Service

Email marketing and donor retention

Acquisition often gets more attention than retention, which can be an awkward balance for an organization that raises in bursts. First-time donor retention is a persistent challenge across the nonprofit sector, and it can be a place where a system is missing.

Who this is for

Organizations that acquire donors in waves — a tournament, a campaign, a moment that traveled — and watch them disappear before the next season. Also organizations sending an occasional newsletter with no segmentation, and organizations that want a recurring giving program but have only a checkbox on a donation form.

The problem it addresses

The structural issue for sports nonprofits is timing. Your giving is spiky and tied to a competitive calendar, so a generic December appeal lands months after the moment that actually moved someone.

A second pattern is that the first gift gets a campaign and the second gift gets a receipt. Where there is no sequence between the thank-you and the next ask, an important stewardship window passes unused.

The third is measurement. Most organizations track one blended retention number, which hides the specific step that is failing. First-time and repeat retention behave differently and need to be looked at separately.

What we do

We start with the data you already have: how the list is segmented, what happens after a first gift, and what your own first-time and repeat retention actually look like over defined periods.

We build the sequences that are missing, usually a welcome flow, a post-gift follow-up that is not a receipt, a second-gift ask timed to your post-season window, and a re-engagement path for lapsed donors.

We set up the recurring giving ask deliberately — at a high-attention point in your season rather than buried as a form option — and the stewardship that supports retention of recurring donors. Which moment works best is a testing decision, not a rule.

We map the calendar to your season, so asks are timed to higher-attention periods and the quiet months carry stewardship rather than silence.

What is included

Email platform migration and list hygiene
Segmentation by giving history, recency and gift count
Welcome, post-gift, second-gift and re-engagement sequences
Recurring giving asks and the stewardship that follows them
Seasonal campaign calendar and appeal sequences
Retention reporting split by first-time and repeat donors

How the work runs

Data review. What is in the list, how it is segmented, and what your retention is when measured over comparable periods. For some organizations this is the first time the two rates have been looked at separately.
Sequence design. Which flows are missing and which existing sends are doing nothing. We map them to your season rather than to a calendar year.
Build and migrate. Templates, automation, and the list work required to make segmentation possible. Where a platform change is warranted we will say so and handle it.
Run and report. Ongoing sends, and reporting that separates first-time retention, repeat retention and recurring revenue instead of blending them.

What you provide

Access to the email platform and to donation data
Someone who can confirm what is true about programs and outcomes before it goes in an email
Photography and program updates during the season
A decision about who emails come from, and from which address

What we do not do

Stated plainly, because the boundary matters more than the pitch. Our approach page lists what falls outside the whole practice.

We do not build or replace donor CRMs. We work with the one you have.
We do not run major-gift cultivation programs.
We do not buy or rent email lists, and we will not send to one.
We do not promise a retention rate, a donation total, or that a lapsed donor will return.

A realistic next step

A call where we look at your current retention split by first-time and repeat donors. If those two numbers are not available today, establishing them is usually the first piece of work.

Talk it through first.

Tell us where the organization actually is. If this is not the right thing to spend on first, we will say so.

Start a conversation