Mailchimp for Nonprofits

Why Email Marketing Is Important for Nonprofits

Email marketing is a powerful tool for nonprofits to engage with supporters, donors, and volunteers. With email, you can share your mission, success stories, and CTAs directly with a dedicated audience in a way that is often more effective than social media because it lands directly in their inbox. 

Here are a few reasons why email marketing is an essential tool for nonprofits:

1. Cost-Effective Communication: Email marketing is often significantly more affordable than traditional marketing methods (like direct mail), which is particularly ideal for smaller nonprofits with limited budgets.
2. Direct Engagement: Emails land directly in your supporters' inboxes, ensuring your message reaches them (whereas communication via social media, for example, might miss them due to their algorithm, time of logging in, etc.).
3. Personalized Messaging: Email platforms allow for segmentation of your audience members and personalization, enabling you to tailor different messages to difference audience groups. This ability tends to increase engagement. 
4. Measurable Results: With email marketing, you can track open rates, click-through rates, and other metrics to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and adjust your strategies accordingly. 

Mailchimp Features for Nonprofits

Mailchimp offers a variety of features that are particularly beneficial for nonprofits:

1. Drag-and-Drop Email Builder: Easily create professional-looking emails with Mailchimp's drag-and-drop builder, which is particularly helpful to nonprofit professionals who don't have design experience.
2. Templates: Helpful for similar reasons, you can choose from a range of templates designed for different types of campaigns, including fundraising appeals, newsletters, and event invitations.
3. Segmentation and Personalization: Segment your email list based on various criteria (e.g. donor vs. volunteer vs. corporate partners, etc.) to easily send relevant communications to each group.
4. Analytics: Mailchimp provides detailed reports to understand how your emails are performing and where you can improve.
5. Integrations: Connect Mailchimp with other tools you use, such as your CRM , website, or marketplace. Integrations with e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce are particularly powerful for social enterprises! 
6. Great Customer Support: For nonprofit professionals who are new to email marketing, being able to get quick answers or troubleshooting help from support cannot be overstated.

Mailchimp Marketing Automation for Nonprofits

Marketing automation can help nonprofits save time and improve efficiency of their campaigns. Mailchimp's automation features allow you to:

1. Create a Welcome Series: Automatically send a series of welcome emails to new subscribers, introducing them to your organization and sharing ways to get involved.
2. Donation Reminders: Set up automated reminders for recurring donations or to follow up with donors after an initial contribution.
3. Event Promotion: Use automation to promote upcoming events and send email reminders to attendees.
4. Engagement Tracking: Track supporter engagement and automatically send targeted emails based on their interactions with your campaigns.
5. Abandoned Cart Notifications and Transactional Emails: Function as a social enterprise with an e-commerce component? Send automated emails to customers who have left items in their shopping carts to help prevent lost sales.

Should Your Nonprofit Use Mailchimp?

That depends. Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform used by hundreds of thousands of organizations, but many of their great features we've mentioned are also available on other email solutions that can help you get started faster and at a lower cost. Depending on your nonprofit's needs, it may not be the most cost-effective option out there.

However, Mailchimp really does offer a range of powerful and user-friendly features. Those that are unique to Mailchimp are especially useful to Social Enterprises with a e-commerce component. Therefore, we'd highly recommend Mailchimp to nonprofits that operate as a social enterprise or offer a line of products that support their work!

If you think you fall into this category, Mailchimp offers nonprofits a 15% discount! Click here to get started and request your discount.

Are you a Monthly Member of our Nonprofit Marketing Academy? If so, access resources that can help you decide if Mailchimp is right for you.

• Should my nonprofit use Mailchimp?
• Nonprofit Email Marketing Solutions: What are the alternatives to Mailchimp?

More Email Resources through the Nonprofit Marketing Academy

Monthly Members also get access to a library of resources to help them tackle email marketing effectively and sustainably. Become a Member to get access now to trainings and resources including:

• Email for Nonprofits On-Demand Training
• Email Pre-Send Checklist
• Automated Email Welcome Sequence Guide
• Sustainable Nonprofit Newsletter Strategies
• Sustainable Newsletter Planning Workbook
• Email Newsletter Tracker
• Email and Landing Page Mockup Tools
• Giving Tuesday Email Swipe Files
• And more!