Ten Actions to Ask of Your E-mail Readers

It's the first thing a salesman is taught, even before the part about not mentioning the price: "Ask for the order." If you want your readers to do something, ask them! E-mails and web pages are calls to action, not just announcements. It's important, after you've educated or outraged your supporters, to ask for some action that supports your cause based on the information you just gave them.

In direct mail fundraising, it's standard to ask for money. With an Internet marketing plan, it's not always necessary or desirable. That's because the web and e-mail have three advantages over direct mail:

1. It's much less costly. At fifty cents per piece mailed, it's hard NOT to ask for money. If you have even a 5% response to your direct mail, you need to get $10 from each one just to pay for the cost of mailing that person and the 19 others who didn't respond. Online, the costs are minimal. An e-mail rarely costs more than a few cents to send, so you can ask for some other action many times, and ask for money in every third, fourth, or fifth e-mail.
2. It's interactive: A letter has one chance to generate money. An internet campaign can be incremental. For example, you can put all your efforts into getting people to sign a petition. You can then ask only petition signers to donate, or take the next action. It's easy with a series of web pages.
3. You have more opportunities to reach your supporters. A very aggressive charity can send direct mail to its house file about 12 times per year. The same charity can send 52 e-mails per year, since the delivery is much more predictable (hours v. weeks) and the response curve is much shorter (days v. months). So you can still do 12 e-mail appeals for money per year, and 40 or so appeals for other actions.

Here are 10 things you can ask your online supporters to do:

1. Sign a petition;
2. Send someone else an e-mail;
3. Go to an event in real life;
4. Buy something to support the cause;
5. Give money;
6. Refer a friend;
7. Send an e-card to a staff member or a child;
8. Watch a program, listen to an interview, read something (online of off) to learn more about your issue;
9. Write a story or otherwise contribute relevant content;
10. Call someone on the phone to express an opinion.

November 2002

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