8 Tips To Make Your Nonprofit’s Emails More Clickable

Image courtesy of Devore Tech

Think about how many emails you receive on a daily basis. Now how many of those are you inclined to click on, read, and interact with?

Very few, right?

Here 8 simple tricks to help your nonprofit’s emails receiving more interaction, more often.

What does your nonprofit do to drive email interaction? Let us know, and other readers know in the comment section below.

If you're using any of the code from this email, be sure to remove any periods!

1. Send your email's from an actual name

   According to recent studies, using a real person’s name as the sender in an email increases open rates. Email recipients are more likely to open an email from a name, instead of an organization. It is more personable, warm, and friendly. The name could be from your nonprofit’s CEO, or your marketing executive, or just a name you pull from thin air.

   As long as it is not “marketingteam@nonprofit.org”, you’re making the right choice.

2. Pre-set the preview text

   Preview text is the small amount of text that directly follows your subject line. Utilize this small window of opportunity to provide the recipient brief preview of what your email contains. It should be short enough to fit in the preview text space next to the subject line, but still provide enough information to entice a click.

   Your preview text should read something like: “Come support XYZ.org, attend our raffle Thursday night!”

   Instead of: “Have you ever wanted to help a large group of people with a problem then attend...”

   The second option is cut-off, unintelligible and not enticing. While the first is direct,

3. Modify plain-text

   It is important to realize that not every person receiving your nonprofit's email will receive the fully HTML optimized version. Some browsers do not support HTML, while some individuals may be running old machines, with out-dated software, who can not view advanced scripts and formats.

   As a result, their emails are messes of quotes, links, alt text that no one’s going to read. It should not effect your HTML optimized version, take the extra 5 minutes to use shortened URLs, and keep the body simple. Make the plain-text version of your email inviting to reach and impact as many people as possible.

4. Add links to images

   Every nonprofit’s ultimate goal with their email marketing campaigns, and email newsletters is to drive traffic to a webpage. Making the links within an email images offers the potential to greatly increase the amount of click through you receive.

   Use the following code to drive up numbers click through rates:  <.a href="”YOUR" link="" webpage=""><.img here.jpg="" image="" src="”YOUR"><./a>

5. Add alt text to your call-to-action buttons

   This can be edited with your email’s rich text editor, or you can enter it manually through the HTML. The code looks like this:  <.a href="”YOUR" link="" webpage=""><.img .alt="" action="" alt-text="" button="" call="" goes="" here="" here.jpg="" image="" src="”YOUR" text="”YOUR" to=""><./a>

   What this does is ensure that if someone is unable to see images in your emails, they will at least see a link, providing them the opportunity to click on it.

6. Include social sharing buttons

   By offering your email recipients the opportunity to share your content, you have the chance to spread your email to an even wider array of people. Where your email list might be 500, if shared by only a handful of those individuals, your message could be spread to 5,000 in just a few key strokes.

7. Simplify sharing with pre-made Tweets

   All of a sudden, the goal you set for your email before even writing it is two clicks away from being shared with dozen, hundreds, or potentially even thousands of people. Making things as easy as possible is the best way to spread your message.

   Check out clicktotweet.com to generate a free custom tweet link. Just type in what your tweet should say, add a URL, a few hashtags, and before you know it, your nonprofit’s email is ready to be shared in 140 characters!

8. Make email forwarding a breeze

   Add a line in your email message to encourage your recipients to forward your message. You can create an image or just highlight text to offer your recipients this option. You can achieve this in your email’s rich text editor, or use HTML. To create an image forward button use this HTML code, just make sure the “%20” is used to separate words:

   <.a href="mailto:?subject=Your%20subject%20here%20&body=Your%20email%20body%20text%20here."><.img here.jpg="" image="" src="”YOUR"><./a>