Customer Experience: Email Design

Overview

Feeding San Diego’s (FSD) email communication paints every stakeholder with the same brush, blasting out messages with little consideration of the stakeholder’s affiliation or interests. This method is impersonal and does not make stakeholders feel important. With the development team’s transition to Salesforce, I saw an opportunity to integrate Pardot and design a refined communication strategy that makes our donors feel valued.

Objective

Develop an integrated email strategy that capitalizes on data to make communication more stakeholder-centric. We want to delight our stakeholders into thinking we created each email only for them. Custom and personalized communication will improve donor retention and stakeholder relationships.

My Role & Responsibilities

Design and execute a stakeholder-centric email communication strategy that increases supporter engagement and retention.

Inventory: Conduct an inventory of all donor touchpoints.

Research: Analyze current performance and gather additional donor feedback.

Design: Design donor segments, build dynamic lists and create email templates optimized for accessibility, readability and engagement.

Execute & Interate: Launch first wave of email campaigns. Build a reporting dashboard and align with senior leaders on next steps.

Process

1. Conduct an inventory of all donor touchpoints. Before embarking on the design of a new donor experience, I wanted to understand our current communication holistically. In tandem with the development team, I built a donor journey map in Figma to illustrate our existing stakeholder segments, the type and cadence of communications they receive, and what behaviors move them between these communication streams.

2. Analyze current performance and gather additional donor feedback. I reviewed our email performance over the past two years and made note of key metrics and areas of improvement based on industry standards and best practices. With the help of a handful of donors, I led a series of content audits to understand what types of information were beneficial and added value for the donors. I also met with several industry experts utilizing Pardot in the nonprofit space to glean tips and tricks and generate ideas.

3. Align with the senior leadership team on business priorities: The transition from MailChimp to Pardot came with significant financial investment and pressure to deliver a positive ROI. In addition to providing an authentic communication experience, we needed to have high alignment on the strategy and action plan. I shared my plan and worked closely with the Director of Development, our CEO, and an FSD consultant during the initial phases of this project. I reported progress and next steps in monthly presentations to this group.

4. Design donor segments, build dynamic lists, and create email templates optimized for accessibility, readability, and engagement. With the help of our Donor Services & Insights Sr. Manager, I identified opportunities for personalized, custom communication with our donors based on first and second-party information stored in Salesforce. I built a new donor journey to plot direct touch points depending on donor behavior and identified automations to celebrate and acknowledge important stakeholder milestones. To easily share this information with internal stakeholders, I developed a communication outline and master communication calendar. This calendar includes content themes, personalization elements, engagement and fundraising goals, audience, etc.

5. Execute and iterate. Through triaging with our senior leadership team, I filtered through the myriad of campaigns, automation, and other drip opportunities to prioritize the top three initiatives we’d start with. We identified lapsed COVID donors, volunteers who are not yet donors, and high-frequency donors who are not yet monthly donors as the three segments we would engage through a series of tailored emails. Through this process, I worked with our Donor Services & Insights Sr. Manager to identify gaps in data collection on Salesforce records. We asked, “What information do we need to successfully communicate with stakeholders that we’re not currently collecting?” and “How can we build a comprehensive donor profile?” I developed a donor survey that syncs with Salesforce and collects information based on donor-giving affinity and interests. The donor survey, coupled with giving data, has enabled us to build several email automations and communicate more authentically with stakeholders.

Result

• Increased Annual Revenue: Since adopting the new strategy, email marketing has directly generated an average of $250,000 annually.
• Improved Engagement Metrics: Average open rates and click-through rates (CTR) have significantly increased. Compared to Constant Contact (17% open rate, 2.4% CTR), Pardot boasts a 30% open rate and 5.9% CTR on average.
• Enhanced Tools and Processes: We implemented sophisticated dynamic lists, an email preference center, and a comprehensive email communication calendar for improved visibility and campaign management.

Platform + Technology Used

• Figma: protoyping and information architecture
• Pardot: marketing automations
• Litmus: email design
• Salesforce: data collection and reporting
• Smartsheet: project management

Lessons Learned

This project emphasized the importance of:

• Testing and Iteration: Starting small with A/B testing allowed for quick wins and continuous improvement.

• Strategic Alignment: Prioritizing efforts based on key business goals ensured maximum impact.

• Data Quality: Clean and comprehensive donor data is critical for effective personalization.

By focusing on these principles, I transformed FSD’s email marketing from a generic approach to a targeted and data-driven strategy, fostering stronger donor relationships and driving revenue growth.