Why emails are sent out

This is the chart of the week on marketingsherpa.com. The marketing objectives are ranked by importance on the chart.

I thought it was interesting to see the similarities (or what I think would be the similiarities) between this chart--which was made for for-profit companies and nonprofits.

Definitely the most important for both nonprofits and for profits would be to retain existing customers/constitutents. In one of the posts yesterday, I talked about how 8 out of 10 donors do not donate again. Keeping existing donors/customers/constituents is very important for a nonprofit, since it has already worked hard to gain the supporter in the first place. By communicating with this in mind will help to ensure that the donors know how their funds were used and why it is important to continue donating. This doesn't necessarily mean that it has to come through email (although that is clearly the cheapest method).

I would think that for the building brand education would be higher on the list for nonprofits as some email communications are made specifically to educate about what the organization does.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this--and how you think that this would be amended for nonprofits.