Share your posts: writing great email

Love it or hate it, email is a powerful communications tool. But as inboxes get busier and donors get choosier, your nonprofit’s emails are more likely than ever to end up in the Trash folder (or worse…Spam!). 

So what does it take to craft an awesome, compelling email that prompts supporters not only to read, but to take action? That’s what we’d like to discuss in this September’s blog carnival. (Wondering what a blog carnival is? Step right this way.)

Here’s how the carnival works.

If you’re a blogger, the fun begins now. Here’s how it works:

• Write up a post with examples, suggestions, cautionary tales, interesting tests you’ve run—anything you like, really, as long as involves nonprofit emails. Feel free to send us a past post if you’ve written something recently that fits the bill.
• Email your permalink to [email protected] by Monday, 9/23 (and tell your friends to do the same).
• We’ll sift through the many excellent entries and choose the ones that work best with our theme. Posts that are easy to read and were written relatively recently (within the last month or two) are best. A good duck pun or two will probably get you extra points.
• Check back at the Duck Call on Thursday, 9/26 to see if we’ve included your post, and enjoy a bump in traffic as we promote the Carnival to friends and followers.

If you’re a reader, stay tuned—we’ll be back at the end of September with a roundup of all the great resources we’ve collected from nonprofits and experts around the web with tips, examples, best practices, and ideas for making the most of your emails. (In the meantime, get in the carnival spirit with Kivi Leroux Miller’s August roundup of interesting posts on how to get along with others in the workspace.)

We’re looking forward to soaking in all of the knowledge and good ideas, so start sending them our way at [email protected]. And if you’d like to follow the Carnival as it journeys around the nonprofit blogging world, please sign up for monthly updates.

What’s a nonprofit blog carnival, and is there funnel cake? 

The Carnival is a monthly roundup of posts on different topics relevant to nonprofits. It travels from blog to blog, and each month, the host declares a theme and collects the best posts on that topic from around the web, bringing them all together for your reading and learning pleasure.

We’re still working on the funnel cake.