If you use email for your year-end fundraising, you have to take the time NOW to get that list ready: who is on it, what they care about, and whether your emails are reaching them.

A clean email list is essential for making it through the more rigorous filters inbox providers put up to handle the influx of holiday messaging.

To get your nonprofit email list ready for year-end fundraising, re-engage inactive subscribers, review who should receive appeals, add new subscribers with clear consent, segment your audience, update your welcome series, and test your email setup. And it may seem early, but now is THE time to start, while you can still fix problems before GivingTuesday and December.

Here are 6 things you should do NOW to have your email list ready for a successful year-end email campaign:

1. Re-engage people who have stopped responding

Identify subscribers who haven’t clicked, donated, registered, or otherwise interacted in a while. Send them a short re-engagement email that reminds them why they signed up and gives them a clear next step. You might ask them to choose the updates they want or point them toward a particularly useful resource. Don’t wait until your first December appeal to find out whether they’re still interested.

• 6 Messaging Options for Email Re-Engagement Campaigns
• We Are Running an Email Re-Engagement Campaign and People Have Feelings
• We Want You Back! How to Re-Engage Inactive Email Supporters

2. Decide who belongs in your year-end audience.

Review hard bounces, unsubscribes, duplicate records, and people with a long history of no engagement. Suppress addresses that can’t receive email, and consider excluding persistently inactive subscribers from your biggest fundraising sends after a re-engagement attempt.

Although we advise you to remove inactive subscribers, a supporter who only gives at year-end may still be a valuable part of your audience. Check donation history and other signs of a relationship before making that call.

• Is a Bigger Email List Always Better? Nope.
• Why Deleting People from Your Email List is a Good Thing
• When to Stop Snail Mailing and Emailing People, Part I
• Should You Contact People Who Unsubscribed from Your Email List?

3. Run some list building campaigns to get new subscribers.

Look at the places people encounter your organization: your website, event registrations, volunteer forms, and social channels. Is it easy to subscribe? Do you tell people what they’ll receive? A useful resource or a clear promise about your emails can bring interested people onto your list before the year-end rush. Make sure they know they’re signing up for email rather than quietly adding them after another interaction.

• Nonprofits Should Try Some New Email List Building Techniques
• 3 Email List Building Pop-Ups for Your Website

4. Think of different ways to segment your list.

Your whole list doesn’t need the same appeal. At a minimum, separate current donors from people who haven’t given. You can also tailor messages for recurring donors, volunteers, past event attendees, or people interested in a particular program.

• Powerful Segmentation Ideas for Year-End Online Fundraising Campaigns
• You Need to Fix Your All or Nothing Email List

5. Create (or freshen up) your welcome series.

New subscribers shouldn’t hear from you once and then go silent until you ask for money. Check that your welcome emails introduce your work, show what their support makes possible, and set expectations about future messages. Follow the path yourself from sign-up to the final welcome email. Are the links, timing, and language still right?

• Email Welcome Series Best Practices
• Do You Have an Email Welcome Series for New Subscribers? Probably Not

6. Test your automation processes

Sign up using a few test accounts and check what arrives. Test the subscription and unsubscribe process, links, mobile layout, donation form, and confirmation email. Ask whoever manages your email platform to confirm your sending domain is authenticated and to review bounces and spam complaints. Gmail’s sender guidelines spell out its authentication and unsubscribe requirements.

I know it’s September, but a little list maintenance now gives that appeal a better chance of reaching people who want to hear from you.

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