When someone subscribe’s to your organization’s emails, it’s time to take action. But that doesn’t mean leading with an appeal — instead, it means welcoming new subscribers to your file, building trust, and priming them to become donors with a new name welcome series.
What is a new name welcome series?
A new name welcome series is a series of cultivation emails that share more about your mission, build trust by fostering a genuine human-to-human relationship, and convert more new subscribers to donors in the first forty-five days.
The new name welcome series is an important part of any donor acquisition strategy and it is based on a more relational (and less transactional) approach to fundraising.
The goal is to win new donors, but this approach provides value up front and builds a solid case for making a donation before you send your first appeal.
How a new name welcome series can help you acquire more donors faster
NextAfter’s original research on Nonprofit Email Cultivation made some important discoveries:
- Only 52% of organizations sent a clear confirmation of email signup or cultivation email within the first 2 days of subscribing
- 72% of respondents did not have (or did not know if they had) a new subscriber welcome series
Which presents a huge opportunity for organizations who are willing to take the time to communicate and build a meaningful, human relationship with their donors.
Not only is it the right thing to do, but our research has shown that the first emails you send to a new subscriber are among the most opened and read that you will ever send.
In one of many experiments we have run around email cultivation, we found that a value-based, relational approach to cultivating new subscribers led to a 920% increase in donations — worth sending a few value-based emails before that appeal, right?
The email series that used only free content offers and never asked for a direct donation led to 920% more donations!
Why a new name series is so effective at improving donor acquisition
People give to people.
If you don’t take anything else away from this article, know this: people give to people, not organizations and definitely not marketing macchines.
Your new name welcome series creates a one-to-one connection with your newest subscribers and reminds them why they’ve subscribed.
The primary goals of a welcome series are to:
- Foster a human-to-human relationship
- Introduce your broader mission and align beliefs
- Provide tangible value that relates to your mission
- Deepen engagement with the nonprofit/Encourage interaction
- Make a donation ask
Ultimately, the new name welcome series is a way to cultivate your new subscriber so that the first communications they receive from you isn’t a solicitation email.
Then, when you do ask for a donation, they will know exactly why you are asking and what impact their gift will make. And this can give you a distinct leg up on other organizations who are all competing for the same donors and dollars as you.
Why? Because in our research on the state of nonprofit email cultivation, we found that:
- Only 52% of organizations sent a clear confirmation of email signup or cultivation email within the first 2 days
- 72% of organizations did not have (or did not know if they had) a new name welcome series
And this presents a huge opportunity for organizations who are willing to take the time to communicate and build a meaningful, human relationship with your donors. Why?
Not only is it the right thing to do, but our research has shown that the first emails you send to a new subscriber are among the most opened and read that you will ever send.
Beyond engagement, there are some significant dollar-and-cents benefits to investing in a new name welcome series to cultivate your subscribers.
Let’s take a look at the real-world results of building a cultivation-focused welcome series that leans into the goals of: fostering a relationship, aligning belief, providing value and fostering deeper engagement BEFORE you make a donation ask.
In the treatment series below, we see a series of emails heavily focused on product offers and digital resources.
Now, to be clear: this is not a terrible approach to a new name welcome series. For one thing, it exists (which is further than most organizations get) and for another, it provides value.
But we wondered what would happen if we tested this against our new name welcome series template (shared later in this post) that made the emails less org-focused, less designed, more human, and more relational.
At first, the changes may not be obvious but lets take a closer look…
- We removed any design elements from the emails to humanize them and make them feel like one-to-one emails sent from a colleague or an acquaintance — we also sent the emails from a human working at the nonprofit (rather than a generic organizational email address).
- We focused on relational language and swapped a few promotional emails with cultivation emails, asking for a reply back (helping with cultivation and deliverability).
- We ended the welcome series with a clear and specific donation appeal, trusting that our previous cultivation would encourage more people to give.
The result? A 33% lift in opens, a 42% lift in clicks, a 875% lift in donations and a 99% lift in revenue!
How to create a new name welcome series that can turn subscribers into donors in just 45 days
Hopefully the examples above make the value of taking a humanistic, relational approach to your new name welcome series fairly obvious.
But you may be thinking, “OK, great, I’m sold. I want to create a new name welcome series, but if I shouldn’t send donation appeals (at first), what emails should I send?”
Let’s look at a rough template of emails you can use to build your own new name welcome series. It may need to be adjusted to fit your audience to some degree …
But a word of warning: if you decide to make substantial changes to the structure outlined below (like sending your donation appeal right away), you shouldn’t expect similar results.
This is simply because you won’t be using the method we’ve proven to work over our 14+ years conducting fundraising research and helping our clients build successful fundraising strategies.
You don’t have to send every email outlines below, and you should definitely test your own ideas — but these examples will help you get started.
Email 1 – Introduction
- Include an introduction to a real person in your organization
- Remind them of the impact donors have empowered you to make and how glad you are they’re so passionate about this cause.
- Introduce your broader mission and align it to your subscribers’ beliefs
- CTA: reply back to share your thoughts, what you’re passionate about, how you’ve been impacted, etc.
Email 2 – What you offer
- What can the subscriber do to deepen their engagement with the organization? What’s the ideal next step?
- Is there a group they can be a part of? Are there groups or forums they can subscribe to? Is there some other content they should consume?
- CTA – their next step
Email 3 – Survey
- Ask your subscriber to share their thoughts about something related to your cause.
- The survey should be about your overall mission and value proposition to affirm alignment between your subscribers’ values and your mission
- A soft ask should follow the survey in the form of an instant donation page
- CTA – take the survey
Email 4 – Survey resend
- Survey resend to those who have not filled out the survey.
- Make it personable: “I noticed you haven’t filled out this survey yet, can I ask a favor and …”
- CTA – take the survey
Email 5 – Provide value/ Story of impact
- You’ve asked your subscriber to take action, now focus on providing value.
- Select one of your most impactful stories and share it with the subscriber.
- No CTA needed — or try a reply back.
Email 6 – Provide value/ Ebook launch
- Continue to provide value – now is the time to provide a new resource to your subscriber
- Your ebook offer should be followed by soft ask/instant donation page — see our instant donation page guide for more
- CTA – download the ebook
Email 7 – Ebook follow-up
- Reminder to download the ebook to those who haven’t already
- Ask for feedback on the ebook if they’ve already downloaded it
- CTA – reply back
Email 8 – Make a donation appeal
- Now that you have demonstrated a ton of value, it’s time to make a donation appeal.
- Make it clear, state the problem, the solution, and how your subscribers can make a difference by making a donation
- CTA – donation appeal
And that’s all there is to it. If you don’t already have a welcome series in place, you should strongly consider it.
If you do have a welcome series in place, consider optimizing it by using the framework outlined above!
Be sure to grab your free copy of the same New Name Welcome Series Framework we use with our clients!
In this simple google doc, you will find clear, straightforward prompts to help you build your content and plan your sends so that you can see similar results to those we shared above!
