I was recently forwarded an email from an old JustGiving colleage Tom Mansel, now at social business & enterprise hub ClearlySo. He’d received it from a colleague who’d received an email from a charity. You know, like that old fashioned email chain sort of thing. Except it wasn’t an email chain, it was just someone sharing something they liked with a friend who then thought they’d share it with another friend.

The subject line of the forwarded email was “the only charity I support” followed by the content: “... because they do practical and not particularly glamorous stuff and tell me about it on a monthly basis!”

That’s a pretty powerful statement, don’t you think? 

It’s worth taking the time to reflect on your own email communications and think whether any of your supporters would apply the same statement to what they receive from you. Or even better, why don’t you ask the people who receive your emails what they like, don’t like, what they would like and how often they’d like it?

Remember, you’re sending these emails for them – be it to build engagement with them, push them to take an action, get them to make a donation – it’s not about you, it’s about what you do for them.

It’s easy to get into a routine of creating and sending content for content’s sake, but it’s useful every so often to take a step back and remember why you’re sending things and whether you’re really meeting the objectives you originally set yourself. Are you sending an email for the reader’s benefit or yours?

And remember, it's very easy to forward an email with good or bad comments to someone else. According to those clever people at Nielsen, "Recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising" - 90 per cent of people trust a recommendation from someone they know

The power of email is something I’ve written about on this blog before, so you can read about what I thought about some other charity emails I’ve received in the past as well as good newsletters I’d recommend for inspiration here.