Target Non-Openers to Increase Donations

Every year I learn something new in my garden. My first year growing vegetables, I harvested lettuce by pulling the entire plant up by the roots. Had I known, I would have just clipped off the leaves I needed, leaving the plant to produce new leaves all season long. If only I had a second chance.

Picture this: you create a gorgeous email for your upcoming donation campaign and send it to a quality list of supporters and past donors. After a few days, you realize the open rates are too low, which means that wonderful email you put together wasn’t even opened by many of your contacts.

The truth is, second chances are needed in email marketing, too. You can send to your non-openers again with a carefully designed campaign, taking advantage of your quality email list to boost your donations in the second round. Learn what to send and when with the tips below.

Join us for a free webinar, Create and Send Your Nonprofit’s Email Campaign in 15 Minutes or Less.

Pull the trigger on a second send

Unlike gardening, you don’t have to wait an entire year for your second chance. You can actually schedule an email to automatically resend with an updated subject line to contacts who didn’t open it.

Contacts don’t open emails for a variety of reasons: they’re too busy, your email got buried on a busy mailing day, or they might not have found your subject line that interesting. The good news is that you can set your email to automatically resend to the contacts who didn’t open it the first time, and tweak your subject line for them, too.

Your second send is still their first open

It may feel uncomfortable at first to send the same email twice, but remember, this group of contacts never opened or viewed the first one, so they will not know that it contains the same content.

Changing the subject line makes all the difference. Even if they had read your initial subject line and consciously chose not to open, your new subject line will catch their attention and completely conceal the fact that you’re sending the same email.

When to resend your email to maximize opens

Out of all the contacts who will open your email, 89% open within the second day of having received it, and 93% open by the third day. Waiting for the fourth day to resend ensures you’re less likely to resend an email to someone that was already going to open. You want to avoid being seen as spam and result in complaints or unsubscribes.

Give yourself a deserved second chance

Having this opportunity to resend to non-openers is an ideal way to make sure your message is reaching as many of your supporters as possible. Think of all those donations you could have received if your email wasn’t lost in a jam-packed inbox.

We know you put a lot of care into your email marketing so don’t let it go to waste because of low open rates. Take advantage of your second chance to make an impact and boost your donations.