Cats and email. Felines reign supreme in digital spaces. In fact, The New York Times once described cat images as "that essential building block of the Internet."

But even before their digital star began to shine, cats may have been teaching us valuable lessons about email marketing. Here are five insights to prove it.

  1. A cat says: “I want attention … on my terms.”

Email marketing translation: The subscribers’ wants and motivations —not our own — are what matter.

  • Preferences. Give your subscribers autonomy. Let them choose what types of emails they receive from you by offering a preferences page. Combat email fatigue with a “subscribe-down” option so supporters can pause or lessen your emails rather than unsubscribe altogether.
  • Timing and Cadence. Build a consistent relationship. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer as to how often and when you should communicate with your constituents. No matter your cadence, try your best to stay consistent so your audience knows what to expect. Occasionally, take a chance on sending a message at a different time, on a different day, or outside of your normal communication schedule and see how it goes. More on testing next.
  • Unsubscribes. Find your peace with unsubscribes. Make the unsubscribe link easy to locate and refrain from burying it in a wall of text in the footer. If you notice particular email results in larger-than-normal unsubscribes (more on tracking later), it may be time to reevaluate that email. Ensure you’re benchmarking your messages against your own historical performance as well as other non-profits in your sector and organizations of a similar size.

 

  1. A cat says: “Let me out … now let me in.”

Email marketing translation: What was fine with a subscriber today might not be fine tomorrow.

  • Testing. Times change, people change, and even best practices change — that makes testing imperative. Some of our favorite things to test at SCA are the sender name, button copy, the landing page, and the preheader copy. We found a statistically significant positive impact using a blank preheader versus visible text, so we employ this tactic for a handful of important messages. (Use it sparingly, though, as screen readers are not able to interpret a blank pre-header.) More on accessibility further down. Check out this list of 46 testing ideas.
  • Track metrics. Know what email metrics you want to track and then create a plan to track them. Remember, you may be interested in seeing metrics beyond what’s available on your ESP’s dashboard, I track the following in an Excel spreadsheet: open rate (with the understanding that opens are increasingly less important), click rate, click to open, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate, response rate, retention rate, conversion rate, and average gift. Filtering these metrics by date, campaign, or email type gives me a better sense of what people are interested (and not interested) in at any time.
  • Reengage.  Once, a subscriber may have been jazzed to join your list, but inactivity happens. We recently updated our definition of an inactive subscriber to "a constituent who has not clicked, donated, or engaged on our website (e.g. surveys, event registrations) within the last year." However, if you suspect your deliverability is suffering, you should consider paring that timeframe down to six months. We send an automated four-part reactivation series and aim for 10% reactivation. If automation is not possible, try to win back disengaged subscribers at least twice a year utilizing some of your most engaging messages.

 

  1. A cat says: “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

Email marketing translation: Ensure your email messages and email lists are in tip-top shape.

  • Pre-send checklist. Mistakes are bound to happen, but you can do your best to curb them by creating a comprehensive quality assurance checklist to follow before you press send. At a minimum, it should include testing messages on various email clients and devices (or using a service like Email on Acid to do a campaign pre-check), looking for spelling/grammar errors, clicking all links, verifying source codes and segmentation, ensuring the pre-header looks good in the inbox and verifying the target audience.
  • List cleans. Plan for a biannual or quarterly list cleaning to help improve or maintain your deliverability. A list clean will look for domain spelling errors, spam traps, complainers, invalid emails, and more. You might also create a survey or profile page that allows subscribers to view and update their own information … consider a spring-cleaning themed message.
  • Authentication. Get familiar with the acronyms DMARC, DKIM, SPF, and BIMI—and what they mean for email marketing. In a nutshell, these email authentication protocols show mailbox providers, like Gmail, that your organization is a legitimate sender. This is a good resource to brush up on the basics. BIMI is the newest of the group. It places your logo next to your message rather than a generic image helping your readers to identify your message and increasing your brand recognition in the inbox. 

  

  1. A cat says: “Give me any box and I will fit into it.”

Email marketing translation: Your emails should display properly and provide a seamless user experience across all devices and clients.

  • It’s your job to ensure that everyone who is interested in reading your emails can. There's so much to be said about this critical topic, and it can be hard to know where to start. Begin your accessibility journey by taking time to understand how screen readers work — they pause for punctuation, announce headings, read your preheader, and so on. Then implement best practices like including clear and descriptive alt text for all images in your message, avoiding center-aligned text, and using contrasting colors so your copy is easy to read.
  • Mobile responsive. It’s official. More than half of all emails are opened on a mobile device — that means mobile responsiveness is no longer a nice-to-have it’s a need-to-have. We want the emails that we spend so much time crafting to look great on any size screen and on any device. Perhaps your ESP already has you covered on this topic, but it never hurts to understand a little more about what goes on behind the curtain.
  • Design for dark mode. This popular screen setting uses color inversion to give the user a black background and limit blue light. Dark mode continues to grow in popularity with most email providers offering the setting, so it’s important to ensure your emails still deliver a good experience in this mode – this requires including reversed images for your logo, social icons, signatures, etc. And of course, keep in mind accessibility principles as you create these assets. Here's a quick comparison of our logo when optimized and not optimized for dark mode:

 

 

  1. A cat says: “You have to earn my affection.”

Email marketing translation: Relationships take time to grow, so find ways to get to know your audience. It will be worth the effort.

  • This could be an entire blog on its own. Personalization goes beyond including the subscriber’s first name (though I love throwing it into a subject line every so often). Look for ways you can segment on behavior and then tailor your content, for example implementing cart abandonment emails for those who land on your donation page, but don’t complete their gift or acknowledging how they made a prior year’s campaign successful and invite them to kick start the current year’s campaign. It can be tempting for time-strapped and resource-strapped nonprofit email marketers to rely on the old batch-and-blast method for sending emails, but at the very least try to segment by giving (e.g., non-donors, current donors, lapsed donors, major giving, sustainers) and version the copy to reflect how they are connected to your organization.
  • Thoughtful content. A good email starts with a good email “envelope” content like the subject line and pre-header. Make sure your subject line complements your preheader rather than simply repeating it … the preheader is valuable territory! From there, get creative! Incorporate GIFs and videos, create surveys and quizzes, use stories, infographics, and notes from folks who have experienced the impact of your organization firsthand. Note that being creative does not mean being tricky or manipulative for the sake of a click. (Avoid using ‘click here,’ which is not only bad for accessibility but not descriptive or engaging).
  • Always say thank you. Follow up with your donors after a campaign to thank them for their gifts and show them how their support is making a difference – and version for non-donors so they know about your successes as well (and perhaps include a soft ask at the end). I cannot count how many replies we have received over the years from donors thanking us in return for thanking them.

Hopefully, you’ve found a helpful pointer or two for your email marketing. Cats are more than loving companions and unrelenting alarm clocks, they are astute teachers of email marketing. Keep these five lessons inspired by our feline friends at the core of your email marketing program and you will have a solid foundation on which to prospurr.

 

About the author: Lara Fornal is a cat-loving email marketer with 12 years of nonprofit email marketing experience. She currently works for the Student Conservation Association, a client of Mal Warwick Donordigital.

Cats featured are valued members of the MWD team.