E mail might be one the best instruments for welcoming, encouraging, and celebrating your fundraisers.
So how do you construct the right e-mail programme? It’s easy: you possibly can consider it just like the steps to constructing a home.
On this put up, you’ll learn to set the inspiration, construct the framework, and add the decorations. All full with sensible suggestions you need to use now for a programme that evokes your fundraisers and helps them elevate more cash! Let’s begin constructing.
Eager to develop your abilities in e-mail advertising and marketing and a spread of different subjects? Apply for the Digital Studying Grant, 250 totally funded locations to spice up your digital fundraising skillset! Functions shut quickly. Study extra and apply now.
Bounce to a piece:
Setting the inspiration
Let’s begin with the inspiration: getting your compliance proper and ensuring your emails attain inboxes (and never the dreaded Junk folder).
Staying Compliant
Let’s begin with consent and advertising and marketing preferences. To caveat, we’re not authorized consultants and will not be offering authorized recommendation.
You’ve in all probability heard the significance of GDPR. Within the UK, the ICO units these guidelines for tips on how to gather and use private knowledge. You want clear permission to e-mail individuals, irrespective of the scale of your organisation. And don’t buy lists: chances are you’ll be blocked if suppliers suspect you’re utilizing purchased knowledge.
The ICO has fined councils, the NHS, and different public our bodies previously, amounting as much as £17.5 million or 4% of turnover in fines! Study extra on the ICO’s Assets for Organisations web page.
Reaching the Inbox (and avoiding the Junk folder)
In case your emails hold touchdown in Junk, it might be as a result of your area fame.
Verify your area well being at SenderScore.org (your Sender Rating is sort of a credit score rating, however for e-mail). The upper it’s (intention for 90+), the extra seemingly your emails attain inboxes.
Right here’s tips on how to hold your Sender Rating excessive:
- Take away invalid e-mail addresses to scale back your bounce price.
- Keep away from emailing individuals who by no means open or click on.
- Ship re-engagement emails asking inactive subscribers in the event that they nonetheless need to hear from you.
Constructing the framework
Subsequent, we’ll construct the framework: rising your viewers, constructing the right e-mail, and creating the correct content material.
Rising your viewers
There’s no level in having a powerful e-mail programme if no one sees it! Search for key alternatives to make signing up simpler:
- Develop your listing organically through the use of e-newsletter signups, kinds in your marketing campaign’s thank-you pages, and gated content material (e.g. “be part of our e-mail listing to get our charity’s free fundraising pack”).
- Contact previous supporters to remind them of their affect and encourage them to help you once more.
- Arrange automations: they’re scalable and have the next ROI! With automation, you possibly can create emails as soon as, then ship them to many individuals mechanically to avoid wasting effort and time.
Lastly, don’t be afraid to take away subscribers who don’t interact. Emailing somebody many instances with out them taking an motion could make your messages begin to really feel like spam, dock your Sender Rating, and make you much less prone to hit anyone’s inbox (this may increasingly not apply for non-marketing emails, like receipts).
Constructing the right e-mail
An important e-mail is greater than what it says or the way it seems. It’s additionally about the way it works and the way accessible it’s. Right here’s how to verify your emails carry out effectively, work in every single place, and look nice.
Design for cell first. Over 50% of emails are opened on cell units, so it’s important yours work and look nice on cell. In case your emails aren’t mobile-friendly, you danger shedding individuals earlier than they even learn the primary line. Most platforms supply mobile-optimised templates, like what you possibly can see in these templates from Fixed Contact.
Ensure that your emails work throughout units. iPhone, Android, Gmail, Outlook…all e-mail suppliers show emails barely in another way. It’s unimaginable to manually verify each platform, however instruments like EmailOnAcid allow you to preview your e-mail throughout platforms, plus flag any spam set off phrases, outsized photos, and accessibility points.
Prioritise accessibility. Accessibility means making one thing usable for as many individuals as doable, together with these with visible, listening to, motor, and cognitive difficulties. Right here’s tips on how to make your emails accessible:
- Use a minimal font dimension of 16pt.
- Select high-contrast colors (e.g. darkish textual content on a white background).
- Design with darkish mode in thoughts.
- Use borders to spotlight key content material blocks.
Study extra in Validity’s 101 Greatest Practices for E mail Accessibility.
Digital Studying Grant members up their accessibility information by 54%! Apply for one in every of 250 totally funded locations to spice up your digital fundraising skillset in 2026. Functions shut quickly.
Creating the correct content material to your e-mail
The content material in your e-mail must be clear, participating, and simple to behave on.
Measurement your banners accurately. Banner sizes range by template, however a full width e-mail banner is normally about 600 pixels huge. Remember the fact that emails with massive file sizes are likely to get flagged as spam extra typically. Mailjet recommends retaining emails underneath 200 kilobytes, Wish to verify yours? EmailOnAcid can flag any information which can be too massive to assist optimise your structure.
Maintain it clear and fast. 9 seconds. That’s how lengthy individuals spend studying an e-mail on common! Within the first one or two sentences, it’s essential your subscribers know why you’ve emailed them, why it issues, and what you need them to do.
Use visuals to seize consideration. Mixing textual content with visuals (particularly GIFs) is a good way to face out! Instruments like EZGif allow you to create GIFs from a number of photos at no cost. Simply add your photos and it’ll generate a GIF you possibly can drop in.
Make your call-to-action (CTA) stand out. Your CTA (what you need your subscribers to do) must be clear, seen, and ideally seem above the fold: that means it’s seen on cell with out scrolling. A number of key suggestions:
- Keep away from utilizing image-based buttons (some e-mail shoppers block photos by default).
- Use underlined textual content hyperlinks for readability.
- Add UTM monitoring to measure clicks and marketing campaign success.
Including the decorations
Lastly, let’s add the decorations. This contains auditing your journey and A/B testing your e-mail content material to seek out what works finest.
Audit your journey frequently
Due to modifications in tech and knowledge rules, efficiency can change over time. We advocate auditing your e-mail journey a minimum of annually to verify every thing’s working correctly.
Strive A/B testing with a transparent speculation
A/B testing means sending completely different variations of an e-mail to a proportion of your listing to see which one performs higher. Many platforms allow you to ship a check to half your subscribers, then mechanically ship the best-performing model to the remainder!
A/B assessments to enhance your open price. For those who want extra individuals to open your emails, discover the most effective topic line by testing variations:
- Query vs. assertion.
- Lengthy vs. quick topic strains.
- Personalisation vs. generic.
A/B assessments to enhance your engagement. To get extra clicks, strive testing…
- The location of your CTA
- A text-only e-mail vs one with a banner picture
- A brief e-mail vs an extended e-mail
Solely check one factor at a time so you possibly can higher see which made the distinction. By constantly testing and optimising our emails at JustGiving, we’ve improved common click on charges by over 80%!
Enhancing outcomes additional with third occasion instruments
As soon as your e-mail programme is optimised and working easily, you possibly can improve it with instruments that make your emails extra dynamic and personalised.
Instruments like Movable Ink can allow you to incorporate personalised content material primarily based on dwell knowledge, like quantity raised, marketing campaign countdown timers, and dwell polls! We see nice outcomes by sending fundraisers their dwell totals and their place on the Fundraising Heroes boards.
JustGiving’s Fundraising Web page lifecycle
In 2020, we launched a sequence of 81 personalised emails to assist fundraisers get donations on their pages, elevate more cash total, and have an superior expertise from begin to end.
Utilizing the ideas supplied on this put up, we spent a 12 months designing and constructing this journey, because it wanted to work for 15,000 charities, a whole bunch of various occasions, and numerous sorts of fundraising. And it’s been vastly profitable: fundraisers who get the emails go on to boost 6% greater than those that don’t!
Key takeaways
Keep compliant
- Ensure that your area is wholesome.
- Verify your Sender Rating and hold it robust.
Develop your listing organically
- Give supporters loads of signup alternatives.
- Design with cell in thoughts.
- Prioritise accessibility.
- Take away unengaged supporters.
Create the correct content material
- Maintain your messaging clear and concise.
- Use visuals and GIFs.
- Make your CTA price clicking.
Check, study, and repeat
- Begin with a speculation.
- Check and optimise your content material.
- Doc learnings and apply to emails sooner or later.
Most significantly, intention to present fundraisers an incredible expertise to match the fervour they’ve for you!
Develop your e-mail advertising and marketing abilities by 58%!
Previous recipients of the Digital Studying Grant (supplied by Fundraising All over the place and totally funded by JustGiving) report as much as 58% development in abilities together with e-mail advertising and marketing!
It’s fully free and is designed to spice up your information and abilities in key areas of digital advertising and marketing that can develop your efficiency. Functions shut quickly! Discover out extra and apply now under.
DIGITAL LEARNING GRANT
Apply now
Get the digital fundraising abilities, confidence, and training you want going into 2026.
Functions shut 12 September 2025 at 5pm. Programme begins in January 2026.
Beneficial Assets
