Increasing Your Email List the Easy Way

05.14.15 | Paige Doster-Grimes

"How can we get more email addresses?"

It’s a question we hear a lot, and for good reason.  While most donors still aren’t making their donations online (the latest study shows online donations account for just 5.5% of contributions to non-profits), we do know that donors who receive regular, relevant emails from your organization are more likely to keep giving than those who don’t.

Sending your donors email as well as mail clearly pays in the long run – even if they aren’t making their gifts online! And it makes sense – messages in two channels reinforce each other, and remind donors of all the great work you’re doing. You stay “top of mind” and are more likely to receive a gift.

So, how do you get those email addresses in the first place?

The answer is simple – conduct a data append.

It sounds complicated – but it’s not! A data append involves matching your donor file against an extensive database of publicly available donor information. At the end of the process, you get email addresses for about 20-30% of your file. 

Here’s how it works: you provide a list of your donors, we find the matches and send them a welcome email giving them the opportunity to opt out of future emails if they wish (as required by law) and, when you get the data file back, approximately 20-30% of your donors will have accurate, up-to-date email addresses added to them.

So for example, if you have 10,000 active records in your database, you can expect to receive approximately 2,000 to 3,000 new email addresses. You can start including them in your e-newsletters and e-appeals right away, and start reaping the long-term benefits. 

And while we’re at it, we take the opportunity to glean even more information about your donors. So, in addition to finding email addresses for your donors, we also find:

  • Phone Numbers – We append phone numbers for your donors, which is a great tool for thank you calls and cultivation. Typically, we find phone numbers for 30-50% of active donors. 

  • Wealth Information – We identify the donors on your database who have the largest assets. This is a helpful tool to identify major donor prospects when used in tandem with the data you already have in terms of a donor’s recency, frequency, and average gift size. We typically find this information for 75% or more of your donors.  

  • Age Information – We find the age of your donors, which is a good indication of who should be targeted for planned giving marketing. You can expect a high match-rate on age – we usually find this information for 75% or more of your donors.

These extra pieces of information come at no extra cost and can really help your staff connect with donors in new ways that are meaningful to them – and pay long-term dividends. 

If you’re interested in learning more or conducting a data append for your program, we’re here to help. The process is simple, inexpensive, and only takes a week or two to complete. In the end, you’ll have the information you need to boost your online communication efforts, increase your donor retention and value, and communicate with your donors in new ways that are meaningful to them.