5 Questions to Ask Before Sending a Reminder for Your End-of-Year Ask

Will you be reminding your ministry partners about your end-of-year-ask (EOYA)?

For us:

• We send our EOYA around Thanksgiving.
• We send a Christmas greeting around December 18th to the 22nd. (This is an indirect reminder about our ask.)
• We’ll send a direct reminder via email or text around December 28th to the 30th.

🤔 Why Is a Reminder a Good Idea?

It might be three to four weeks from when your fund appeal arrived in mailboxes until now.

Your fund appeal and Christmas greetings are buried with the letters and emails your friends have received. They care about you, but they’ve been busy.

Unless they’re very organized, I wouldn’t expect them to be able to find your original letter or email from several weeks ago.

I’ve been sending email reminders for about nine years; 10 to 20% of our total fund appeal comes in response to our reminder emails.

⏲️ Do You Have Time to Do a Reminder?

I get it. You just don’t have time. To do a reminder properly, you would need to know who you asked and who has not yet responded.

Do you at least have time to send everyone a general email or text? It’s an indirect reminder, which is better than no reminder.

Post an image and one paragraph:

• Thank them for their partnership for the past year.
• Share a family photo and a New Year’s greeting.
• Ask for prayer for your upcoming ministry event.
• Share a meaningful verse or answered prayer from the past year.

✔️ Have They Already Responded?

Take the time to send your reminder only to those who haven’t responded.

TIPS:

• Merge their name into the subject line and/or greeting.
• Use an emoji in the subject line. This increases open rates. Search for these on Emojipedia.
• Include a link for giving.

📧 How Should You Send Your Reminder?

Depending on how many reminders you must send, email, text, or phone your ministry partner. Your choice will also depend on their preferred medium and your relationship.

I wrote a very detailed post about Sending a MailChimp Reminder Email. Use Tags, Groups, or Segments.

Leave your specific reminder in their voicemail if they don’t answer your call.

Tracking Their Response

If you feel it’s helpful, you may want to know who is picking up what you’re sending.

• MailChimp will report who has opened and/or clicked your email.
• If you create a bitly link (or QR code), you’ll see a headcount only. You may be happy enough with that information.

📆 When Should You Send a Reminder?

The 29th and 30th of December are good days for that. I assume my friends are busy with family, eating a special meal, or watching fireworks on the 31st.

CoSchedule has the latest data for 2023:

• See the best days to send email.
• See the best times to send email.

I’ve already missed both for the East Coast. I’m going to sign off and get my MailChimp reminder email put together and sent.

Let me know if this has been helpful.

NOTES:

• The following are highlights about email fund appeals from eQuipping for eMinistry. The second post has some important tips for your give button on your email. Click on the posts that would be most helpful to you.
  • Thoughts on Fund Appeal Email Campaigns is a post from a year ago. I use paper letters for fund appeals. I send a handful of fund appeals by email after Giving Tuesday. I send these when my email won’t be “buried” in our friends’ inboxes. I also discuss sending an ask and a non-ask email to the same person.
  • The following post is a little more advanced about the look of a fund appeal email (but can apply to a reminder email). Make sure your email is mobile-friendly, choose the best time and day to send it, and “bullet-proof” your give button. (If your give button is an image, it only displays if your recipient “downloads pictures.” I share a work-around.) Read more about the 3 Tech Tips for your Fund Appeal Email.
• The time-lapse photo of fireworks is by Sebastian Davenport-Handley on Unsplash