Attention: EveryAction Development is now Bonterra Development. Please bear with usas we update our screenshots to match our new name.
Do’s and Don’ts for End of Year emailing
DON’T send a radically different amount of email on deadline days like #Giving Tuesday or December 31st.
Email providers don’t like abnormal amounts of volume from a sender. If you don’t usually email your list 3x a day right now, but you know you will want to on those all-important days, you should plan for the change. Build your program slowly by increasing your volume in the week or two leading up to the day, so the new traffic doesn’t seem unusual.
Watch our video about deliverability
DO use Email Scoring on the segmentation step of Targeted Email.
The email score is a near real-time representation of how engaged someone is with your email program. You can use this to improve your open rates by suppressing the less engaged members of your email list.
Read more about how to use Email Scoring
DON'T leave your Pre-header text field blank.
This is a great way to optimize your opens and share your Call to Action with supporters skimming through their inbox.
Read more on creating effective content
DO use FastAction one-click donation links.
We’ve seen clients improve conversion rates by 9x when using this, and our improved Smart Links builder makes it easy to insert dynamic ask amounts.
Read more on using Smart Links and FastAction
DON’T leave your email series Automations running on autopilot.
You may want to pause your old email series during this time if it has content you don’t want supporters to receive during #GivingTuesday or during your End of Year campaign.
When you come back to your email series in January, think about updating them to take advantage of features like applying Activist Codes or Quick Decisions based on your supporters response to your outreach effort.
Read more about setting up an Automation
DO your testing now!
Now is the best time to experiment with your dynamic ask formulas, or with your heavily styled vs minimally styled asks. You want a chance to get the experiments done ahead of time so that you can operationalize that learning for these crucial moments. Just starting out with A/B testing? It’s easy to pick a percentage of your list to test with when sending an email.