Your donor-centric, story-filled annual appeal, complete with the perfect PS line and attention-grabbing outer envelope, are hopefully done. Box checked. Now what?

Sitting back and waiting for the donation checks to arrive does you no good. Praying for a thousand points of light will not move the needle on your annual appeal. That’s because getting the cash requires at least 12 touches (borrowing a page from the private sector’s playbook.)

Twelve touches may seem excessive, but each touch should apply a combination of different techniques to be as effective as possible. So how can you make an email blast effective and make sales faster and more efficiently? Follow your snail mail annual appeal with a clever email campaign, with a click-through button to a donation page, branded to match the appeal.

• Write and design all 12 email correspondences and schedule them to be sent – so you can spend December at holiday parties, not scrambling to craft follow-up emails.
• Plan for a minimum of two emails a week starting the week of Thanksgiving (be sure to get to 12 or more!
• Leveraging basic human psychological tendencies works. This can mean crafting lines that include words that imply time sensitivity –like “urgent,” “breaking,” “important,” or “alert.” This is proven to increase email open rates.
• Adding names or personalizing content in the subject line can mean the difference between an open or an ignore. For example, “Miriam, check out what happened in the fall!”
• Use more images than words but exercise caution because some spam sensors check image-to-text ratio.
• Make sure the words make the donor the hero. This is not about nonprofit chest beating. This is about letting your donors know they are part of a very special and enlightened group of people.
• Use humor in subject lines. Use your judgment for what is humorous
• Vanity is a powerful motivator. If you say, “Everyone who is anyone will be donating,” that’s an impactful subject line
• People are lazy. Appeal to people’s desire to do as little as possible with easy instructions, or even say, “It’s just one step to make a huge difference.”

It’s important to use discretion when employing some of these techniques.Exploiting psychological tendencies can be obvious to the recipient, or even the inbox’s spam sensor. Including personalized information can also come off as creepy. I would not recommend sending, “I saw you at Whole Foods yesterday.” A good rule of thumb is to be sincere and original.

And, have some fun. Slick marketing comes off as fake and manipulative. People pick up on that. It’s the down-to-earth content that sticks.

For potential major donors, one of the touches should be a phone call or even an in-person meeting. “Hey, do you have time for a cup of coffee?”

If you have the bandwidth, build in some interactivity. Check out our favorite social media-marketing guru Gary Vanyerchuck for inspiration. Keep it real.