Email marketing – sending emails to people that either raise awareness or funds for your cause – is one of the most effective forms of marketing.

The potential for email marketing is huge. According to Charity Digital, the world has more than 3.7 billion email users and there are three times as many email accounts as there are Facebook and Twitter accounts combined.

 Organisations are six times more likely to get a click-through from an email than they are from Twitter.

Here are some tips to help you improve your email marketing:

1.Grow your supporters

Lots of people will willingly sign up to your email lists – so make sure you make this as easy for them as possible. You can do this by:

• Including an obvious sign-up link on your website
• Encouraging people to sign up through your social media accounts
• Using events such as fundraising or training events to encourage sign-ups
• Asking people if they want to sign up to your newsletter – such as your volunteers or people who contact your organisation for support.

Make sure you ask your supporters to consent to joining your email list. See Charity Digital’s The right way to ask for GDPR for more about how to do this.

2.Personalise your emails

Personalisation is vital to email marketing because no one wants to receive emails they find irrelevant – and will soon unsubscribe from your list if they do.

Email marketing software, such as MailChimp, will allow you to set up personalised ‘To’ fields, naming the person you are emailing.

3.Be compelling

Showcase the work you do, explain what you hope to achieve, talk about the urgency. And make it emotional – the more personal the message, the more likely it is to have a positive reaction.

It’s all about telling stories. Use videos and photos of real people (or animals!) where possible.

4.Keep it simple

Email marketing software will offer a wide range of templates. We would recommend keeping it simple – – clear, uncluttered designs that cut to the heart of your story are going to be most effective.

Keep paragraphs short – two to three sentences is ideal – and make good use of sub-headings and bullet points.

5.Choose the right software for you

There are a number of options for email marketing available including MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, MailerLite and DotDigital. You can start to work with Mailchimp for free, which makes it especially useful for smaller charities. Any organisation with less than 2,000 subscribers on their list are entitled to use the cost-free version of Mailchimp.