When you create and manage email interests, follow these best practices to increase the likelihood constituents open emails and stay engaged with your organization.
To learn what email interests are and how they work, read About Email Interests.
Best Practices for Defining Email Interests
To define email interests:
Put yourself in your constituent's shoes. Think about which types of email communications your donors want to subscribe to or unsubscribe from.
Keep in mind that every marketing email you send must have one or more email interests.
If you send an email more than once a quarter, create an email interest specifically for that communication. This allows constituents to opt out of only that type of communication, which decreases the chance of constituents unsubscribing from all of your emails. For example, consider the most extreme case: sending an appeal every month for donations. It probably would make you nervous to set up an appeal email interest for fear that your constituent base would opt out. But think of it this way—if you're sending emails that people don't want and you don't have an email interest specifically for that communication, they will opt out entirely. Given the choice between not getting hard solicitations or no email at all, I'd pick the option that allows my organization to still communicate with them about other things.
If you have donors who are fiercely loyal to certain program areas, setting up email interests for these programs is a great idea. To oversimplify, consider an animal shelter: you may have constituents who are "dog people" and would much rather receive updates on what's happening with dog-specific programs, and you may have "cat people" who would rather hear about cats and not dogs. In this scenario, you could have an email interest for each. Constituents can self-select which types of email they get from you.
Note: Email interests apply only to your marketing emails. Email interests don’t apply to transaction emails, which are emails with one of these purposes: Acknowledgement, Receipt, or Payment Reminder. When you create an email with a transaction purpose, you cannot select an email interest.
Manage Email Preferences
Let constituents manage their own email preferences. Constituents can subscribe or unsubscribe from marketing emails, but they can’t unsubscribe from transaction emails. For more information, read How Can Constituents Update Their Email Interests or Unsubscribe?
Putting It All Together
This workflow describes what should happen when a new constituent signs up for your emails through a Bloomerang CRM online form:
The constituent clicks the link to sign up for emails from your organization.
Bloomerang CRM sends an automatic response to the constituent. This response should:
Thank the constituent for signing up and include the name of your organization.
List your email interests with a description of what to expect for each (frequency you plan to send it out and what type of content they will see in it).
Tell the constituent about the Manage Email Preferences link at the end of the email so the constituent can immediately customize what type of emails to receive from your organization.
To create this automatic response, create a custom confirmation email for your email sign-up form.
Chris, Thank you for signing up to receive emails from Tatooine Animal Shelter. We send a few different types of emails at various times throughout the year:
To customize which emails you receive from us, click Manage Email Preferences at the end of any email from us. Thanks so much, and we look forward to keeping you up to date with what's happening here! Tatooine Animal Shelter |