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5 Tips to Boost Email Fundraising

When you do email right, it can be the one of the cheapest and quickest ways to reach your audience.

Here are five essential tips you need to incorporate into every single one of your emails to raise more:

1. A Great Subject Line & Sender

This is the first impression on your reader, so you need to set yourself apart and convince them to click on your email. Don’t make your emails look like spam.

Keep it short and compelling.

When your content isn’t that fun, we experiment. We like to pick something that feels familiar and might scratch a curiosity in the back of someone’s mind. Think popular song lyrics, movie quotes, or funny commercial catch phrases.

Trump email

2. The Hook

Once you get someone to open your email, you’ll have to convince them to keep reading. It should be emotional and engaging. Try starting with a powerful statistic, a personal story, or a thought-provoking question.

For the email above: our hook was themed around “garbage.” Joe Biden called the MAGA movement “garbage,” and Trump is on a garbage truck!

Using current events and news coverage help make your content timely. Doing this helps make your content unique to the reader, but only if you’re the first person to deliver it. Speed is the name of the game!

3. The Stakes

Why is this email urgent? What happens if the reader doesn’t act? Stakes should be tied to real-world consequences.

If possible, use storytelling to highlight the problem your organization is addressing. Make it personal and immediate - donors need to feel their contribution matters.

For our fundraising pitches, we make sure donors know that our deadlines are right around the corner, and that their help is mandatory to reach our goal.

Trump Alert

4. The Call-to-Action

A strong CTA tells the reader exactly what to do. Be direct.

Always include action verbs. Use a bold typeface or different colors to make it stand out.

Finally, you’ll want to keep the focus to one clear action - too many choices can overwhelm the reader.

Above, our CTA starts with delivering urgency before our deadline then asks for readers to give money for a particular reason: election victory.

5. The Donation Page

If readers click but don’t donate, then you’ve lost them. Use the page to deliver urgency!

Every single one of your donation pages should have a widget. Our favorite is the donation stream, so you can show the momentum behind you. The countdown clock is a close second, so visitors can see a real-time reminder of the time they have left to donate.

Here are a few more blogs to learn more:

Lastly, adding pictures to your pages adds a personal touch. WinRed allows you to upload a mobile and desktop picture, but they only let you add one.

HOT TIP: You can add more than one picture to donation pages! Add your pictures to a Google Doc then Copy them to your clipboard. Drop your cursor into the WinRed’s Call-to-Action box and paste them.

You can use this as a way to use less words and connect more with your supporters.