doing, if you want to stuff the envelopes yourself, that kind of thing. Postage, I think a postage, I think it's 63 cents these days. I will tell you that I just ran the numbers and I'm in California, Southern California. Expensive land for a mailing of 300. Not including the design and, and not including the stuffing because my team does that ourselves. Their mailing is going to be about $800 for about 300 pieces of mail just to give you like a reference.
- [17:58]
Ria
And on that note, given the fact that hard copy is more expensive, would you recommend a hard copy follow up in the mail to folks who haven't responded to the first solicitation?
- [18:09]
Jess Campbell
You mean like a second one or.
- [18:11]
Ria
A postcard follow up or something like.
- [18:13]
Jess Campbell
Hey, yeah, I know, right? Still here? I think if this is your first year, I would not only because even for me, who's done a magillion of these, I'm like starting, I've been working on my mailing pieces for weeks already. Like it's just a whole thing. It's just A whole process. It's just like a big project. So if this is your first year, I would not do that. I would use a trigger, probably over the phone call, text message or email reminder instead. If you've been doing this for eons and you have a team and this is no big deal, then sure, I don't know that I would prioritize the second one.
- [18:51]
Ria
All right, one more question, then we'll keep moving. This is what we call a champagne problem. What happens if you meet the match before the end of the campaign?
- [18:59]
Jess Campbell
Oh, I have this literally as a don't do this. So should we just wait until we get there? Okay, cool.
- [19:04]
Ria
Yeah, let's wait. Okay.
- [19:05]
Jess Campbell
Okay, cool.
- [19:06]
Rhea Wong
Keep going.
- [19:07]
Jess Campbell
Okay, so do continuing on the do this one's really important about making your asks specific and compelling. And the reason why I've added the word compelling is because this year especially capturing folks attention is going to be more challenging than ever before with the introduction of AI and people writing all these frequent but not great emails and communication like you have to really stand out. And I have so many clients that come to me and they have questions want to raise money for general operating support and at least what I'm advising folks this end of year, like 2025, end of year campaign season, I'm saying to them, to the best of your ability, let's raise money for something specific. And so here's just an example of what not to do. Help us reach our a hundred thousand dollars goal. That's not motivating. There's no impact. I have no idea what that a hundred thousand dollars doing versus you have the power to help us clear clear 400 single moms off our wait list. Right. Single moms is who we're helping. We have a specific goal of what we're trying to do. And we also use this really important word in fundraising, you which kind of makes the donors pay attention. So if I I call this a power state and it's this sentence that centers the campaign theme so to speak and obviously communication piece to communication piece it can change. But having what are we raising money for? Write that sentence out and you're going to use that over and over again. Next have a specific and public financial goal. So similar to the one we just said. People love a goal post. I say this all the time. And so communicating, even including with visuals a la a thermometer, telling people like we're trying to raise X number of dollars by X date. Some of my clients have an internal private financial goal compared to what we're sharing outwardly to the public, you do you. But having a specific and public financial goal. One of the clients that both RI and I work on together, they have a very specific goal of 21,903. Because it's doing this one very specific thing. And the thing about numbers like that is they're believable, they're credible, they build trust. And so when you're like, we're trying to raise a million dollars and not really saying what you're doing with that money, it's what. So I would just really encourage you to have the most specific goal possible. And that can vary internally versus externally. Okay, continuing on to do this, send emails. Email each week of December, but especially on Fridays. So again, you just heard me say I like to send between, like, 14 and 16 emails the month of December. I understand that not everyone is doing that or will listen to me on that. I do recommend sending an email at least every week in the month of December. But Fridays are specifically powerful. Why? People use their inbox as a to do list. And I hate to be, like, transactional about fundraising because 99% of the time, I don't teach that. I know Ria doesn't teach that. But the month of December, specifically, is when people are wildly busy, like, crazy busy. And for the most part, my experience with donors is they have the best of intentions, but they're super strapped with time and capacity, just like all of us. And so if you send an email on a Friday, especially, like the earlier part of the day, it can provide, like, a trigger. Oh, yeah, I need to do that thing. Let me do that thing before I head out for the weekend and try to not be on my email so much. And I always send an email every Friday of the week. In addition to other days of the week. There's also, like, data on this. I didn't pull it. I've written about it before. But they are very successful fundraising day. Speaking of successful fundraising days, the last three days of the year are hands down, no questions asked. Every single year, it's the same. Some of the most profitable fundraising days of the year. And so that's why I'm encouraging you to Send at least 4 emails the last 3 days of the year. I was just on a call with a client yesterday and we were talking about what these last couple of emails of the year are. And unlike the first half of December, where I'm sharing more like storytelling impact emails, longer emails, these ones are a little bit more like, to the point, like, quick and dirty. Not totally. Except for the last one is very. Get your donation in today. Kind of think. But these don't need to be, like, long, beautiful with quotes and like. No, no, no, no, no. We're just, like, triggering those reminders the last couple days of the year. Okay. Seeing this might have been my last do this. Should I go straight onto the don't do this. Okay, cool. Don't do this. As a reinforcement for what we've already talked about, ghost your audience until giving Tuesday. I'm going to let you all have a moment with yourself and say, were we going to send emails before giving Tuesday? If the answer was no, I would really encourage you to change your mind and send a couple emails. Because again, it just doesn't feel good as the receiver of that to get like an ask out of nowhere. I believe, like, fundraisers and organizations need to earn their asks. And so you should start now is the point. Don't do this. Okay. Again, sending one to three emails will not get the job done, unfortunately. It's just too crowded. It's too busy. Like, you won't break through. You won't capture the attention required to raise your goals. If you rely on giving Tuesday only emails or only sending a couple emails the whole giving season, you have to send more. Next is worrying about bothering people. This is what I hear all the time when people are like, joss, you want me to send 16 emails in the month of December? That's going to make people unsubscribe. And the truth is it might make some people unsubscribe. And the truth is those people likely weren't going to give anyways. And I know this is more of a mindset thing that takes time to work through. I'm at a place. I'm sure Ria's at a place, too. Like, I don't even check that metric anymore because it really doesn't matter. And they're gone anyways. And you, I always say to my clients, like, you are not your subscriber. You might have a very overwhelming full inbox. That doesn't mean that your subscriber does or that doesn't mean that they don't like email. I am someone who loves email. I actually, I say this all the time. Saturday mornings, I sit on my couch, I drink my hot steaming cup of tea, and I read my favorite newsletters. They're long, they're like stories. And I click through all the links. It's like one of my favorite things I do every single week. So by sending less emails to someone like me, you're just missing out. And so really, I would encourage you to just let this one go, because the people that matter are going to enjoy your emails. The caveat is you have to send good emails, right? No one wants another bad email in their inbox. So, yeah, don't bother people with those. Okay, Next thing, don't do this. If you hit your goal early, do not stop asking. Do not stop asking. So, going back to the question that you asked me, Ria, about what if we hit our mat? So I'm just going to tell you this little story real quick. One of my clients last year had. It's a local aquarium. Like, it's so geographically specific. It's like community fundraising. Like, this organization is not raising hundreds of millions of dollars. They had a $50,000 goal that we hit, like, December 8th last year. And so we just kept going with the plan. We have 11 more emails to send. And they ended up raising. Drumroll, please. $103,000. So not once did it deter people from stopping their gift from coming in. They more than doubled their gift. And so again, if you hit your goal early, increase that goal, you do have to communicate what that extra money is going to do. Oh, my gosh, we made it. Let's go further. And it really kind of rallied people. Yeah, we're all in this together. And I always say this. People love to be on a winning team. And so it's actually more. I always pick a more conservative goal that we hit and over raise than crawling to the finish line that we never hit. That is psychologically for the donor, like, not inspiring, not motivating. Okay, don't do this. Spend a ton of time and energy on social media. So the truth is, social media is just a really difficult channel to raise money from. It's a great way to build awareness. It's a great way to build your email list. It's not a great way to raise money. And so in a world where you have limited hours in the day and limited capacity, if you have to pick a channel to. I'm not doing this. I personally would cut social media first. If you're someone that we have a whole cons team and we have the ability to do this, a part of that. Great, add it in. But I'm just giving you this permission because I know that people think, think, oh, I have to post on Instagram, I have to post on Facebook, I have to post on LinkedIn. And the truth is, it's just a really difficult channel to raise money on.
- [28:37]
Des
Most orgs treat Giving Tuesday like a clickfest. That's why they end up with $50 gifts and zero meetings. On November 11th at 12pm Eastern I'm hosting a free live webinar to flip that script. You'll get a copy paste 30 day plan, a one page impact brief. Donors can five our 72 hour move sprint to convert signals into meetings plus DA stock and wire language. So leadership gifts land this year. If you're an ED or DOD at a 3 million plus organization and you want leadership pledges by year end, register in the show notes. Again, it's free and the link is.
- [29:11]
Ria
In the show notes.
- [29:12]
Des
Bring your top 25. We'll make this actionable.
- [29:16]
Jess Campbell
Okay, I have this whole other section about teaching like stuff but maybe we should go through some questions and then if there's a little bit more time I can keep going.
- [29:27]
Ria
Yeah, I think that that makes sense. And actually one question that came up that I really want to talk about, get your thoughts on is I want to talk about segmentation because segmentation is key. So when we're talking about major donors. Yeah, you need to suppress them from your campaign. Endless. So here are a couple caveats. I'm going to break it down into a couple of different pieces for you. So if you are talking to someone, they're actively in your campaign, you've qualified them. Now is the time to prompt the question. Would now be the time for us to talk about a proposal for funding because you increase your chances of. Of a.
- [30:07]
Rhea Wong
Yes.
- [30:08]
Ria
When you do it in person, you increase your chances by 70%. But remember when we're talking about major donors, often if they're giving from assets or DAF or family foundation, like the end of year is not as relevant to them because some people will give because they want the tax benefit. Right. But like these people have already given their thing so like they're under it. They're not under that same time pressure. Now they might give just because it's like culturally we'd like to give at the end of the year but like that's not necessarily like you should not rush them based on your timeline because they have a different type. Okay. The general point here is we're not going to mass solicit people who are major donor potentials. Now if you're talking to someone who has been qualified but you have not complete then complete qualification on them. If you don't know what that means, you have to go back to the module. I would slow roll it and start with a, start with a cultivation with them in January, you can let them know that we're doing this, but again we're going to slow roll it. They are not part of the mass appeal. If they have given this year, you are not going to solicit them via this mass appeal. What you may do is reach out to them with gratitude and offer a couple of frictionless ways to perhaps upgrade to extend their existing impact. If you have people in your list who you suspect might be high capacity, there are wealth flags that you but have never given. You can include them in the in your solicitation. But I would offer like a premium version of it with like hand raising and goal searching. I'm going to talk about hand raising in a second. If you have lapsed major divers, you do not send them this email. You reach out, you phone call, you try to set a meeting, you tell them about what's changed and why. Now you present one specific funding need. And if they're bored people or board introductions, you also do not mass email. So that's my perspective. But Jess, what are your thoughts on this?
- [32:10]
Jess Campbell
No, I mean I think being super thoughtful about your segmentations in general is really important. I think major gift donors are in a really obviously important category. Another one is like monthly donors. These people are folks giving to you every single month. And so are you including them in these emails? My opinion is no. If anything, I would probably produce a smaller, shorter series asking them to make an extra additional one time gift because they're some of your most loyal supporters. So I think maybe spending like 30 to 60 minutes mapping out who it is you want to communicate with and how you want to talk to them is worth the time. But yeah, I totally agree with you Ria, that rushing major gift donors to meet this campaign's priorities is silly. And also treating these major gift donors as part of the mass communication is also probably not the way to go. Think about that, right? Like you're having all these one on one conversations with people, you're going back and forth and then boom, you just rely on all this mass communication.
- [33:20]
Ria
It's like, yeah, and the other two things I'm going to just mention here, I'm doing a much longer training on this. But when you're thinking about your donation page, I know we've a lot of us have talked about donation pages do not sleep on offering multiple ways to give. So I think we default to here's the credit card, right? But I wanted to send a check to someone. I literally had to search like down in the itty bitty bottom for the mailing a check. And I was like, this is annoying. There was no information about giving with my dad. If I have a daft like you should offer that opportunity because that is a major gift indicator. Maybe you want to offer people the opportunity to donate stock. Maybe you want to offer the opportunity to donate crypto. Right. So even if you don't embed it on the giving page that you have, that goes with your class year or however you get your donations in, like on the page and signaling to people that it is an option is very helpful. There's also the daft widget which you can get from Market Smart for free. And then the last piece I'll add is I'm really recommending that people put in their communications event. I'd be curious about what you think about this, Jess, because I know you just did this with respect to serving people. And I want to put in hand raising signals in emails on my website when you sign up for my newsletter, like clicking boxes, like, I'd be interested in a tour, I'd be interested in making a gift over 10k, please call me. I'd be interested in bequest information. So I'll put a list of the hand raisers. But like what are your thoughts about where we can put these sorts of filtering questions in?
- [35:04]
Jess Campbell
Yeah, and if you've never done anything like that direct. We for example, have even started a level lower with just like email engagement, which if you want I can share my screen and we can go through that a little bit if there's more. Because that's really what you're trying to get people to do. Right. Is like open and click now so that the first time they are getting an appeal email isn't the first time they've ever opened and clicked a donate button. Right. And so there's a lot of ways to do this. But let me just go to actually some examples. Storytelling is a whole different thing I can talk to you about. But if you want to get people to open your emails, your subject line is going to be the most important trigger. I personally think sparking curiosity is the number one way to do that. So there's an organization called the Block in Chicago. They run an after school boxing program for kids on the west side of Chicago. And their founder sent an email with the subject line, he almost quit. And immediately I was like, who is he? What did he almost quit? I've gotta know. I think also things with numbers. Like I sent an email last week to my list that said 29% of nonprofits won't do this. And so you're like 29% won't. What they do. I need to open this and find out. I think that is a really overlooked thing, the subject line to get people to just first open the freaking email. There's a tool called subjectline. Com. It's free. It allows you to actually plug in your proposed subject line and it will rate it and then it will give you suggestions on how to improve it. It's free. I think you can do one a day. So that's step number one to get people to click. I really like there's two different ways. There's the warmup face, raising your hand and then there's the asking phase, raising your hand. Right. So I want people now to be very comfortable with engaging with the emails. And that can be everything from what I call a clickable section which I'll share in a second, which is like a section below that we will do for clients that is like things I found on the Internet and it's like links to memes or tiktoks or reels or articles or whatever. It's just like fun and casual and silly, but like forcing people to click a little bit. Last week in an email to for a client, we actually asked them to fill out a one question survey where we're like if you could rank what we do, like what matters to you. And so we ask people to rank from a scale of 1 to 5. Other ways we get people to click or even reply. Replies are some of the most powerful engagement tools in emails is we'll have a quiz or question and we'll say hit reply with your answer. So a question, what percentage of people have work in the food industry? Like I have a client that does that type of work for justice involved youth and a 10%, 30%, 50%, 90% click A, B, C or D or hit reply A, B, C or D. And so that's a tool to get people to engage. I think as far as asking people to engage it on a deeper level, one of the ways we do that with clients is with these tent pole moments. So right now some of my clients are hosting panel discussions like what for example, he's doing like a what teachers want, what parents want, what educators want, where people come live to a zoom call to have a discussion. I have other clients doing like a impact. This is what we've done over the last 10 months, come listen to it type of thing. We have a town hall with one of my clients happening in November where we're Bringing in speakers and that's getting people to again go a little bit further I think as soon as like now. But through the month of November you could do what you just suggested is have some sort of email that's do you have a DAF, a donor advised fund? Do we take DAFs? And I've done this for clients where we're screenshotting what the steps look like and then it's this is how you execute that. I will say though that the later we get in the year, the less likely people are going to be thrilled to meet you for coffee and come for a tour. The window is closing unfortunately, like the time for a lot of that work was like the summer, September 1st half of October. The window is shortening quickly. And so other ways you could do that is like doing some sort of like virtual recording situation where again you're getting people to click and watch and then you have that kind of back end information about who's doing that. And just to underline what Ria is saying is like you just need to make giving easy. Do not be burying your mailing address. Do not be burying your donate buttons. Do not be burying how people can give you money. Or maybe you need to test it. I just recently made a donation and I was like how many steps does it take for me to do this? Another one. I just made a gift yesterday because I'm going to share this on LinkedIn soon. But oh my gosh you guys. I found I read the best impact report I have ever read in my whole life. I'm not even exaggerating. I sent it to all my clients. I'm like this is the new gold standard. But when I went to make a gift after I read their impact report, they only took credit cards. No Apple Pay, no PayPal. And so I was like where the is my credit card? Cuz I don't like memorize. It was just like oh my gosh. They almost didn't get me and my donation because they made it hard for me. Cause I was doing it on my phone which like doesn't memorize my numbers. So I would just say like make giving easy.
- [40:56]
Ria
Yeah, I'm actually also going to just put in the chat here you all have email signatures. Put this in your email signature. Considering a 10k plus or DAF stock gift, request a 20 minute briefing, have it click to your calendar because y' all are sending out lots of emails, lots of people. You don't know who all is out there. So we want to put little catchments everywhere. And briefly, how do you feel about thermometers campaigns?
- [41:22]
Jess Campbell
And I like them. I think visuals and show not tell is really helpful for folks. And it doesn't have to be like a literal thermometer. Like, for some of my clients, I'll do like a line with, like, their logo and like a point. And I'm like, we're this far away. But I think visuals are really helpful. I did just want to show you all, like, a clickable section. So this is one that I've sent to my email list with the question of, on a scale of I want to be in charge to, I'm chill, which one are you? And I asked people to reply with an emoji. And the reason why I did that is because, like, even typing, I was born a typing. No question. That's just a little bit extra work that people don't want to do, but they can send an emoji.
- [42:08]
Ria
Real quick.
- [42:09]
Jess Campbell
This is something we do for one of my clients. We have an action of the week, and then we have this section called A Bit of Fun from the Internet. And usually the bit of fun from the Internet has three things. This one, I copy and pasted this tweet instead. But it's just again, like this one says, for the moms who want to eat all the Reese's peanut butter eggs, it's like sparks that curiosity, and you might just click. And I'm sure it clicks over like a TikTok or something. So this is what I like to include in the bottom half of an email. The top half is usually like a single story of impact or transformation followed by this. Okay, let me see. Oh, go ahead. Bria, do you have a question?
- [42:47]
Ria
Oh, I was just going to say we're getting a request for the gold standard impact report.
- [42:51]
Jess Campbell
Oh, I know, you guys, it was so good. I have a draft LinkedIn post, so let me find it.
- [42:58]
Ria
And y', all, one of the tips that Jess gave me, which is so again and so obvious, is like, you also keep a folder of emails that you like, even if they're not nonprofit. People like you should be signed up for Jess's email list just to see how she does email. You should be on my email list if you're not already follow people on LinkedIn. Like, success leaves clues. You don't need to make this up from scratch.
- [43:21]
Jess Campbell
No, yeah, I. There's also a couple resources. They're more like, for marketing, like they do. Some of them have nonprofit sections, but they actually, I'll just share them. You can use them One is called Email Love. If you Google Email Love, it's like a database of emails. These are definitely more like marketing focused and I'm a big proponent of clean, simple text based emails. Not a ton of images. So this isn't that. But that's another resource for you about like high quality emails. I can also share some of my more popular ones. I've been sharing these Day in the life emails.
- [44:04]
Ria
Yes.
- [44:05]
Rhea Wong
Question for me.
- [44:05]
Ria
Do you do AB testing on your campaigns?
- [44:09]
Jess Campbell
Not so much on campaigns, but on subject lines and mailchimp makes that pretty easy to do. I also feel like you can a b test yourself to death just like you can segment yourself to death. Like for me a lot of this testing is stuff you should be doing the first nine months of the year, not the last three months of the year. Like we have a mission and we just need to all go.
- [44:35]
Ria
But to, to that point I think you've said it, but I just have to reiterate it. Put in as much if not more thought in the subject line than he did the content of the email because I think we often just do a throwaway subject. But it's like ol Gold said if he had all the time he would just focus on the headline. Yeah, really chatgpt it if you need to, but just really think about what are the curiosity, the ticklers, the headlines that are burning. Make people open. Yep.
- [45:06]
Jess Campbell
Yeah, because if they're not even opening your email, you've already lost them. But here's an example of the day in the Life email that we did for a client. We, we do this for all of our clients. They're very popular. Just like other tricks. I just gave this advice recently but make sure your font isn't microscopic. I like to do 18 and higher which you might be like 18 but again scrolling on mobile it's not. Honestly I also something people are usually surprised by. In an Ask email I will hyperlink various texts like anywhere between five and seven times which you might be like, whoa, that's a lot of. That's a lot of links to the donate button and it it that's what works even in that email report. I think was it 7 or 9? It's more than you think. You should do it more than you think. And then you need to have what I call an unmissable button. So big ol button that's like red, yellow, pink, like whatever. Your colors are neon green and I like to use active language. So instead of donate today, I might say I'm ready to double my impact. See the difference? I like to use that kind of language on buttons. I'm just trying to think of, like, other little things I do for you all.
- [46:24]
Ria
I hate the point that you made too, about not having too much, like, graphics, because I know a lot of times we can get real cute about, oh, we're going to lay out this whole thing. But actually what it does is it makes your email unbelievable.
- [46:36]
Jess Campbell
It makes your emails undeliverable. Yeah, they're very difficult to load, especially on mobile. So I went to just so you guys have an idea of like, how much I geek out on this stuff. In February, I went to a newsletter conference in Austin. That's all it was about, email newsletters. And there was this guy on stage that developed and co or founded like a very successful newsletter and sold it to HubSpot for millions and millions of dollars. And in the room he had mailchimp and flodesk and convertkit and like all these tool developers, right? And he said on the microphone, and he can say this to them, like, why do you guys make it so hard to send a plain text email? Like, why? Because that's what works the best. He said. This guy, he was like white background, black text with a button. And he wasn't even talking about fundraising. He's talking about selling stuff that is the most effective email. And so I heard that and I was like, same for fundraising. And the Day in the Life email is not a fundraising email, which is why it works for building trust and getting to know the person sending the email. And it's entertaining. I would never send that email to raise money. If I'm going to raise money, I want it like clean, simple. I want my text to breathe, no thick paragraphs. I want bold. I want bullet points.
- [48:05]
Ria
All right, I'm just going to follow this up if there are other questions in the last two minutes. But Jess, how can folks work with you if there's like needing a little bit more Des Campbell action?
- [48:14]
Jess Campbell
Oh, that is so nice. So I don't work with a lot of clients, like one on one. I keep my portfolio very small and we are at capacity right now. But I have a template shop which I shared with you and that is a great tool for people who are like, I don't know where to start. I hate a blank page. The templates are very cost effective. So this email is a template, a free template for you to go out to a donor who's may have given a certain amount consistently over a couple years. And this is some language for you to say make an upgrade. And then over here is a four part series about converting someone who made a one time gift into a monthly donor. I like to send this series in January to everyone who just made a gift in December to say basically, hey, let's automate this giving thing and just chop up your gift over the month. This works really well for donors who give 500 and below. So not so much your major gift donors, but if folks make a 500 gift or less to your end of year campaign, I would send them this series. I think that's it. And I can send this with you guys if you like. Don't want to pull out your phone or whatever. Otherwise working with me, you can certainly reach out and maybe in 2026 we'll have some space.
- [49:35]
Ria
Maybe, I don't know. But oh my God, you're such a popular girl at the mom.
- [49:40]
Jess Campbell
No, I just don't want a big.
- [49:41]
Ria
Team and I just don't work with a team.
- [49:43]
Jess Campbell
I don't feel you.
- [49:44]
Ria
I feel you. Thank you, Jess. I so appreciate you.
- [49:47]
Jess Campbell
It was so nice to hear. Thanks Ri. And just say good luck this giving season.
- [49:51]
Ria
It's going to be, it's going to be an interesting time.
- [49:54]
Jess Campbell
Yeah, I know. I have zero idea how it's going to go. So we're being aggressive and we're starting early for all of my clients and I would encourage everyone to do this same.
- [50:03]
Ria
Yeah, we're just, it's going to be exciting. All right, thanks. Appreciate you. Bye.
- [50:10]
Rhea Wong
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