Ep 273 | Crafting the Perfect Year End Emails with Vanessa Chase Lockshin

It's that time of year again – year-end giving season is just around the corner! In this episode, we're thrilled to have Vanessa Chase Lockshin, a fundraising expert specializing in digital fundraising and storytelling, share her top tips for executing successful email campaigns as part of your year-end giving strategy. Vanessa has helped clients raise millions of dollars through email, and she's here to share her wealth of knowledge to help you maximize your efforts.

This episode gives you the step by step plan for how many emails need to be sent from Giving Tuesday through the end of the year. You'll also get the strategies to build and plan for a smooth process. Don't forget follow-up, we talk about that as well!

What you'll learn:

→ Why email is the most effective digital direct response marketing channel
→ How to start planning your year-end giving email campaigns now (even in September!)
→ Strategies for email list segmentation and personalization
→ Best practices for Giving Tuesday email campaigns
→ The importance of donor stewardship and follow-up after donations

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[04:23] Start to plan your year-end giving email campaigns early. Building messaging and narrative momentum is key to a successful campaign. Keeping donors engaged and stewarded is crucial for repeat giving.
[08:03] Determine the right email frequency. Don't worry about over-emailing. Staying top of mind is important. Find the right balance between too many and too few emails. Understanding that testing is important and pay attention to trends over the years.
[10:40] Remember the power of email list segmentation and personalization. Optimize fundraising by making the right asks to the right people. Tweak core emails for different audience segments. You don't have to rewrite full campaigns for each segment.
[12:41] Giving Tuesday email campaigns are still helpful even with all the noise. Craft compelling messages that go beyond just asking for a donation. Determine the right email cadence leading up to and on Giving Tuesday which includes multiple emails on that day.
[19:26] Don't forget the he importance of donor stewardship and follow-up. Closing the communications loop with donors and providing updates on impact will keep them engaged. Use personalized emails and stories to connect with donors.

Resources

EP 128 | Creating Campaigns with Stories with Vanessa Chase Lockshin 
Vanessa's email cohort program

Full Transcript

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
I am so excited to kick off our month on year end giving and starting off with how to execute your email campaigns in conjunction with your year end giving campaigns. So I'm so excited to have Vanessa Chase Lockshin as our guest today. But really, just to dive into year end giving this whole month. I know it's only September, and it might seem like year end is far away, but the more we can put in place now, the better off we're going to be as we get into that busy season. I want you to have as much pulled together and planned as possible, so that when it comes time to execute, you can focus on those one on one calls. You can focus on those meetings, you can focus on those gifts, and know that you've got a lot of things running in the background, and one of those things is email. Vanessa. Vanessa Chase Lockshin is a fundraising consultant specializing in digital fundraising and storytelling. She's the author of the storytelling nonprofit, A Practical Guide to telling stories that raise money and awareness and the creator of an immersive online training program for Nonprofit Professionals, Vanessa has helped clients raise millions of dollars, including including helping variety BC build an email program from the ground up that raised over $2 million in three years. Vanessa's fundraising career started at the University of British Columbia, her alma mater, her clients have included Barnard College, Meals on Wheels, Association of America, Girl Scouts of the USA, British Columbia Children's Hospital, Senior Medical patrol, sorry, Senior Medicare Patrol, the Dixon transition society, Zanesville, Museum of Art win without war and open medium.

I'm so excited to have her here to really talk you through the tactical side of email. How many emails should you be sending? When should you be sending them? How should you be kind of working your email list to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to your email campaigns? So I hope you'll join me for this episode. I know you're going to love it before we jump into it. It's a new month. It's time for a new freebie, and this time is your year end giving checklist. It has a list of the things to consider and to start to put in place now and after someone makes a donation, so that you're ready to go, so that you could have all your ducks in a row and all the pieces to the puzzle ready to launch when you are don't make sure you don't forget out. Don't forget a single piece of what you might need to put together in order to make sure you can have the most successful campaign possible. So head on over to thefirstclick.net/resources, to grab our checklist for your year end giving campaign for now, let's get into the episode.

Intro
You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Hey, friends, please join me in welcoming Vanessa. Chase Lockshin to the podcast again. Vanessa, thanks for coming back.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be back.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Yeah, it's been a bit, but I am always excited to have conversations with you about email, because it's both of our like, favorite topics in the world. So I know it's going to be a great conversation, but before we kind of jump into what we're here to talk about, to talk about today, just kind of refresh our audience. Why is email just your jam? And why do you think it's such an important part of an organization's, you know, marketing

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
strategy? Yeah. I mean, there's so many reasons why it's my jam, but I would say number one is that it's the most effective digital direct response marketing channel that we have. It is by far the best way to get in front of your audience, and it's a list that you own. Unlike all the platforms where you're competing with algorithms, having to run ads, email is something you have, I would say, like much more control over of course, we're all at the mercy of like inbox service providers like Google and Yahoo these days, but on the whole, I think, like, definitely better for organizations.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Yeah, Oh, totally. So especially going into your end campaigns. I know it's September, when this podcast is going live, and we might not be ready to think about year end campaigns, but why is now the time to kind of get things in place?

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, I feel like it's never too early to start thinking about any campaign, right? Because a lot of what has to happen in order for a campaign to be successful is some degree of, like messaging and narrative momentum going into it. A lot of times, what I see happen for organizations is they just kind of like, flip the switch on the campaign, and they just kind of like expect everybody to get on board with what's happening. But a lot of times like, they haven't talked about that programming before, they haven't used that messaging before, and it's all brand new to their audience. And sometimes that can cause them to lose traction that they're hoping to gain in a can. Game. In addition to that, there's also the always valuable activity of just stewarding and engaging our donors right like we want them to feel thanked and appreciated after that last gift. So have we done enough of that to adequately prepare them for the next Ask and the next one after that? And I would say, like one of the like benefits of doing communication now that's a little bit more unique to email is that we want our subscribers to be engaged. And the best indicator of subscriber engagement and likelihood of taking another action, opening an email, clicking an email, making a donation, is recency of last action. So if it has been like 30 days since somebody has last done something with an email you sent, they're becoming less and less engaged. If it's been six months, we're probably talking about an inactive subscriber. So if it's been a while since you've been communicating more regularly and giving people opportunities to be engaged with your emails, now is the time to queue that up so that you're ready to send more emails for giving Tuesday and year end.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
So if I understand you correctly, if you've been maybe sending out a regular email newsletter or some regular communication or stewardship piece, keep doing that until you're ready for the campaign. Otherwise, now is a great opportunity to also maybe do a re engagement email campaign in September to re engage with folks before they start getting kind of campaign emails.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, absolutely. And I would say, like one thing that I run into a lot with clients is the tendency to under email or underestimate how many emails they could send potentially, I feel like I regularly, like, hear from people in workshops where they tell me, like, they send once a quarter an email, and they're like, afraid to send something more, because what if people don't like, getting too many emails and things like that. Those concerns are all super valid. I hear that like, you know, I think about, like, the amount of text messages people are getting right now, and like, campaign season and everything, like everybody is definitely experiencing a high volume communication. However, I would encourage you to just think about your own inbox, like your personal inbox. What did you even get in there yesterday? What did you get in there a week ago? Like we are not tracking information from external senders, excuse me, external senders nearly as closely as our subscribers as we think our subscribers and donors are. I'm sure we would like them to be, like, paying that close attention to us, but they're just not, and it's because we're just all dealing with this huge volume of external communications in our lives these days, and so the downside of emailing to infrequently, like, you know, once a quarter or once a month, is that we actually haven't given people enough of an opportunity to know our organization be considered a reliable, like a reliable, reputable sender, somebody that they actually want content from, and keeping all those subscribers engaged. So it could definitely work against organizations if they're being a little too conservative in the approach there well. And

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
the other thing I like to tell people is, if you're not doing it, or if you're only doing it quarterly, somebody else is doing it more often, and they're staying more top of mind than you are. And so, yes, I think there's that balance, like, I bet you would have millions of dollars if you got $1 every time somebody said, Well, how often should I send an email. But I mean,

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
like, you know, like for political campaigns, I would say like for political campaigns a lot of times, the calculus is like, how many emails can we send until we suddenly don't raise that much, and we're just losing a lot of subscribers. And I probably invite everybody to think about the amount of political communication they get these days, like, it's quite a lot. And there's a reason they do it. It works. However, there is a line at which we all consider it spammy, but there's so much room between like what we see campaigns doing and emailing somebody once a quarter, like, so much room to play and think about strategy and frequency of email sends them there well, and

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
let's talk about strategy, because I think one of the ways to kind of mitigate that is really understanding who's on our list and what their interest level is, right? So, you know, it's one thing to send, you know, 20 emails during your end campaign to your entire list, and they all get the same message that might give some different kind of fatigue. But you know, if we can really be thoughtful about who's on our list and what they care about, we can be much more successful. So could you talk a little bit about what list segmentation is and how we might want to start to approach that when we're thinking about building our year end campaign?

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm much like for direct mail or other types of segmentation we may do in fundraising and marketing, there are lots of ways to segment even an email list, and a lot of it comes down to what your organization's goals and priorities are around fundraising. Obviously, chances are for email, your goal is getting like retaining donors who have already made a gift, who are on your list, acquiring donors or acquiring new donors, to people who are currently subscribers, that maybe haven't made that first gift yet. And maybe you have some other goals in there. I have a client who has a mid level giving program, and so that's a very distinct segment for them on their list. The value of doing segmentation is often that we can optimize how much money we're raising. We're able to raise more because we're making the right asks to the right people at the right time, you know, whereas, like, you know, for this client, like they could sure, like, just send one general fundraising email to everybody. I'm sure they'd raise a decent amount of money, but with their mid level giving program, they probably raise about $20,000 more a campaign, because we're getting out in front of those people with $1,000 plus ask, and that's really valuable for organizations. And when we don't think about what those segmentation opportunities might be, we're really just leaving money on the table,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
yeah. And I think that sometimes that feels overwhelming to folks, but it's not really like creating brand new emails. It's kind of tweaking, like maybe taking the core emails and kind of tweaking it a couple sentences here and there for your audience, right? It's not like you have to create brand new campaigns for like, three different segments,

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
yeah. And I would just having this conversation with somebody yesterday where we were talking about segmentation and emails, and I like to think about it kind of a little bit more like horizontally, where we have the emails that we know we want to send at certain times in a campaign. And then it's a question of, well, who actually needs to get this email? And then what version of the email do they need to get? Rather than, here's all these segments and all these different emails you need to send to them. It's easier to think about like the emails themselves, first, as kind of being like a strategic point, you know, and also like you want consistency across all of those emails. Like you You don't need to be sending something radically different to a donor who's giving $100 one time gift versus somebody who's giving $500 like, the messaging for your campaign probably needs to be consistent. Like, there needs to be a through line there. And so for us, like, oftentimes when we work on campaigns for clients, like, we develop a really strong base email that we're working with. And then typically, where the biggest changes in the email happen are around the call to action, and then also the donation page, like we might be some sending certain segments to a donation page with a very customized gift array. Yeah,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
I love that. Okay, so let's talk Giving Tuesday, because I feel like this is kind of the launch for most campaigns, or most year end giving campaigns. And you know you might have your opinion, you as a listener about giving Tuesday and how it works or doesn't work for your organization, but it is a loud and noisy day. So could you kind of walk us through, like a strategy of what a cadence might look like leading up to Giving Tuesday and how many emails we might want to kind of think about on that day itself?

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, well, I want to get to that, but I want to say the number one tip I actually have for people about thinking about being more successful on Giving Tuesday isn't necessarily about the frequency. It's about having a compelling message that is not just it's giving Tuesday and make your donation. And I think we all know that on some level. But I want to remind people, because I do see those emails every year where like, that is the central essential message coming through the email. And like, that's just not enough for me to be compelled to make that donation. And I think the same thing too, with like, the subject lines, right? Like, everybody is sending a subject line with something about giving Tuesday. Like, where can we actually send something that's, like, emotionally compelling, interesting, it's going to capture people's attention in a much more, like, impact oriented way, because ultimately, that is, like, why people want to make that donation and want to make a difference. That's That's my soapbox about messaging on Giving Tuesday. So good. Let's talk about the frequency, though. So I think, like, in terms of the frequency of like, Giving Tuesday itself, like one email, sure, like, we can definitely send one email and, like, make it happen and get that campaign out the door. For most of my clients, we're often sending two to three emails on the day itself, and there might be segment versions of that. So there's, like, a morning email, and typically, like two a little bit later in the day. Interestingly, the last like, two years that we've done Giving Tuesday campaigns are, like, early evening emails are outperforming the morning emails. I don't know what it is about our, like, current habits around email, but yeah, I've been, like, surprised that often email sends that we do at like, 6pm 7pm at night on GivingTuesday are outperforming but anyways, that's like a random, random data points. Definitely recommend, yeah, I definitely recommend sending multiple emails. I think the thing that a lot of organizations kind of grapple with, too, in the days leading up to Giving Tuesday, like that week before, is like, well, we can send people cultivation emails saying, like, Giving Tuesday is coming. Like, should we make an ask? Should we get out there ahead of people? And, like, put a donate button in our email, or, like, put a call to action in there. That's like, you might as well, right? Like you're gonna tell people about this campaign, like you're gonna get some early action takers, probably not the bulk of your audience, which is fine, but you might as well. Like, if you're gonna take some time, like, emailing. Our time to talk to people about a giving opportunity, like, make it easy for people who participate to just, like, do the thing right away. Yeah, I would, I would tee up your campaign, though, and just think about, like, you know, a week or two out, like, what is it that you want to be talking about on Giving Tuesday? And this is really about, like, the messaging that you want to get out there. It's like, what is the problem that your organization is currently fundraising money for to solve, and why is that problem a problem? And can we get people thinking about that again and thinking about like, the impact of this problem and also the impact the organization's solution can have on solving it and people's lives all of that. So, you know, thinking about like, can we tell some stories around that, can we get people engaged in what we want them to be thinking about, and get them intrigued by, like, what the possibilities are and what our organization's positive vision for the future can be? I think that those are good types of emails to send leading into campaigns, just to make sure people kind of like, maybe have some baseline what we're going to talk about the day itself, like sending two to three emails is a great plan, and you can even think about doing some follow up afterwards in the weeks after. We had a client last year who ran a like four day matching gift that started on GivingTuesday and ended on the Friday after it. That Friday, we raised, I think, about six times the amount of money we raised on Giving Tuesday. And I'm very sure it's because nobody was out there sending emails. So like, Giving Tuesday is not your own day to make an ask. So you can also just think a little bit more spaciously about make meeting your goal. And like, what that can look like. Like, Sure, you can set a goal for giving Tuesday itself, but like, maybe you want to expand the communication into the days after, or maybe you just want to send them one email on Giving Tuesday, but actually focus on follow up in the days after. It really depends on what you want to do, like, what your kind of larger vision for that campaign is, but there's, I think there's so many options for how you can increase the frequency around the email sentence for that,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
yeah. Well, and what do you think about the language too, in regards to, like, you know, we know, donors have different kinds of motivation, right? Some of them like to be the ones that kick it off and they feel really good. Some of them want to be the ones that close the gap and kind of finish out things. And so, you know, even in that small time frame, like language that kind of includes that, well, we've already raised X amount of dollars, so people understand, oh, this campaign has legs. I'm going to give to it, versus like, oh, we only have $1,000 left to go. And then you pull in those people that were just waiting because they love to kind of be the hero at the end. Like, kind of, do you see that playing a part in just, not only just the Giving Tuesday piece, but then the completing out the rest of the of the campaign?

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, I feel like I see that in campaigns any time of year that I run, regardless of whether it's holiday season or not. I think like that goal the motivation, like, I would say, like distance to goal is highly motivating to people, and creates a sense of urgency too, right? Where it's like, we have a deadline. We're trying to meet this goal by this time. And if you're close, like, fantastic. And I would say, like, the way that I kind of characterize and think about the psychology of it sometimes is like, people want to support winners, right, which I know several trade but like, people are excited to support an organization who's, like, out there winning at the thing that they're doing right? And so if we are close to, like, meeting a goal, people are excited about that. If we've exceeded the goal, people are thrilled, and we'll still keep donating if we tell them we exceeded the goal. So I feel like sometimes like being able to, like, frame your messaging throughout the campaign in a goal oriented, urgent way. It's really important and useful. And as you think about, like, the emails that you have, like, you can think about that arc and that messaging, where it's like, sure, like the morning of Giving Tuesday, it's like, maybe you're announcing the goal, like, maybe you're getting things kicked off. Like, there's some excitement. Messaging there in a follow up, you're probably reporting on the progress. And like, how do you want to frame that? It's like, you're close to the goal. You know, you only need so many more donors to help you reach out however you want to frame that. You know, you can kind of keep working that messaging over time. I do find that that kind of like distance to goal messaging is most effective when you're really close to the end, like both the time of the campaign you're close to the goal. So I think you kind of have to be strategic about like when you pull that out in emails, but, but it does work really well.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Okay, so let's talk about the follow up piece. Because I think when you're talking about follow up, in this case, you're talking about still sending emails out to donors who haven't given yet in the year end campaign to update them on where you're at. But I think also I want to make sure we talk about follow up with regards to what somebody has given because I feel like if you do that right and then continue to stay in touch throughout the year, then you're already setting yourself up for success in next year's year end campaign by doing something as simple as like a thank you sequence, or whatever that looks like. So how you know, kind of how do we want to think about. About that as we're like, planning the front end, because a lot of times we think about just the fundraising part, and we don't think about the thank you and the follow up afterward.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, it's interesting. Actually, yesterday, in a training I was doing, we were talking about three phases of fundraising campaigns, which is how I both build them as a consultant and also teach people to think about them. And I think about the three phases is cultivation, asking and stewardship. And I was just saying to everybody in the training yesterday, like, the stewardship phase is often when we don't think about as being a part of the campaign. We often think about it as, like, this separate activity that we've done after the asking has been completed. It's just this, like, whole other process that takes place. It's like, separate from the campaign. And I would say, well, like, what if we think about it as part of the campaign? And, like, hold ourselves to account for really closing that communications loop with donors. It's not like it has to be a multi week, multi month stewardship campaign like this can be one or two emails or however, like, what your however your capacity looks like to be able to execute that. It doesn't have to be extensive, but there is such value in making sure that donors know that they that you've one received your gift, that you received their gift, you appreciate their gift. And here's how it's going to make a difference, and how we're going to use that, and then being able to have some sort of follow up at some other point about how that gift has made a difference. It's, yeah, it's a really important piece of the puzzle. And I think sometimes with like, I don't know, like, with so much of like, the automation and digital these days, like one of the defaults is just like, well, like, the CRM sends an automated thank you email, like, the donor got their tax receipt. And to that, I say, like, is that enough? Like, are we, are we saying that that's enough? Like, I just, I don't know. I think we I think donors deserve more than that, like, form email, form letter that they're getting. Like, sure, that is a basic expectation that we should all be needing for our donors, but going above and beyond that, like, it's not hard to send a more customized email to them afterwards with a story about the program they donated to, or some other engaging content that helps them connect to what they've made a gift to.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Yeah, well, and I think in your to your point of automation, like you can still automate those follow up emails and still create like that personal connection with your donors, like, we have clients that have recorded, I mean, a generic thank you video that we can embed in those thank yous and generic in that they're just saying, like, thank you so much for giving, not personalizing that video to the person, necessarily, but it does still then talk about the impact that their donation in that particular campaign is going to make. And so I think there's ways to make them feel per them feel personalized, if you're in a period where you just don't have time to do some of those things on your own. But yeah, I think going above and beyond for your donors, regardless of the size of the gift, especially at a year end, campaign, will just make you stand out and increase that chance, right, that you have that second gift that comes in at some point.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. Your other part of the question was about, your other part of the question was about, like, follow up for people who haven't even given a Giving Tuesday and like, what happens after that? I think one of the things to consider there is, like, you know, I often think like that time between Giving Tuesday and, like, December 21 like December 25 is kind of a bit of a dead zone for fundraising, right? Like people are at holiday parties. They're preparing for holidays, they're buying gifts, like everybody is doing life during that time, and making donations is just like, not something that people are doing as much. I think that's a good time of the month to be doing cultivation, be sending stories, still be sending things, but maybe having like calibrated expectations for what fundraising could look like, how good fundraising can be during those times during the month, and then really focus strategically on, like December 26 through December 31 like those are often the key dates we want to be able to send out emails, and that the end of the month, right? Like, you know, some people are going to be compelled by it's the text your deadline. Like, make your text Received Text deductible donation like that will be a message that will compel a lot of people. But also, just think about, like, the other types of motivation people have for giving, and it's like, what did you speak to in the Giving Tuesday campaign that you that you maybe missed, or is there another program that you know is really popular, but maybe you didn't talk about during Giving Tuesday, and maybe this would get some donors to be excited about making their their gift. I also, at the end of the the end of the year, really love to send some sort of like personal email from the executive director, kind of casting a vision for the next year and being excited about what's going to happen next, and really giving donors an opportunity to buy into a positive, optimistic version of like, what the future can look like with their support. And that's often an email that, like, sits pretty well with people, especially like reminding them that, like, you know. Want to be prepared for the new year, and like, the tax year's deadline is here and all of that. But that can also just be a really great email to send to people where you can kind of weave in contextually, like what else is happening around the issue areas that you're working on, and trends that are emerging in the community and things like that.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Yeah, that's a really good point, because it also kind of reinforces the money that's coming in and where it's going and how it's going to impact the organization. So kind of piggybacking then on the question that I asked about giving Tuesday like, kind of, what does that cadence look like then from the 26th through, kind of the end of the year, like, how many emails are you kind of prepping and setting the stage with for those few days.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, probably the best thing I can do is give you a concrete example from one of our clients last year. They obviously have, like, a deep, like, mid size, email list for a nonprofit. There's about 15,000 subscribers. We ran a Giving Tuesday campaign, and then from about like the Friday after giving Tuesday until Christmas, December 25 we sent, I think, three emails during that time, and they were, one of them was like stewardship, follow up to all donors who had made a gift in that calendar year. The other two were, I would say, much more like story driven with a very soft fundraising ask towards the bottom, definitely not like as hard hitting as the Giving Tuesday emails that we had sent. And then for those last couple of days of the year, I believe we sent an email every single day from the 26th to the 31st and two emails on the 31st you know, was that a lot of emails I don't like, I look at like what other organizations do whose email lists I'm on, and there was one who sent me five emails on the 31st which definitely caught my attention, because that seems like quite a few, but again, like you know, so much of the basic strategy of fundraising, it's like fundraising is in the follow up, like it happens, because we follow up with people. And I always say to people, like, we do not need to be aggressively following up year round. Like we don't need to send people an email every day. Pick your moments the last week of the year is that moment? Yeah, it is, like there's one moment of the year to send a few extra emails. Like it's method

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
that's so good, yeah, and I agree it's so true. And I think too, I think the hard part is is like people are on vacation and they're out of town, and your staff is taxed, and they want to spend time with their family and friends on holiday and all that good stuff. So I think like prepping now and getting those things pulled together and having kind of three or four different emails that you can have keyed up for different scenarios. Of like, okay, maybe you have two or three versions of your email, and maybe you do this differently, but that are like, Okay, we've hit our goal, or we've exceeded our goal, or not just different versions of your email, but like, different sentences that you can insert into email so that you can prep as much now. Like, that's the beauty of starting to get things done as September is you can get as much kind of pulled together as possible so that it doesn't tax you so much on time, when you're saying, Well, how the heck am I going to spend or send eight emails in five days? Like, you know, we're on vacation. It's Christmas time, so like, prep now and get you all kind of started. Yeah, absolutely. I

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
hear you on that, and I always feel like empathetic for staff who have to work that week between Christmas, New Year's, because it is, like, not a super fun time to be working. Nobody is like, doing anything. A lot of people are off on vacation. Yeah, my agency is open, like we are sending emails for clients that week. So I am that person working and sending a bunch of emails last week of December. Typically, you know, I would say the other thing too to consider is, like, not only can you, like, write emails now and think about like, just getting things prepped ahead of time, which is, which is very possible with email, I think also you don't always have to reinvent the wheel. Like, if you're feeling daunted by having to send more emails than you have in the past, look at what you did last year. I guarantee you probably had one email that was a winner in December that raised more money than all the other emails, and you can send that email again. You can make some tweets to it. You can modify it. You could just steal the subject line from that email, like there's so much about that, like the reusing strategy of email content that works extremely well. I always laugh, because in November every single year, I always remind people in my my newsletter list that one of the best things you can do is send what we call like a kicker of one of your emails that worked really well. So just like, send it later the day that in that day or the next day. And I always tell people, like, Don't change the subject line, don't add anything new to the email. Like you are just resending it the same thing. And like typically, our clients will get an additional, you know, five to 15% of conversion rate against the original conversion rate on the email. So it will continue to raise money. I always get people who are like so I don't need to change anything. Yes, don't need to change anything. Just try sending it. And I always get people who come back will be like that. Worked, we raised more money. And I'm like, yeah, exactly nobody saw 100% of your like, emails the first time you sent it. And so if you are thinking about sending more frequently, like, you can be strategic in resending things or repurposing things that you've done before that have worked really well. And I think it's a good idea for everybody. Like, whether you're a small team or a large team, like, we do not need to be in the business of creating, like, a bananas level amount of email content you would just don't need to be so we have so much created already that we could work within a rework,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
yeah, well, um, I love that, and it's such a good tip tip too, because I think in all things in marketing, we always feel like everybody sees everything, and we know that that's just not the case. We know that that's just not the case. And repurposing is amazing, so I love that. And you have like, a cool email cohort, cohort, wow, that was a hard word to say coming up. So would you mind kind of sharing a little bit about that and how people can get in touch with you?

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things I care the most about with email and the organizations we work with on email is really building email programs that build relationships and tell great stories. It's something that I've always been passionate about as a digital fundraiser. And so one of the things I like to do is take what we do in our email agency for clients which can cost quite a bit of money and make it much more accessible to people. And so earlier this year, in the summer, we ran a summer cohort of our storytelling intensive where we met four times together in our small group and worked on things like messaging, campaign narrative, campaign stories and actual appeal writing. And it's a really great way for organizations to get organized and have consulting level support without the enormous price tag. So if you want some accountability and some help just getting yourself organized and really building a strong campaign that's rooted in great messages and great storytelling, the story intensive would be super helpful for you.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Yeah, I love that, and it's going to be amazing. And if you want to know, like I mentioned in the intro, a little bit more about Vanessa and her philosophy on storytelling and campaigns, we did another episode on that, oh my gosh, we just realized it was like three years ago, almost three years ago, which is crazy, but the content is still really good and relevant. So we'll link that up in the show notes, as well as the link to learn more about the program she's running, so you can check all that out at thefirstclick.net/273, but Vanessa, thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your amazing words of wisdom. My

Vanessa Chase Lockshin
pleasure. This was great. Thank you so much for having me. Okay,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
so are you ready to really jump into your email strategy. I love all the tips that Vanessa shared with us. And if you want to listen to her episode that we had with her, where she talks about storytelling in your emails, it's another great one. You can find that one at the eight at thefirstclick.net/128 and in that episode, she just really talks about the power of storytelling in your email campaigns to have bigger impact, and this is something that you can use in your year round emails, not just in your year end. So I think you'll really find it helpful. You can find the show notes and resources for this episode at the first click.net/ 273, for now. Thank you so much for listening. Please make sure you subscribe where you listen. Hit that notification bell so that you don't miss out on an episode. We're here wherever you stream your podcast and also on YouTube, @DigitalMarketingTherapy again. Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and I can't wait to see you in the next one you.