We believe every Christian organization should have a robust email strategy. The advantage to email is that it is much more cost efficient, much more tailored and targeted, and more urgent (since production cycles can be shorter). And in the last number of years, Masterworks has helped organizations dial in and dial up the cadence of their email communication as more and more constituents live in a digital context.
Our emails are always fully branded to the visual language and written communication style of the organization we’re serving. Our team of writers speaks confidently in the voice of each of our organizations, and our designers are brand experts in bringing your brand to life in the ways that are most authentic and accurate for your organization.
Our email approach is typically outlined on a content calendar, where 12, 24, 48 or more emails are planned out a year in advance to align with the fundraising, marketing, and ministry strategies of an organization.
In addition, we have a comprehensive set of measurement strategies that allow an organization to understand the effectiveness of their emails and can guide strategic shifts in how they’re engaging their constituents.
EMAIL CAMPAIGNS
One email strategy is to functionally mirror your outbound direct mail strategy. This is a tried-and-true approach that works very well for organizations — sending out email-based appeals and newsletters that function in a very similar way to direct mail. This replicates that classic cadence of direct response communication, while braiding in an organization’s organic email communication. Our strategies dovetail perfectly with an organization’s internal communication strategy.
EMAIL AUTOMATION
The second big thing we do with email, that is increasingly common and works very well, is leverage technology for email automation. This enables you to not only tailor the program that each of your constituents receive in terms of cadence and timing but also the content. Masterworks comes alongside organizations to make use of email automation capabilities that can lower the lift required to execute the work and significantly increase the quality of the communication as well. Whether that’s using an organization’s own tools, from the CRM or email service provider, or even leveraging third party platforms that specialize in automating communications, Masterworks has come alongside many organizations to help them strategize about how to build, implement, and utilize these systems to increase the quality and consistency of their email communications.
We also help organizations integrate their email automation with other types of automations to increase the effectiveness of other media efforts — such as YouTube, digital, and even direct mail.
EMAIL ACQUISITION
Due to consumer migrations happening from the mailbox to the inbox, Masterworks has taken its 30 years of expertise in securing audiences for organizations in direct mail and applied that to email. The email landscape is different from the direct mail landscape in that the ways that you would acquire those lists are typically mediated through a variety of different sources. The Masterworks Media team has deep relationships with America’s leading Christian publishers. These publishers provide activation opportunities for you to communicate with people who are interested in the types of things you do but who don't participate with your organization yet. Masterworks can build programs for email acquisition that can reach thousands to millions of potential new constituents for your organization. We also have the expertise to build effective email creative to engage people, as well as ensure that the responses from those emails, whether clicks to your website or other form submissions, are tracked and then can be used in subsequent marketing and fundraising communication.