Get to Know Your Audience Via Your E-News Welcome Email

Subject Line: A Quick Question
"Thanks for joining the blogging tips newsletter and grabbing an excerpt of Blogwild.
I was wondering what is your biggest question about blogs?
Let me know.."
Andy Wibbels
___________________________________________

This is the welcome email I received today after confirming my subscription to Andy's blogging tips e-news. More importantly, this is a great model for nonprofit and foundation e-news welcome emails. 

Research tells us that your audiences are highly engaged just after they subscribe to your e-news. After all, they are opting to receive email from your organization on a regular basis, which shows a significant level of interest. And, at the moment of subscription, your organization is top of mind.

Andy capitalizes on that short-lived attention focus to ask his subscribers what is they're most pressing question on his core expertise. Here are a few audience research strategies your nonprofit can put to use in its e-news welcome email:

• Discover what your audience is most interested in learning about in your e-news or RSS feed, like Andy does
• Develop a better profile of your readers, by asking them to complete a brief reader survey
• Ask your readers' opinion on a current conflict or topic in the issue area in which you work.

One tip -- and a way Andy can increase his responses: Ask for an immediate response and include an email or form link. Make it easy for your readers, and catch 'em while they're paying attention.

BTW, don't forget the other key element in your e-news welcome email: Ask your readers to 'whitelist' or protect the email address used to send the e-news. otherwise, they'll never get it and you'll have lost one interested prospect.

Are you Getting Attention? Subscribe to our free e-newsletter today.

Comments

[Andy Wibbels]

I look so smart! :-)

Thanks so much for subscribing and for the shout-out. I need to go the extra mile and have that message in HTML and plain-text format as well.