Day 19: Leaning on Other People's Audiences
This is one of my favorite email growth tactics because it works…fast.
Cassy Horton is the CEO and Executive Director of Pickles Group, a nonprofit that supports children with parents navigating a cancer diagnosis.
Her organization is only seven years old and very much in the building phase. That means that Cassy is constantly thinking about how to bring more people in. Importantly, she doesn’t want just anyone—she wants raving fans. Cassy wants people who are passionate about supporting kids who are experiencing a very stressful moment in their lives while their parent navigates cancer.
For that—she need an audience.
Here's how she leans on other people's audiences to grow her own:
🛠️ How to lean on other people's audiences
Step 1: Before anything, Cassy thought long and hard about what her current audience would want. Do they want to learn something? Do they want resources? Do they want community? What Cassy found out was that for her organization—folks wanted a little bit of everything, but especially information.
Step 2: Cassy decided that the best way to give her audience what they wanted was to bring together a bunch of experts on certain topic areas. Think things like language barriers or summer activities. That’s how a virtual panel called How To Talk To Kids About Cancer was born.
Step 3: As the host, Cassy and her team reached out to four other organizations to participate in the panel with her. She also set up the backend which included:
Creating a promotional graphic for the event
Setting up a registration page
Writing and setting up a welcome automation
Setting up a Zoom link
Creating swipe copy for email and social media that her fellow panelists could post about
Promoting the event across her email list and social media
Sending reminders leading up to the event
Sending out a reply after the event
Step 4: Finally, you need to get loud about this event you are hosting. Send updates and reminders to your partners too so that they will share about the event far and wide as well.
Step 5: Track - how many RSVPs came from your current audience vs. are totally new to your email list.
Step 6: Make sure to onboard any new folks well via a welcome sequence or your other cultivation tools.
💡 Why it works
By inviting other, larger organizations to participate PLUS promoting an event that everyone’s audience is interested in, Cassy and Pickles Group were able to tap into other people’s audiences.
For example, if Cassy had just promoted it to her own nonprofit’s audience—she may have converted a few dozen people to RSVP with their email address. By having several people promote the same event—that number went up to several hundred people (I think their most popular panel had over 800 registrations!).
📊 Results
For this particular panel discussion, Cassy was able to register over 230 people—many of whom were new subscribers.
🧰 Tools Needed
An email service provider (Mailchimp, Kit, etc) to send emails and build an opt-in page
Canva (for designing promo materials)
Zoom or other video conferencing platform
🗣️ Last thought
Attaching yourself to other people’s audiences is one of the fastest and most effective ways to grow your nonprofit’s email list because you’re drawing in like-minded people and bringing them together on a topic they are interested in.
It's why it's one of my very favorite strategies.
Would you give this one a try?
Cassy and her team are doing really great stuff. If you want to give her a follow or attend their next conversation—you can sign up for their newsletter here.
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