Use LGL Email to craft visually appealing emails

Overview

Communicating with your organization’s donors, potential donors, and stakeholders is an enormous part of the work of any nonprofit, and emailing is one of the most cost-effective and efficient ways to do this. Emailing through Little Green Light allows you to create emails in ways that are flexible and also visually appealing to readers. The best practices and instructions provided below can help guide you in creating and maintaining email communications to best serve your organization and its constituencies.

Ensure you’re following best practices for emailing

Make your emails mobile-friendly

Many emails are opened on a mobile device. This means, no matter how good the content is, if it can’t be read easily the email is likely to be deleted. Or worse, readers might unsubscribe. Ensuring that your emails are mobile-friendly allows them to be read on a smartphone or tablet because a mobile-responsive email template resizes your content based on the device it's being viewed on.

The LGL email builder allows you to preview how your email will look on a mobile device, send test emails, and make any needed adjustments for readability before sending.

Balance informational newsletters with fundraising appeals

E-newsletters are a great way to keep the lines of communication open with your supporters and help them stay up to date on what is happening with your organization. But be sure you balance sending fundraising appeal emails with also sending non-ask emails. Sending three non-appeal emails for every appeal is a good balance.ⁱ

When drafting your email appeal, consider following this simple framework: 1) Communicate the problem that needs to be solved; 2) Explain how your nonprofit can solve the problem; and 3) Ask for financial support to help solve the problem together.” ⁱⁱ

ⁱ Recommended by Sandy Rees of Get Fully Funded

ⁱⁱ Recommended by NonProfit Tech for Good

Limit call-to-action buttons

Limit the number of call-to-actions to one or two per email.ⁱⁱⁱ Optimizing the use of your call-to-action buttons can make a significant impact on your email’s click-through rates.

NOTE: Button elements are an available design option in the LGL email builder.

ⁱⁱⁱ Recommended by Hubspot

Offer an opt-out option

In order to maintain a healthy email list and comply with CAN-SPAM guidelines, it’s important to include an opt-out link in your emails. You should include your physical address as well.

TIP: Learn how to create an opt-out form in Little Green Light and add it to your email template by editing your email sender signature.

Create an email design using LGL Email

For detailed instructions on using the features in LGL Email, please see this help article.

In this section, we share the elements that were set up and used to create a solicitation email that looks like the one shown in the image below. You can follow these guidelines to create your own email, using your choice of images and settings.

Solicitation email exam ple

First content block

Columns element

This Columns element is set up to create two (2) columns

CAUTION: Using multiple columns in your email can significantly reduce readability on mobile devices. To ensure readability, always thoroughly test and review your email design before sending.

The first column contains a Text element to add the organization name
The second column contains another Columns element containing three (3) columns, with a social media icon inserted in each

TIP: Add your social media account URLs to the image file to make them clickable in your email.

Second content block

Image element

This is an Image element. You can use an image you have saved in your image list or upload a new image you’ve created elsewhere

Third content block

Heading element

This is a Heading element. Add your desired content in the box to the right within the email builder:

Global element

Fourth content block

Text element

This block uses the Text element. Content can be directly added and formatted within the block
In this example, the text color was changed to blue, formatted as boldface, and centered in the space

TIP: Within Text elements, you have the ability to add merge fields to personalize the content. For instance, you can add the merge field [[first_name]] in the content to make the ask even more personal.

Fifth content block

Text element with background color

This is another Text element

TIP: Creating separate Text elements gives you more flexibility in formatting and moving content around. Note the up/down arrows directly to the upper left of the block. This allows you to move the block up or down the page, if desired. The trash can icon can be used if you want to delete the element altogether.

Sixth content block

Button element