Conversation with John Walsh

Almost everything about email marketing

“The more your email looks like a marketing email. You will end up into the marketing tab or spam,” says John Walsh.

He is your go-to guy for all things related to nonprofits and email marketing.

For more than 3 years he has been working as the email marketing manager for a large nonprofit. After working on different aspects of digital marketing for profit, he is applying his past knowledge to the nonprofit world.

“When you are buying a product or donating, there is not a lot of distinction. However, the reasoning is completely different. But as far as the principles of email marketing or content marketing or websites or transaction process they are all very similar.” 

A few months ago I connected with John on LinkedIn. I like his simple nuggets on email marketing and nonprofits that he regularly posts on LinkedIn. In one of his recent posts on LinkedIn he talks about why email validation is an important aspect that shouldn’t be ignored:

“If you have bad addresses it affects deliverability. Bad deliverability lands an email in spam. An email in spam is never opened.”

Mid last month I asked John if he could answer a few basic questions regarding email marketing. Earlier this week he provided me time and showed up on the video call smartly dressed in formals. And here I was in my running dress code.

Generally, I have a basic story framework in my mind before I get into such conversations. But with John, it was slightly confusing for me. In my mind I wanted the conversation to transform into a go-to doc for nonprofits. But I also find the Q&A interview writing style lazy. 

So where do I start from?

I eventually started from where most conversations start today.

No not from “How has life been?” We all know how the pandemic is treating everyone.

When marketers realised that social media isn’t the ideal way to reach out to consumers, the email made a rebirth. The glamour of social media pushed email in dark corners.

Soon organic reach was dead and feeds were not designed for one on one conversation. Besides no one goes on social media to read a marketing message.

Social networks also evolved from engagement platforms to controlling our lives. Facebook and Google are your new faceless dictators of the democratic world.

The marketer is losing consumer attention in an age of personalised communication.

COVID-19 and email marketing

An email is an old tool for a new problem. The pandemic provided all the limelight.

With the start of the pandemic, everyone was worried, and all we wanted to be flooded with information about the virus.

John saw the same. “To begin with, for everyone life was crazy in personal and professional space. We witnessed the same with email marketing.”

“Starting from March we started going uphill. We started putting COVID-19 in our subject lines. Which gave us a giant increase in email open rates.

By the time we reached May our organization was not only acknowledging the pandemic but helping people to get through it. We were offering a lot of content around the pandemic online and doing a couple of outreach programs offline to help people.

Additionally we also took this opportunity to ask people if they can support our outreach programs. We were in two minds considering what everyone was going through but we were surprised to see people donating in whatever way they can.”

But post-May the email traffic dropped and so did the donation. “Flattening the curve,” is John’s new marketing term that he uses with a cheeky smile.

“Unemployment rates have increased, people have accepted the pandemic, the urgency has passed.” 

However, the slump isn’t bothering John. He considers it to be normal human behavior. He trusts that the strategy of continuously communicating with people from day one will pay off.

“When people come back to giving the percentage will be a little bit higher than the normal. We saw a real high, then a slump, followed by a normal and then slightly above normal. That’s what we want.”

Small nonprofits and email marketing

Parking the pandemic at bay, I decided to address the elephant in the room: How should a small nonprofit initiate its journey of email marketing?

John answers the questions in two parts - strategy and technology.

Elaborating the strategy he starts by asking a simple question:

Why do you want to use an email?

“Is there a certain reason that you think that email works better for my nonprofit than mine? I am an email marketer so I am biased. But I want to caution people that they shouldn’t start because someone is doing it.”

His why sits right on top of his work desk.

Don’t ever buy an email list.

“It is harder to create something from nothing but if you buy a list you are basically doing the same thing but you are going to hurt your organisation. Start from the beginning such as doing lead generation, collect email addresses from your website, and through your donation forms. This is a better and legit way to collect email addresses.”

Never send a marketing email from your personal email id.

Informing on the technical side, he recommends starting with an email service platform. However, he reminds me not to send a marketing email from a personal email address. “If you don’t have the money and staff then start with the email clients that offer free service for a certain number of email ids. They will do the basic job.”

Email database segmentation

Once the ‘Why’ and the email client is ready; ‘Segmentation’ or segmenting your database or group of individuals based on different attributes and filters is recommended.

“When you just want to send a communication to only donors, then you segment it and remove anyone who is not a donor from the list.”

Paid email platforms have inbuilt features for segmenting. For instance, you can create a list of people who are your regular email openers. Interest and geography segmentation are also possible.

Citing an example he says that a pet nonprofit can segment lists based on the pets people love. “Rather than sending emails with generic pet images to an entire list. The nonprofit can send emails with cat images to the group that loves cats, ”

“If you don’t have much data then just ask your people. Use surveys.”

Personalised communication

Personalisation completes segmentation. However, personalisation goes beyond just adding the first name in the email subject or body.

Digital writing tool, Grammarly emails are one of my favourite personalised emails. They send me by-weekly emails on how I use the product and can I can make my writing better. It sends me data about my common mistakes, my writing tone and my writing performance compared to other users.

I love it. It’s personal and adds value. 

It looks good for a user to receive personalised detailed communication. However, on the business side pulling up such individual granular data means investments in tech.

Lack of funds and belief in technology are some of the biggest challenges for nonprofits. I inquired if there is a workable solution. 

“It is easier with technology and when you integrate CRM with your email provider. But I know someone who is doing it manually with the help of spreadsheets. He adds whatever personalised detail he obtains, puts it on a spreadsheet, and then uploads it on the email client.

We have also done it manually. Pulled data from CRM, cleaned it up, and worked on it. So it is possible if you don’t have the technology but the investment is on time and resources. For us, it was worth the time and effort,” informs John.

Email personas and user journeys

Having email personas with journeys structures the entire email workflow. At John’s end, he and his team have created personas based on their segmented audience.

“For the mass we have a general level of communication but we narrow further it down to volunteer emails which are more specific and personalised.

Additionally, we have an event type of email journey. If you attend any of our events you will be part of a different email journey.”

Recently John started a welcome series email journey for individuals who are coming from lead generation. These people have a very basic idea about the nonprofit.

The welcome email series is a five-part journey with an objective to tell the people about the organization, the impact, and how she can contribute. If these people don’t donate then they become the part of the mass segment who receive occasional communication.

“New nonprofits should start with a broad journey. Know where the audience is coming from and where are they in your email journeys.”

Email user journeys can be automated with most of the email clients available in the market. Automate the ones that need to be done. As your list size increases it won’t be possible to operate in a manual way.

Email and content marketing

Another important aspect of email marketing is content. In my observation majority of nonprofits believe in pushing everything into a monthly pdf format newsletter. It is ineffective and asking the donor to consume pages of content in one go is a lazy ask.

John’s organisation works on a content strategy called “Ministry in Motion” - it is an overarching theme about everything that is happening right now.

“When people donate they want to know what the nonprofit is doing. They want to know how their money is driving an impact. And we use our content to showcase the impact and gain trust. This is how you are helping and connected to the nonprofit cause. Email takes all these large pieces of content, creates bit-sized information with the links to the blog,” adds John.

Avoiding marketing or spam tab

Even after doing all the hard work most of the emails will land in the marketing tab or the worse into the spam filter.

Marketers have been doing email blasts for years. Thereby killing the entire email experience. The same was done to the reading experience on the Internet with digital ads and hence adblocking was born.

Email experience misuse saw the birth of marketing or the promotions tab. Misuse it further and start ending into spam.

John has a very simple solution to avoid the promotions tab: sometimes all you need is a simple text and a click link.

“Strip all images, all buttons, and all colors. Basically, strip anything that is HTML related.”

Additionally, it is a best practice to send all your organization emails from a person at the organization. People connect to emails that are sent by human beings. This goes a long way in building relationships.

The last suggestion is to send a true text email. Because even though you remove all the HTML but if you still have a tracking code then email providers like Google can recognise it and chances are that your email will still land in the promotions tab.

However, it is tricky because you will have to find another way to track if you are interested in knowing how many people opened your email.

Phew! my time is already up.

So I ask my last question related to testing. How can I even think of finishing an email marketing conversation without touching upon testing?

“You can get online and read a lot of articles or speak to people and listen to what has worked for them. What works for John will not work for you. Listen to guidelines but test and learn from them.”

This is the most comprehensive talk I have ever had around email marketing. And I still have so many areas left untouched.

Wait! Don’t go away.

Do you think I have shared something new with you?

I don’t think so.

Obviously, John has been brilliant in responding to all my queries.

But I still have this tinkering thought: We all know the importance of email. Then why don’t we acknowledge or work on it? 

Why do we still mistreat email?

John has a hilarious yet meaningful response:

“Everyone thinks that they do email every day. So they are experts and they think that knowledge can be transferred to marketing emails.

Well, that is where the problem lies. Email marketing is hard work and very strategic. When you are talking to thousands of people you still have to be conversational but also be careful.

The public may not forget you for your mistakes like your best friend will.”

By the way, the above thoughts are yet to be tested says John before signing off.

Thank you, John 🙏