When it comes to marketing strategies, SMS and email marketing are among the most highly recommended approaches for a reason. Over 5 billion people worldwide own a smartphone, and over 4.5 billion people use email.
Despite this widespread usage, however, many organizations aren’t seeing the fruits of their labor. If anything, they’re seeing countless people opting out. It stings, but you have to accept it. After all, honoring SMS opt-outs is the law.
But why are your supporters opting out of your email and SMS channels, and how can you reduce future opt-outs? In this guide, we’ll explore five common reasons and how to address them.
1) Communication Fatigue
You know the saying: too much of a good thing can turn bad. That same saying applies to email and SMS marketing. If you send multiple emails and text messages per week, you’ll end up overwhelming your supporters. And not just emotionally—you’ll be clogging their inboxes, too.
Fortunately, there are ways to combat this issue:
Scale back your communication frequency
This is the easiest solution because it simply means cutting back on the number of emails or text messages you send to your supporters.
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to how many messages you send to your supporters. But the safe bet is once a week for email marketing and about one to two text blasts for SMS marketing. Ultimately, you just need to find a balance between keeping your organization top-of-mind and overcommunicating to the point of exhausting your supporters.
Ask about communication preferences directly
If there are still a good number of supporters unsubscribing from your email and SMS channels, ask what they’d like to hear from you.
You can do this by sending out a form for them to fill out with their feedback. This is a smart strategy because you’re getting insights straight from your audience while engaging with them. You’re showing them that their opinions matter, thus strengthening your bond.
Monitor engagement
Simply put, use subscriber data to create email and text campaigns that resonate with your audience. Review click-through rates, conversion rates, and response rates. Note which messages are doing well and which ones aren’t. Then, when you’re planning the next wave of emails and texts, keep this data in mind by building on your strongest strategies.
For example, let’s say that you’ve noticed that messages with photos of your volunteers and beneficiaries perform better than text-only communications. In that case, you can focus on including more visuals like photos and videos in future messages to align with audience preferences.
2) Lack of Personalization
Sending basic emails and texts can start to sound generic, making your supporters feel like just a number.
To fix this, take these two steps to increase personalization:
Address supporters by name
Doing this will add a personal touch to your emails and texts, making your supporters feel like you’re directly talking to them.
You can include their names in several ways, such as in your email subject lines or at the start of the message with a personalized greeting.
Don’t worry about manually tweaking every single email or text you send out. Instead, you can have automation or AI personalization tools do this for you. These tools can pull up donor information from your CRM into your communications and even come up with a short message of appreciation for your donors.
Segment your supporters
With this strategy, you’ll review all your supporters in your database and group them by shared characteristics. Once you’ve made your groupings, you then create messages that will resonate with them.
Just like with the previous suggestion, you don’t have to do this manually. Your organization’s CRM can automatically create donor profiles for supporters who have contributed or interacted with your organization. Then, you can segment them based on their:
- Age
- Where they live
- Income
- Family status (e.g., are they married and with children?)
- Donation amount
- Giving frequency
Bloomerang’s nonprofit CRM guide offers even more suggestions for segmenting your donors. For instance, you can segment new donors, long-time donors, major donors, and so on.
After creating these segments, start planning ways to engage with them. For example, if you have many supporters living in the same area, you can host an event there. For supporters who live farther away, you can inform them about a virtual Q&A happening soon.
3) Poor Timing
When it comes to email and SMS marketing, timing is of the essence. You can’t just send messages anytime you want—that will only show that you lack respect for your supporters’ boundaries and lead to low engagement.
Thankfully, the solutions to this problem are easy to implement:
Observe quiet hours
This tip is especially true and useful for text marketing. It’s imperative that you only send out messages during standard waking hours in the recipient’s time zone. Otherwise, you’re going to risk waking them when they’re supposed to be asleep and irritating them so much that they opt out of your channel.
Optimize send times
This is a simple remedy, but an effective one. Take a look at your nonprofit’s data analytics to see when your audience is most active. Then, schedule your emails and SMS communications during those times only.
4) Too Many Donation Asks
As a nonprofit organization, the last thing you want to do is to make your supporters feel like you only reach out when you need something from them. To avoid sending out too many donation asks, try these strategies:
Share supporters’ impact
Did your supporters come out and help you during a recent fundraising event? Or were they able to recruit more volunteers for your nonprofit? If yes, you should send a message reporting the positive impact they’ve had on your organization and thanking them for all their efforts. A little graciousness on your part goes a long way.
Another thing you can do is send special updates to those who have contributed restricted funds. They need to know that you’re handling their donations the way they want you to. Additionally, sending updates will show them that you’re a trustworthy nonprofit, and that will motivate them to keep donating in the future.
Invite them to participate in nonmonetary engagement activities
Do you have any upcoming events? Are you looking for volunteers for any of your organization’s campaigns? Your email and SMS channels are the perfect way to disseminate this information.
This strategy works particularly well in email marketing because you have more room to explain what you’re asking from your supporters. It’s also a lot more flexible. You can start with email newsletters that contain educational content, then follow up with another newsletter about news and updates, and then a few days later, send an invitation for them to learn more about your current programs and activities by reading your blog or watching a video about them.
Additionally, this email strategy can also encourage conversions without sending supporters to your donation page. It’s a win-win situation for you and your supporters who want to get more involved in your mission.
5) Channel Redundancy
If you’re sending the same message across all your channels, supporters may start to get bored and opt out. There are a few ways you can fix this mistake:
Play to each channel’s strengths
SMS messages are short, but people get them quickly. Meanwhile, emails might take some minutes to reach people’s inboxes, but they do have the space for longer content.
With this in mind, you can plan messages that leverage each channel’s strengths.
For example, SMS is perfect for urgent communications, such as last-minute event updates and appeals with a deadline. Email is the best avenue for storytelling and impact messaging. It’s also great for long-form impact reports and complex event details.
Create a unified cadence
Your organization doesn’t have to pit SMS and email marketing against each other. Both channels have their pros and cons, so the ideal strategy should be to find a way to use them together.
As Mogli’s SMS marketing vs. email marketing guide explains, “An omnichannel strategy involves not just sending the same message on multiple channels, but ensuring each subsequent message builds off the one before it.”
For example, you can send an email invitation to an upcoming event that your organization is hosting. As the date for that event approaches, you can occasionally send texts to remind them.
Combating the Increasing Number of Opt-Outs
Seeing supporters opt out of your marketing channels always stings, but fortunately, not all is lost. All you have to do is diagnose the issue and act accordingly.
Just keep your audience in mind when planning your strategy for both your SMS and email channels. Think about what they like to hear from you and how often they want to hear from you, and incorporate that in your strategy. Also, respect their boundaries by not invading their quiet hours with your nonstop messages.
It might take you a lot of trial and error, but you’ll definitely find the right cadence for your email and SMS marketing channels.
