The Best Email Marketing Software for Charities

Charity Marketing / 14 Sep 2022

Email marketing is a powerful tool for connecting with donors, boosting cause awareness, and maximising fundraising outcomes. But to optimise email marketing efforts, it’s handy to know which ones are actually suited to charities. 

In our latest blog on digital marketing for charities, we explore email marketing platforms and how they can help charities share their mission with a wider audience. 

Email marketing for charities: things to consider 

Templates 

Pre-formatted emails offer ready-made guidelines to build your own campaigns. Most legitimate email marketing softwares will have a library to pick from. 

For marketers looking to save time on designs, consider looking for platforms with templates designed specifically for fundraising appeals, charity events, and charity newsletters. 

Personalisation 

Personalising email communications involves updating custom fields such as names, organisations, or titles to send more targeted messages. It is a proven way to increase open rates and boost conversions. 

According to recent stats, 71% of email users said they’re more likely to open personalised emails. When it comes to marketing for charities, personalisation is key to creating and maintaining a dialogue with donors as it can highly impact a sub’s decision to interact with emails. 

Segmentation 

Segmenting emails allows marketers to create and send emails to sub-groups. These sub-groups can depend on various factors such as donation history, engagement levels, age demographic, location, or gender. 

Similar to personalisation, segmentation can ensure charities send out hyper-relevant and targeted messaging – garnering more meaningful and lasting engagement with your cause and, statistically, helping to boost donations. One report showed that personalised Calls To Action (CTAs) convert 202% better than general emails. 

Automation 

Automation features are valuable for creating time-sensitive onboarding and drip emails. Drip marketing is when emails are automatically sent to subscribers, triggered by diverse aspects like a set timer, actions they take on your site or status changes. 

Automated emails can help increase donations by transforming site visitors into donors, encouraging repeat donations, and re-engaging dormant audiences. 

Reporting  

Everyone’s favourite part: stats. Reporting is vital for charities to keep an eye on the impact of their email marketing campaigns. 

Accessing in-depth reporting insights – data on open and click-through rates, for example – is needed to formulate long-term marketing strategies, including repurposing social media and pinpointing what works and what, well, doesn’t. 

Pricing 

Many email marketing platforms offer discounted memberships for charities. The email marketing software Flodesk, for instance, offers as much as 50% off annual subscriptions for charities. If you want more bang for your buck, make sure to look up charity discounts before committing. 

The best email marketing software for charities 

MailChimp 

MailChimp is an accessible email marketing service with wide ranging features. MailChimp’s single-step automation feature allows users to send welcome emails to new subs – a beneficial way to welcome sign-ups and show your appreciation. 

With higher price plans, you can also carry out a range of A/B testing – for instance, to try out the impact of alternative subject lines or how effective certain copy is at converting subs to donors. 

Active Campaign 

If you’re big on automation, Active Campaign is ideal for more experienced email marketers looking for slightly more autonomy. From auto-responses to email enquiries to in-depth nurture campaigns, you can create diverse email sequences and segmentations to keep donors informed of the work they’ve helped fund and supporters keyed up on your cause’s progress. 

Emma 

For charity marketing teams that like to collab, Emma provides team collaboration options. Teams can work together on: automation, segmentation, landing pages, drag-and-drop editing, multiple device designs (so you can switch between mobile and desktop views), user forms, analytics, and various integrations. 

Constant Contact 

Before MailChimp came Constant Contact, the big cheese in email marketing. With over 100 customisable templates and access to a tonne of stock images and video content, Constant Contact is great for charities looking for creative flexibility or keen on personalisation. Also noteworthy: Constant Contact is, as the name aptly suggests, known for its stellar delivery rates. 

If you’re looking to promote fundraising events, this could also be a good shout for you given its event management features. Constant Contact offers tools for organising event invitations, registrations, tickets, and automated event reminders. You can easily integrate it with EventBrite, FormStack, and Office 365, too.

Still unsure where to look? Don’t hesitate to reach out for charity marketing advice or how we can help with email marketing for charities, SEO strategy, and more.