4 Steps To Market Legacy Giving Using Email

Building a legacy giving program requires nonprofits to market the opportunity to leave a legacy gift. But it’s time to think beyond direct mail pieces and brochures. Today’s legacy giving donors and tomorrow’s prospects are engaged online. Email provides nonprofits with abundant opportunities to get legacy giving messaging in front of donors. Here’s how your nonprofit can integrate legacy giving into your email program.

Building a legacy giving program comes down to marketing

While we might like to think that a donor with 10+ years of giving history already has our nonprofit in their will, they may need to learn that leaving a gift is an option. That’s where legacy giving marketing comes in.

Through marketing communications, nonprofits can educate donors about the opportunities to leave a legacy gift and the tax benefits for their loved ones. But unlike making an ask for a one-time annual gift, getting the gift takes more than one ask and a few follow ups. It also takes more than passive marketing efforts.

Nonprofits who are succeeding in building large legacy giving programs are proactively marketing legacy giving to donors. Through face-to-face conversations, direct mail pieces, and email, nonprofits who approach legacy giving as a long-term, multi-channel effort are getting more traction.

But wait! Aren’t legacy giving donors direct mail donors?

To that I say, but who are your legacy donor prospects? It’s not just Boomers. In fact, most people tend to write a Will during a big life change such as marriage or having a child — life changes that often take place in people’s 30s and 40s. Conversations about gift and estate planning may need to happen with people younger than you think.

Indeed, the legacy gifts that your organization may receive in the next 20 years might be from Boomer direct mail donors. However direct mail donors (even those over 65) have email addresses and are often on a nonprofit’s email list, and not all of them are legacy donors yet.

4 steps to integrate legacy giving marketing into your email program

Email is a scalable and highly effective way to get legacy giving marketing materials in front of your donors. If your nonprofit is ready to up your legacy giving game, here are four steps to get started integrating legacy giving into your email program.

Step 1: Identify your segment(s)

Have an open mind when it comes to your legacy giving data. Your best legacy giving prospects are your most loyal donors, regardless of the dollar amount they give. Loyalty can look like making annual gifts for years, volunteering, being a board member, or being a monthly donor.

To keep things simple, you might start with one segment of legacy giving prospects. Over time, as you see who is most engaged with your legacy giving content (see Step 4), you may develop other segment strategies for those donors who are more engaged.

Wealth screening can also impact your segmentation choices. Specifically, someone’s net worth can indicate whether they may be a prospect for a Charitable Remainder Trust or a Charitable Gift Annuity.

You can also find some great insights on segmenting legacy prospects by generation in this webinar.

Step 2: Build a plan to consistently roll out legacy giving messaging in email

Once you know who you want to target through your legacy giving marketing, you need a plan to consistently get legacy giving messaging in front of the audience. Consistency is often the biggest challenge nonprofits face with legacy giving. It’s easy to send a one-off mailing but it can feel like a heavier lift to be consistent. The balance here is committing to a cadence you know you can execute.

If you’re just getting started, my recommendation is once per quarter. If you have been working on a legacy giving program for a while or have more capacity, aim for once a month.

In these regular email marketing pieces about legacy giving, the goals are to 1) educate donors about legacy giving opportunities and 2) help donors see that people just like them leave legacy gifts.

We often see news stories about mega-transformational legacy gifts so it’s easy for someone to feel like their gift of $5,000 or $25,000 may not make a difference. That’s where storytelling can be a powerful ally for legacy giving. Stories offer social proof and when organizations pick diverse donor stories, they can be more effective at reaching different cross-sections of the donor audience.

If you’d like to see some examples of legacy donor stories, take a look at these examples from BC Women’s Hospital Foundation and these legacy donor stories from the Canadian Red Cross.

With any legacy giving email you send, giving subscribers content to click on is key. Your email could be a teaser of a story or a link to a legacy giving story video. The reason we want people to click on content is so that over time we can see who is most engaged with legacy giving content. Either within the content or in the email, be sure to link to your legacy giving informational page. Again, this will be valuable information about your prospects.

Step 3: Strategically use surveys

One of the best tools we have to get legacy giving prospects to raise their hands is surveys. With our clients, we typically run an annual prospecting survey to update the donor file. It’s a short email with just one question that gets to the most important information for the fundraising team: Is someone planning to or considering a legacy gift?

Here’s an example of one of these survey emails.

These kinds of emails are extremely effective because of the ability to answer the survey quickly and easily track responses. Over time, they will help you build a better legacy giving portfolio.

Step 4: Leverage your email user data to take things multi channel

The fuel for your legacy giving marketing is your data. With email, you have an incredible wealth of engagement data that will allow your team to do things like:

• Personally follow up with subscribers who are highly engaged with legacy content
• Send targeted direct mailings
• Curate better event invite lists legacy giving events

Email has long been an incredible tool for fundraising and there are so many possibilities for legacy giving marketing. With time and consistency, your nonprofit will begin to build a legacy giving program that can provide sustainability for its future.