Copywriting Tips for Fundraising Emails
MarketingSherpa has a great article up now (free access until October 29th, so hurry) featuring copywriting tips from fundraising email specialist Karen Gedney. Her advice contains a number of surprising twists, like “Write the subject line first.” (Gedney elaborates: “People spend all of their time getting their email right, which is a hard job because you are trying to compellingly piece together a lot of information into a small space. And then they slap the subject line on it at the last second. I actually start writing an email by going over a number of different subject lines. It’s all about distilling, distilling, distilling, until it is a finely polished gem.”)
Another suggestion I found intriguing was to watch YouTube videos on the topic you’re writing about, for inspiration — specifically, she looks for “real language” phrases and wording that create an emotional reaction in her, and pulls from those to write compelling copy.
Here’s a summary of the tips on their own, but you’ll have to click through to MarketingSherpa to read the whole article.
- Bring Copy to Life Via YouTube Videos
- Create a Word Picture
- Use a Provocative Campaign Name
- Optimize Copy and Images for Landing Pages – Now
- Short Subject Lines Bring In More Donations
- Dedicate Time to Subject Lines
- Write the Subject Line *First*
- Test Copy on Low-Risk Campaigns
- Don’t Expect Clickthroughs from Copy Links
- ‘P.S.’ Still Works
- Find the Right Copy Length: Think Short But Sweet
- Don’t Sleep on DM