Nonprofit organizations are reaching more people through digital channels than ever before. While some experts were quick to declare that e-mail marketing died during the social media boom, the data says otherwise.
Email lists grew by 11%, a growth rate outpaced by list growth in major social media platforms (Facebook, 13%; Twitter, 15%; Instagram, a whopping 44%). – mrbenchmarks
26% of donors say that email is the tool that most inspires them to give (25% social media, website 17%, print 13%). However, nonprofits have an average open rate of 28.59% and an average click rate of 3.29%. The reality behind email conversion is complicated.
In this post, we unpack the key reasons to develop and maintain a strong email marketing strategy and explore nine steps to creating a powerful fundraising email letter. Let’s dive in!
Why send fundraising emails?
Donor engagement and retention
Email marketing allows nonprofits to engage with donors, volunteers, and supporters. By providing updates on the organization’s activities, sharing success stories, and expressing gratitude, nonprofits can foster a sense of belonging and loyalty among their audience. This engagement helps to retain existing donors and encourages them to contribute more frequently and generously.
Email marketing is the king of the marketing kingdom with a 4400% ROI (Return on Investment) and $44 raised for every $1 spent. – www.campaignmonitor.com
Fundraising
Direct communication with your donor base is one of the most effective tools for fundraising campaigns. Nonprofits can use fundraising emails to communicate their campaigns, showcase the impact of donations, and provide convenient donation options.
With targeted messaging and personalized appeals, nonprofits can inspire recipients to donate, and increase their fundraising revenue.
Awareness and advocacy
Through email marketing, nonprofits can raise awareness about their cause, mission, and ongoing initiatives. They can educate their audience about relevant issues, share compelling stories, and mobilize support for advocacy campaigns. By keeping supporters informed and engaged, nonprofits can amplify their message and attract new supporters who resonate with their cause.
Did you know: Most email marketing services are free for smaller nonprofits (or nonprofits with smaller email lists)? Even when your email list grows, email marketing remains a cost-effective communication tool. If you’d like help choosing the right email platform, this guide explains the popular choices and offers great alternatives.
How To Write Powerful Fundraising Emails
When it comes to crafting effective fundraising emails, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but we’ve compiled our top tips to help you create messages that resonate. From ensuring your database is up-to-date, to creating attention-grabbing headlines and showcasing your impact in tangible and emotive ways.
Keep reading to unpack the guidelines that lead to creative emails that stand out and support your fundraising goals.
1. Sort out your database
By segmenting your donors and catering your email marketing towards the different segments, you can increase donor retention rates and donations.
There are several ways in which you can segment your donor base, some of the most common being based on age, gift size, last donation date, and donation frequency.
Donor segmentation primarily focuses on providing relevant content to smaller pools of donors. It prevents your donors from experiencing the frustrating feeling that your content and communications are irrelevant to them personally.
Segmenting your donors allows you to customize your tone and information and encourages your donors to engage with your nonprofit in a way that’s suitable for where they’re at in their donor journey. A donor who has given to your organization repeatedly over the months and years should receive a different email than someone who has just signed up to your email list. Segmentation also helps build trust and enables your nonprofit to use data to grow your donations.
Make sure every email subscriber gives their permission to join your list (verified opt-in) and update your Terms of Use and Privacy Policy documents. After sending out your email newsletters or campaigns, look at your soft and hard bounces. If you’re getting a lot of bounces, or if your open and click rates are low, you should re-evaluate your email list.
2. Craft a powerful subject line
35% of email recipients open email based on the subject line alone. (Convince&Convert)
A great fundraising email isn’t great if it doesn’t get opened. This is why it’s essential to craft a subject line that will make your emails stand out in inboxes.
Here are a few tips to improve your fundraising emails’ subject lines:
- Keep your subject lines short, ideally 4-15 characters.
- Create a sense of urgency using words like “urgent” and “important”.
- Keep them accurate. While you can get very creative with your subject lines, they should always pertain to the content of the email. Misleading and deceptive subject lines are no-go and are even forbidden in some countries.
- Intrigue your readers or pose a question – this can help increase your open rate.
- Try personalizing the subject line by using the contact’s first name.
- Include the name of the sender.
- Test different days and times of the day and don’t forget to do lots of A/B testing to see what performs best.
- Try avoiding the word “we”. “We” is a faceless entity and “I” is a person who wants to talk to “you” and “me”.
- Use rhyme, lists, alliterations, and more. These perform well. But also break the rules and get creative.
Pro tip: MailChimp found that the following words were bad for open rates:
- Help
- Reminder
- Percent Off
This WFP USA subject line creates a sense of urgency and focuses on a single individual to create a connection.
3. Get your formatting right
Our attention span is increasingly shorter. Very few people read long, elaborate emails – even if they’re great. Most people skim over the content. Additionally, the time it takes an average user to judge your organization is 50 milliseconds – not even a full second!
Furthermore, with more and more users turning to mobile, the importance of well-formatted emails is higher than ever. More than half of emails are read on a mobile device. And some studies claim even more than that.
Here are a few tips to get your fundraising email formatted right:
- Keep it short, a couple of paragraphs long – ideally two to three
- Limit paragraphs to 2-3 sentences
- Choose descriptive headlines and subheads with active verbs and vivid nounsCarefully craft the message in your preview snippet
- Make sure the fundraising email looks good on mobile screens – the text should be big enough to be easily read, and all the links should be easily clickable
- Make sure your fundraising email isn’t overcrowded, and that the elements are surrounded by lots of space
- Pick one typeface and stick with it
- Limit yourself to 3 colors, keep your backgrounds light, and use your colors as accents only
- Use big and bold imagery in your fundraising email to immediately engage your contacts and draw them in
- Always include your organization’s logo in the header of the email
- Include your organization’s contact information in the footer and an unsubscribe option
Pro tip: Make sure your donation page is mobile-optimized so your donors are not met with a complicated, unmanageable form.
4. Tell a compelling story
A good story is the foundation of a successful fundraising email. Humans are hardwired to respond to emotive stories. Stories have always played an important role in human history. For thousands of years, they have been a tool to convey knowledge, educate, share experiences, and most importantly, connect to others.
Research at Stanford University observed that we remember information more when it is conveyed as part of a narrative “up to 22 times more than facts alone”.
Not only do we remember stories more than facts, but they evoke emotion and move us to action. This is why storytelling is a powerful tool for nonprofits who have no shortage of compelling stories to tell. Storytelling gives the reader a glimpse into your world and reminds them why your mission is important.
Here are a couple of ways you can employ storytelling in your fundraising email:
- Tell a story that pulls on heartstrings. Here’s an example of such a story by charity:water
- Have a protagonist, a hero. It’s easier to relate to an individual with a name than to a faceless group of people (e.g. the poor in Somalia)
- Use simple, human language. Stay away from the industry jargon.
- Use compelling visuals to go with the story
- Tell stories that directly showcase the impact of your donors’ contributions. Tell them exactly how the money will be used and what outcome will result from their donation.
- Guide your readers along the dramatic arc
- Paint a mental picture with your words and appeal to all senses. We internally mirror others’ experiences, whether through sight, hearing, or reading
- Make sure your email answers the questions: Why should I care? How will my donation help? What do you want me to do/How do I help?
- Focus on a specific program or initiative. Don’t include information about everything you do in one email
5. Use a single call to action
Using a single call to action doesn’t mean that you ask only once in the email – many fundraising experts recommend asking readers to give three times!
However, don’t confuse your readers. If your goal is to raise funds, don’t ask your readers to sign up for an event, volunteer, and read your blog. Ask in a couple of different ways.
For example, you could add a prominent ‘donate’ button to your email that will lead your readers to your donation page or link to your page within the copy.
Additionally, you don’t want your recipients to read your fundraising email and wonder what the point is. Don’t beat around the bush, make the ask in the first two paragraphs, if possible. If you wait too long, many readers will move on to the next email in their inbox.
Pro tip: According to a meta-analysis of over 22,000 participants (42 studies), giving people the choice of not donating almost doubles the likelihood that they will donate. Simply ask your readers to donate, and then add some variation of the following phrase: “But you are free to choose either way”.
6. Demonstrate a tangible impact
Crafting a story and a dramatic arc involved you presenting your readers with a problem (possibly through the story of a single individual), a solution (likely your organization’s service), and inviting them to become part of the solution (call to action).
To get your readers to donate, it’s important to show donors how their donations will make a difference. Link the donation amounts to specific outcomes/results.
Millennials are very likely or somewhat likely to stop donating if they didn’t know how the donation was making an impact (78 percent), the organization asked for support too frequently (73 percent) or they didn’t feel a personal connection with the organization (72 percent).
To motivate your donors to give, show them what their donations can achieve through specific examples. Show them that $50 could help you purchase school supplies for a student from a low-income family, or that $200 supplies the equipment needed to organize a river clean-up.
7. Create an effective closing
One of the biggest challenges of writing powerful fundraising letters is the tone.
It can be hard to strike a balance between detailing the consequences of not acting (e.g. “Without donations like yours, more children will have to go without food and clean water.”) which can induce guilt and discourage the readers from giving, and a positive and uplifting tone.
Thank your donors in advance and tell them again why their contribution matters.
It’s during the close that you need to be particularly confident about why you’re asking for donations. This is the time to connect and be in tune with your donor.
8. Make it easy to give
Seeing that the main purpose of a fundraising email is to raise funds, making it easy for your readers to give is essential.
Even if your email copy was perfectly crafted and your call to action was inspiring and compelling, if your readers click on your call to action and your donation process is complicated or confusing – you will lose them. If it’s hard to read and interact with a website, let alone donate
By using an online donation system like Donorbox, you guarantee a hassle-free, optimized donation system for your donors – which results in more donations. Donorbox donation pages are simple, beautiful, and fully customizable. As a system, Donorbox is safe and secure, and much more affordable than other tools on the market. Donorbox boasts tons of other features that can help you raise more funds for your nonprofit. Here are some of them:
- Suggested donation amounts with descriptions to let your donors feel great by knowing what they’re contributing to
- Integrated employer donation matching
- Recurring giving options. Place a recurring giving option on your form to see higher donor retention rates
- Optimization for desktop computers, mobile phones, and tablets
- Accepting donations on your Facebook Page
- Donation ‘thermometer’ to encourage more donations
- Multiple payment gateways (Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal Express)And so much more!
Pro tip: Offering your donors the opportunity to sign up for a recurring giving program is a great way to boost your donations. It also helps your nonprofit make better financial projections and plan under them.
9. Track and evaluate your emails
Sending a fundraising email is only half the work. What happens after matters too.
Tracking some essential email KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is crucial if you want to know whether your fundraising emails are successful or not, and what you need to be working on to increase their effectiveness.
Here are some email KPIs that you can track:
- Delivery Rate (how many of your emails reach their destinations)
- Unsubscribe Rate (how often a recipient unsubscribes from your mailing list)
- Open Rate (the percentage of recipients who opened an email from your organization)
- Click-Through Rate (how many recipients click a link you placed in the email)
- Email Conversion Rate (whether the individual completed the action after clicking the link in your email. For fundraising emails, this is usually a donation)
If you’re interested in other digital KPIs your nonprofit should be tracking, click here to read our article.
Pro tip: Don’t forget to show gratitude for donations of any size. This demonstrates that your organization is appreciative of your donors’ support and that they’re valued beyond their wallets.
There are many ways to thank your donors after a donation has been made:
- Sending a follow-up thank you e-mail
- Sending a tangible thank you card
- Highlighting one or several of your donors on your social media platforms
Inviting donors to special events or giving them gifts
If you’re still trying to decide on the right email marketing software that suits you, FormGet has a comprehensive comparison of 30+ options. You’re sure to find an option that suits you.
Conclusion
Crafting a powerful fundraising email is hard work. Segmenting your audience, choosing the right messaging for each one, picking the right visuals, using the best words, and ensuring your tone is right – there’s a lot to consider.
While implementing the best practices and tips we shared above can set your organization on the right path, the truth is, there’s no formula for the perfect fundraising email. Every donor is different and every situation is unique.
Don’t forget that it’s crucial to test every tip and update your email fundraising strategy accordingly. This reiterative process is the only way you will truly know what works best for your nonprofit.
Donorbox empowers your nonprofit by giving you the best digital tools to manage your fundraising efforts in a constantly evolving sector. With Donorbox, you can send automated and customized thank-you messages to your donors, segment your database, manage your donors and so much more!
For more nonprofit tips and resources, visit our Nonprofit Blog.
Raj
