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Giving Tuesday ⇨ Spam Tuesday ⇨ Blacklist Tuesday

Are you going to damage your email reputation for the dream of easy money? This is an extremely important question to ask yourself as you get ready for Giving Tuesday. Don’t let it become the day that you SPAM all of your supporters, and lose the privilege to email them ever again.

When a supporter marks your email as spam it doesn’t just affect your sending to that one person. Spam complaints are stored by email providers and if you receive enough of them, they will stop delivering your emails to anyone!

How do you avoid sending spam?

1. Get permission first and keep your list clean

The most important part of sending mass emails is the most boring part: keep your email list clean! Ask people if they want to receive your email before you send them anything. Be careful about who you add to your list, and make sure you have permission. If someone no longer wants to receive emails from you, remove them from your list promptly. In addition, periodically check your database for duplicate contacts and merge them together.

2. Know your audience and group them into separate email lists

Now that you know who wants to receive emails from you, design your email strategy specifically for each type of supporter. Send a different email to your volunteers than you would to your major donors. DataMiner Platinum allows you to customize your email lists extensively. Need help building a query for your email list? Contact support@donorsnap.com and we’ll give you a hand. Just make sure that you aren’t including the same person in multiple versions of the same email!

3. Don’t send too many emails

One email might be too many, but five emails might not be enough. Where do you draw the line? The answer is to plan your email strategy ahead of time. Write all of your emails before you send the first one. Picture each group of supporters (separate email lists) that you are sending to and read each email from their perspective. Be honest with yourself about how they might respond and cut out the unnecessary emails entirely.

4. Not all mistakes should have an email “apology”

We all occasionally make mistakes in our emails, but don’t send another email just because there’s something wrong with your original email. Remember the purpose of your email, and carefully weight the different pieces of it. If something as critical as your donate now link for your Giving Tuesday campaign is broken, send another email. But if your email apology also includes a broken link to the donate now form, it’s time to admit defeat. Don’t spam your supporters. Preview and test your emails twice, and then ask two coworkers to check them twice. Click on all links in your email to make sure they work. For small errors, consider following up only with individuals who reply after noticing them.

5. Don’t send an email that is only an image

Every email should have text in the email body. Text in the image itself does not count. Email providers are more likely to automatically mark an email as spam if there is no text.

6. Send your emails!

When you’re all ready and the time is right, send your emails. DonorSnap subscribers have an easy to use mass email tool included with every subscription. It lets you send the types of simple, personal emails that you would send from your normal email system. For those of you with html experience (or a web person on staff), put those skills to use and build something more fancy if that fits your strategy. Sometimes the personal touch of a simple email speaks louder than a fancy email template. If you need templates, then consider using the integration with Constant Contact instead. Constant Contact makes sending professional looking email newsletters easy with hundreds of templates to choose from.

Learn more about the DonorSnap Mass Email Campaigns tool included with every subscription.

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