Cause Awareness Campaign
The Gist of It
Use a cause awareness day to communicate and bring attention to your mission.
Find different ways to get supporters involved, like resourses, posting on social media, webinars or a match.
Cause awareness emails can ask for donations. After all, gifts help raise more awareness.
Transcript
Fortune cookies, sea monkeys, and Scrabble. What do these three things have in common? Each one has a national day to celebrate its existence.
Many nonprofits create cause awareness campaigns based around National Days. Theirs are, of course, more serious than, say, Lost Sock Memorial Day.
Cause awareness campaigns allow organizations to engage current supporters and attract new ones.
Let’s see how email can contribute to a nonprofit cause awareness campaign. You don’t need to wait until “Everything You Do is Right” Day to go Behind the Campaign.
Introduction
Welcome to Behind the Campaign.
A showcase of the best nonprofit campaigns. Here you will get ideas, tips, and strategies to create successful campaigns for your organization.
Today, we will look at 3 cause awareness emails from 3 organizations. They use different approaches to drive awareness, but for the same reason- suicide prevention.
Let’s start in the inbox and see how they do it.
Email Inbox
Each subject line is unique in how they encourage supporters to open the email.
Studies found 35% of people open an email based on the subject line.
The first, from To Write Love on Her Arms, is informational and says “Today is World Suicide Prevention Day.” The preview text expands the line and provides encouragement with “And we’re beyond grateful that we get to spend another day with you.”
The second, from Crisis Text Line, states “Mental health is about all of us.” The preview text is a call to action asking supporters to “Join Mental Health Together for World Suicide Prevention Day.”
The last one is my favorite, as it creates a sense of curiosity, with the one-word subject line, “Resiliency.” The JED Team then finishes the thought in the preview text, “how it helps prevent suicide.”
While the purpose of each email is to raise awareness, the way they go about it is unique.
Cause Awareness Emails
You can use email to encourage awareness about your cause.
This email is all about spreading the “message of hope.” They ask supporters to do this in different ways, through wearing a shirt, leaving sticky notes of encouragement, or checking in with those you care about.
When posting online, they ask supporters to use a hashtag, so the organization can interact with the post.
They provide unique ways to bring attention to their cause.
Now, we will look at the email from Crisis Text Line.
Emails can get supporters involved through messaging and audience building, but it can also help organizations meet different goals.
Crisis Text Line uses the cause awareness day to get supporters engaged at a different level. They launched a new initiative and asked for volunteers.
The email explains the need and how volunteers will help students overcome “moments of darkness.”
Through their volunteers, Crisis Text Line will raise awareness about suicide prevention.
The last email takes another approach to cause awareness.
The type of cause awareness email JED sends is a cultivation email. They include a resource on how to build resilience. When you click on the link or image you go to a page with downloadable tip sheets.
These sheets are a guide to helping friends and loved ones struggling with mental health.
As part of the cultivation, they also add a video on how to cope during difficult times.
While the organizations use emails to talk about cause awareness in different ways, they all include a donation call to action. It is not predominant, in all three emails the donation ask is at the very bottom of the email.
Yes, even with cause awareness emails, organizations can ask for donations. After all, gifts help raise more awareness. Like these 3 emails, it is best to add it toward the end of the email, so as to not detract from the main purpose.
Conclusion
These 3 examples show how organizations use a cause awareness day to communicate and bring attention to their mission.
They sent emails to build an audience, recruit volunteers, and provide much-needed resources. All for the goal of greater awareness.
Feel free to include social media in your campaign. And choose different ways to get supporters involved, like a webinar or even a match.
Time to get out from Behind the Campaign and create a cause awareness campaign for your organization. Success starts with you.
