How do you get your followers onto your mailing lists?

Most charities really wish they could directly contact their social media followers. Is there a way to get their details?

We’re all well aware that the algorithms of social media don’t show our posts to everybody who follows our accounts. (Unless you pay.) And that there is a lot of noise and competition on socials.

What’s less ignorable than a social post? Email.

What’s less ignorable than an email? Post.

But how do you get the email addresses or postal addresses of those thousands of followers who seem interested in your charity? Here are a few ideas.

Post your signup form

You might think, “nobody wants to join an email list”. Are you sure? Every month, make your email list sound fun and interesting, and post the link to your signup form on your socials. Mention what’s going to be in the next email. If you’re offering something useful, some of these people will sign themselves up. (We do it each month on LinkedIn with great success.)

Create a lead magnet

What specialist knowledge does your charity have to share? Can you create a how-to guide, an explainer booklet, a Bible study, a children’s activity or something else that would be useful to your followers?

Offer to send your followers a copy free or charge or for a nominal fee. By doing this, you’ll be helping them out, showing thought leadership, and getting their addresses at the same time.

Use your campaigns

When your followers donate online to your campaigns, you get a chance to ask them to sign up to your email list. And, if they Gift Aid, you’ll collect their postal addresses too, which you can use next time you run a campaign.

One recent charity campaign involved posting an item out to people who donated, and also sending them a special email update later in the year. This meant they collected the postal addresses of email-only contacts, the email addresses of postal-only contacts, and both of these things for donors who had previously just been anonymous followers on social media.

(Just don’t forget that people have to opt-in to an email newsletter list.)

Or… meet them where they are

When all’s said and done, some people just want to connect and communicate with your charity on social media, and that’s their choice. For those people, make sure you prepare content just for them that’s appropriate to socials, rather than trying to make them read a 20-page PDF of your newsletter. You’ll get much more back.

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If you need help with your communications, please just get in touch with our team.