Nonprofit publisher enhances online book sales using Email Marketing Director

The publishers of Contributions magazine, a bi-monthly print publication going out to about 20,000 nonprofit professionals an issue, needed a plan and a better tool to launch effective email marketing campaigns for its industry-focused books.

Contributions is celebrating its 20th year covering fundraising, management and marketing for non-profit organizations. In the last seven years, Contributions has been publishing and promoting books on these same topics. The Medfield, Mass.-based company has nine new books it's currently marketing, with another 10 books it plans to publish in the next few months.

To prepare for its new email marketing approach, Publisher Kathleen Brennan said her company asks for email addresses from their book buyers and magazine subscribers, many who wish to receive updates on the nonprofit resources Contributions offers.

"We have a variety of ways we ask for email addresses," Brennan said. "When readers renew their magazine subscriptions, we ask. When buyers order from us, we ask. The addresses almost always come when customers are ordering something from us," she says.

Brennan users both online and offline formats when asking for email addresses. On the Contributions website (http://www.contributionsmagazine.com/index.html) there is an ecommerce section where customers order books and assorted publications. Customers can also call in and order books "the old fashion way, where we actually take orders to the post office," she says.

After several months of gathering email addresses from customers and readers, Contributions was poised to launch their targeted email campaigns.

Challenge: Target past buyers and 'pay a little less postage'
Contributions' email campaigns needed to reach previous buyers of books to promote new titles, all written exclusively for nonprofits. "If they bought one new book from us, then maybe they would be interested in another title that would complement the one they have already read," Brennan says of the campaign planning.

The challenge for the publisher was to enhance online book orders and "pay a little less postage," Brennan said. "Direct mail works, for what it is. But it's expensive to print brochures and catalogs, and mail them. It's also pretty labor-intensive." Brennan says that while Contributions will continue with direct mail because of its success in the past, the publishers sought a different way to market their specialized products to big groups of people, a way that was less labor intensive with lower cost. Promoting books using Email Marketing Director fit this description.

"The software allows us to be more targeted. I couldn't send a personal letter to all the people who bought 'Book A' just to tout 'Book B'," Brennan says. "But I could easily send them an email doing just that. That makes more sense than printing up a whole specific targeted piece that might reach 100 people, for example. That wouldn't be worth doing. But with Email Marketing Director, I can specifically target those people to receive something that’s relevant to them, instead of sending them our whole catalog," she says.

Solution: Something needed beyond Outlook Express
The first attempts by Brennan to email Contribution book customers were using Outlook Express. "It was just way too unwieldy. It would do just batches at a time, and there was nothing automated about it," she says. "We used it for a month or so, and we sent out seven or eight campaigns, but we gave up on it."

Brennan and company were almost dissuaded from continuing the email approach, until they found campaign automation and more via Email Marketing Director.

"We were looking for a solution like this: We needed something more automated, with the ability to give us more options when crafting the message," Brennan says.

The automation features most attractive to the nonprofit publishers include the software's handling of bounced emails (automatically marking email addresses in the publisher's email lists which have typos or are no longer active) and its easy, one-step unsubscribe processing (marking addresses of those who click the "unsubscribe" link in the email message).

"The software is easy to install. Importing lists, targeting subscribers, and scheduling campaigns are all easy and clear, and the instruction on these was very helpful," Brennan said.

Results: Customers receptive of new book info
The immediate measure of Contributions' email campaigns using Email Marketing Director is the return, or the number of people purchasing books. While Brennan says there's always an immediate upsurge in book sales activity when an email campaign is sent, there's another important analytic she's looking at: customer unsubscribes.

"It's important to me if we get a lot of feedback by way of unsubscribes, because I don’t want to annoy my customers," she says. So far, only a handful of customers have unsubscribed, an encouraging sign for this new email marketing approach.

Email Marketing Director's one touch unsubscribe feature automatically removes recipients whom click the unsubscribe link in an email message. Recipients of emails simply click the link once to be removed from the list.

"We try to keep our messages short and to the point, and make it easy for customers to order and get the information they want," Brennan says. "If we were getting hundreds of unsubscribes back, we would rethink about continuing with this approach. But that has not been the case at all."

Contributions customers whom have unsubscribed to date have numbered less than a dozen. "I'm taking that as a positive sign," Brennan said.

Results: Publisher's time savings and more
As a publisher of books, a magazine, and a website resource for nonprofits, Brennan calls Email Marketing Director's automation her most valuable component. "It really is easy. Once you have your message and your email list imported, you click "Run Selected Campaign," and it does the work while you continue with what you're doing… like checking your email to see what's waiting for you," she says. "I like that (the software) runs in the background and does the job while I can go on to other things. Once you get to that point, it doesn't need attention."

"As a small business owner I've had to learn way too many software programs over the years, so it's not anything I want to take on because it's often something that causes more headaches than solves problems," Brennan says. "But that's not the case with Email Marketing Director… I would definitely recommend it."

About Contributions
Contributions, the "How-to Source" for nonprofit professionals, is publisher of books, directories, a bimonthly magazine and an online web resource guide which focus on fund raising, nonprofit management, and marketing. Regular columns and books published by Contributions cover direct mail, planned giving, major gifts, legal matters, board development, prospect research and more. More information can be found at http://www.contributionsmagazine.com.

About Arial Software
Founded in 1993, Arial Software is widely considered the industry leader in comprehensive software designed exclusively for relationship marketing through personalized email messaging. Its products include Campaign Enterprise email marketing software and Email Marketing Director desktop software. More information on Email Marketing Director can be found at http://www.arialsoftware.com/EmailMarketingDirector.htm.