Email Marketing Strategy & Design - Nonprofit

Global Ties Akron's newsletter went out on Mailchimp with no fixed schedule. Some months it skipped entirely. Every send routed through the Executive Director before it could go live, which meant her calendar decided the send date more than the audience did.

I replaced the ad hoc process with a fixed monthly production cycle: content in, reviewed, and sent by a deadline.

Every issue is written to read as a personal letter from the Executive Director rather than an org-branded blast, so each send does double duty: reader engagement and building recognition of new leadership.

A shared Content Hub let staff submit updates directly, removing the Executive Director as the bottleneck. Every send includes an A/B subject line test. Donor retention and outreach enhanced by a detailed link performance tracking.

*Built a direct production pipeline (design to staff) that cut the ED out of day-to-day content approval
*Ran monthly A/B tests comparing curiosity-driven subject lines against direct asks and informational statements
*Tracked link-level performance to see which content actually drove clicks, then rebuilt layouts around it
*Shipped supporting web work tied to a fundraising campaign: a donation page with a live progress tracker and a donor wall
*Reported results monthly against nonprofit industry benchmarks, not just internal trends

*Open rate: 24.1% trailing average
*Click rate: up 32% after four months
*Engagement held steady even as opens cooled later in the summer: clicks per unique open stayed tight every month from May through August, the most consistent stretch in the 12-month window
*The newsletter also stopped skipping months. Total sends were up 57.2% period over period
*Freed an estimated 5-10 hours a month for the Executive Director
*Subject line testing implemented to better understand what resonates with the audience

Globally Speaking #1

Globally Speaking #2

Globally Speaking #3

Globally Speaking #4

Global Ties Akron