Nonprofit organizations also struggle with building their email lists. We had a person on our call last night who works for a Breast Cancer charity. They have the additional challenge of avoiding spam filters when they put their name in their email subject lines.

Here is a recent report from M+R Strategic Services and the Advocacy Institute, as reported by the Getting Attention blog.

• More Donations Online – Nonprofits raised 40% more money online in 2005 than the year before, likely driven by the cataclysmic Asian tsunami.
• Email Overload – The rates at which online constituents open their emails declined from 30% in 2003-2004 to 26% in 2004-2005 as supporters became overwhelmed with email.
• Budgets Matter – Nonprofits with larger online budgets had better online programs, building larger email lists, generating more online activism, and raising more money online.
• Email Lists Growing – On average, the nonprofits studied more than doubled their existing email lists over a 12-month period.
• Lots of Bad Email Addresses – For most nonprofits, over a quarter of email addresses on their list go bad each year.
• Activism More Popular Than Donations – Not surprisingly, more email subscribers took online political action than made an online donation — 47% vs. 6%.

There were a lot of listeners on last night’s List Building teleclass to learn "25 Proven Ways to Grow Your List of Raving Fans and Clients." I think I forgot to post about the class on this blog…and hope you had a chance to make the call anyway.

We’ll be packaging it into an informational product that contains the audio, the transcripts, and an Insider Secrets from Successful Online Experts on how to grow your list, in the next few weeks.

I’ve had some great contributions from people on their favorite list building tips, from Tom Antion, Joan Stewart, Paulette Ensign, Martin Wales, and many of the experts who have been on our Conversations teleseries and who have lists in the 100,000’s.

I’m still accepting contributions to the special report. If your favorite list building tip makes it into the report, we’ll publish your photo, URL, and 25 words about you and your business. Just email me, or hit the comment link below and write about how you’ve grown your list. 200-400 words is fine.

P.S. Even if you’ve grown your list only into the hundreds, your tips can be significant. In list building, it’s not always size that matters. What matters is that you reach the right people who want to hear from you, and who will become your clients. I’d love to hear from you.

How many times have you heard that? Every time someone complains about the time necessary to do a newsletter or a blog, we repeat the List Mantra: "The Money Is in the List…"

We’ve heard horror stories about $20,000 websites that have no way to capture email addresses and build a list. What’s your list building horror story?

How many ways are there to build a list? Let me count them….Ali Brown says there are 101 ways. You can buy her downloadable report for $97 or so…

Or you can start reading about the importance of list building every where on the Web. Here’s a good post by Brian Clark at Copyblogger.com, in response to Where’s the Money in Blogging?…

Read More→

Here’s an interesting post from Nancy Schwartz’s Getting Attention Blog. Evidently the Cirque du Soleil is harnassing the power of email marketing, getting on the list building band wagon and generating a fan club to boost business. Here’s an excerpt from Nancy’s blog (which I highly recommend subscribing to, btw).

Take a look at Cirque’s email marketing approach — directly transferable to nonprofit organizations for fundraising, advocacy, membership or volunteer campaigns, or ongoing relationship development. Cirque:

• Promoted the email list development as "Join Our Fan Club", not "Sign Up for Our Email List", and featuring that invite right on the home page. Becoming a member of a club is much more enticing than becoming an email subscriber.

What a great tip! What kind of ‘club’ can you promote so that people feel proud to join and get the insider tips or information exclusive to club members?

I’m not sure that people would join "The Blog Squad’s Fan Club"…although we do have two fans, I think, at last count. But maybe people would feel more inclined to join the "Savvy eBiz Tips Club", and get smart tips for marketing online, instead of a signing up for a newsletter.

What do you think? And what kind of club could you envision for building a list for your business? Any good ideas out there?