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All great work starts with constraints. Artists need a canvas. Engineers accept the laws of physics. Authors are limited by language. By embracing constraints, creators do their best work.

Nonprofits are no different–they must generate impact with limited resources, which requires tradeoffs. The challenge I want to wrestle with today:

How do you get your message to the world?

Spreading the good news about your work requires some impossibly difficult choices. Most nonprofits try to do too much and do nothing well. A common trap is chasing multiple social media platforms by posting on all of them at once. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Each platform is its own distinct animal and what works on one won’t work on another. It’s exhausting and impossible to sustain. When we have limited time and energy to get the story out, instead of social, I suggest focusing on email. In all of my work, I generally adopt an “it depends” attitude, but email might be an exception.

Here’s why I feel so strongly about it.

Email doesn’t change

Email technology (essentially) hasn’t changed since the days of You’ve Got Mail. Social media platforms have come and gone, but email remains. It's now delightfully old school!

Email is popular

Social media platforms are incredibly fragmented, but do you know what they all have in common? You need an email to sign up. Which means that email is more popular than all of them combined. Essentially everyone who uses the internet uses email.

Email is open

No one “owns” email, which means it works on any browser and any device. It's essentially a public utility.

Social media platforms are not! They are closed source, always changing and when you want to leave, you can’t take your followers with you. If you want to move from Constant Contact to Mailchimp, you just export your list from one tool and import it into the next.

Email delivers

How many times have you done a marketing campaign on a social platform only to find that your most devoted followers never saw the content? It’s painful. An email list is made up of people who have chosen to receive your emails in their inbox. You send. They receive. Email has no algorithmic middlemen that demand ever-changing ritual sacrifices for them to share your message with the people who want to see it.

Email is personal

Social media is a message you broadcast to the world but an email is more private. When people engage with a social media post, they like or comment which is nice, but that engagement is a public broadcast of their own. They have to run through their subconscious filters, which often dilute authenticity and block connection. It’s embarrassing to try to make friends in public! (Follow me on LinkedIn to witness.) But email is fundamentally different! When my readers engage with my newsletter, they reply which accomplishes two amazing things. It makes me feel good (try it right now!) AND it takes the conversation from a one-to-many conversation to a one-on-one conversation.

Email is the path to deeper, more meaningful connections.

Email converts

Email converts better than social. While I believe this, it's probably not categorically true. For instance, bad emails don’t convert (lol). And it’s not totally a fair comparison because email tends to be much further down the funnel than social. But this is the beauty of it! Our experience on social media over a week looks like passively consuming thousands of posts from thousands of brands. If we see a brand we like and want to engage in a deeper way, we might visit their website and subscribe to their email newsletter. We can’t control our feeds, but we can control our inbox. This opt-in is an incredibly powerful indicator of intent to engage–far more powerful than passive scrolling.

Email isn’t perfect

While I’m a big believer in email, it has some limitations.

Very crowded

Did you enjoy reading emails the week of Black Friday? The word has gotten out about email. Just because you land in an inbox doesn’t mean you won’t have competition.

Limited growth

Your emails can’t go viral. They might get forwarded a few times, but your list is your ceiling. People have long tried to get around this limitation. Remember email chains from the 90s? Every email ended with an ominous warning like: “Forward to ten of your friends or else! If you break the chain, darkness will follow you and your family.” In modern times, email platforms like Kit and Beehiiv have tried to solve this problem by building a referral network. Those networks can help, but you still can’t go viral. This limitation on growth is why a good email strategy is normally paired with at least some social presence. I suggest focusing on one platform with the primary goal to convert social followers into email subscribers. Social serves email.

Default filters

Email providers like Google want users to have a seamless email experience which means filtering out the noise. Google created tabs like “Updates” and “Promotions” to the chagrin of email marketers everywhere. As a user, I love those features and am very grateful for them. You, the marketer, have to persuade people that your message is worth dragging over to the “primary” tab.

Hint: if you read this far, how about moving my emails to the ol' primary, eh?

Wrapping it up

I love email. It’s old school. It’s personal. But it’s not a silver bullet. Bad emails that flood our inboxes make the world worse. Don’t be a digital polluter. As people with limited resources and a critical story to tell, we have to make impossible tradeoffs. Of course it would be great to do all the socials, all the podcasts, and have a rocking email newsletter. The reality is we can’t do it all. We have to choose.

As you're setting your goals for this year, I suggest that you focus on email. Whether that means updating the calls to action on your website or committing to writing once a month–email is a great investment. Just remember to be patient. If you need help, Katelyn Baughan is the undisputed expert in building an email strategy for nonprofits. Subscribe to her newsletter and listen to her podcast.

Until next week,

Ted

PS Forward this to ten people. If you break the chain, bad things will befall you. If you continue the chain, eternal glory is yours.