Day 6: Send a Cold Email to Warm Contacts
Sometimes, you just need to let folks know what you are doing and/or that your nonprofit actually has an email newsletter worth reading.
To do this—we are going old school: sending a cold email to warm contacts.
Here are the steps:
🛠️ Setting up your cold email
Step 1: First, you’ll need to compile a list of people who would be a good fit for your newsletter. It can be friends, family, co-workers past and present, neighbors, people your kid goes to school with, former classmates, etc.
These could be people who are interested in your nonprofit's specific mission OR people who are just interested in YOU.
Step 2: Remember your opt-in link you created in your email service provider? You'll need that link handy before you prep your cold email.
Step 3: Next, you’ll need to send them an email—preferably via your Gmail/Yahoo/Outlook account ➡️ WATCH THIS FOR A GMAIL MAILMERGE TUTORIAL
Need an example? We’ve got a template for that:
That's it!
💡 Why it works
Potential email subscribers are not mind readers—they can't know what they don't know.
That's why you need to pitch them on joining your newsletter.
For example, I'd never say to someone, “Join my newsletter!” because no one is dying to be on one more list.
Instead, I might say something like, “Does your nonprofit want to discover more donors in your email list? Join my newsletter where I send a weekly email all about using email to help your nonprofit raise more money.”
When you reach out to your network and let them know what they can expect—you might just find new subscribers who are genuinely interested in your content.
📊 Results
Depending on how big (and engaged) the list of people you send this cold email to—you can expect 10-40% of people to subscribe.
🧰 Tools Needed
Your newsletter opt-in link via your email service provider
An email tool (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook). Note: for this type of communication I would not send this via your EMS (Mailchimp, etc—that feels too impersonal).
🗣️ Last thought
If I was starting my nonprofit's newsletter from scratch—this would be the first thing I'd try.
You need to tell your network what you're up to! Those who are interested will join and you'll build your email list with engaged community members from the get-go.
Let me know if you give this tactic a try!
See you tomorrow for Day 7.