Ep. 162: 10 Email Secrets That Turn Opens into Donations
EPISODE 162
10 Email Secrets That Turn Opens into Donations
About the Episode:
Most nonprofits underestimate the quiet powerhouse sitting right in front of them: email. In this episode, I’m sharing 10 proven strategies to transform your inbox into your most reliable fundraising engine. From reactivating lapsed donors to priming your biggest asks, I’ll walk you through the data-backed reasons email outperforms social and direct mail, and how small tweaks in consistency, intimacy, and urgency can create donations on demand. Whether you’re a solo fundraiser or leading a large team, these secrets will help you stop leaving money on the table and start treating email like the main course—not the side dish.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
The “donations on demand” effect—and how to tap it fast
Why loyalty + retention are built in the inbox, not on Instagram
How to scale intimacy so 2,000 people feel like you just called them personally
Winning back lapsed donors with re-engagement emails that run on autopilot
Using email data as your GPS for bigger campaigns
How to create the giving reflex—training donors to open, expect, and act
How email primes major donor conversations and reduces cold call pressure
Why urgency works in inboxes and flops on social
And why email is still the cheapest, highest-impact digital fundraising engine you’ll ever have
It’s not your stories—it’s how you’re telling them. If your amazing work isn’t getting the attention (and donations) it deserves, it’s time for a messaging shift. The Brave Fundraiser’s Guide guide gives you 10 done-for-you donor prompts to make your message impossible to ignore. Get it for free here! https://christinaedwards.krtra.com/t/xKuLs6tOiPZa
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“Email is actually a tool to create donations on demand.”
“Email is a loyalty builder in the inbox.”
“Email scales intimacy.”
“Email reactivates lapsed donors without you ever having to pick up the phone, send a handwritten note, send a mailer, or another direct mail piece.”
“Email is a robust data tool. It is a window, a glimpse into who your audience is, what they like, what they don't like, what gets them interested and hyped up.”
“Habit hurting is a way to stay top of mind for your email subscribers.”
“Storytelling makes major asks and follow-ups so much easier.”
“Email is a campaign multiplier.”
“Urgency works better in inboxes.”
“Email has almost zero extra cost and is all impact.”
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Easy Emails For Impact™ - Turn Your Inbox into an Income Stream
The SPRINT Method™ - Fundraise Like a Pro, 5 Figures At a Time
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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*Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Christina Edwards 0:05Email fundraising, boring newsletter or annual ask you dread writing. What if I told you that email is the secret weapon that nonprofits sleep on that quiet channel is actually your most reliable fundraising engine. So that's what we're going to dig into for today's episode. I'm going to share the 10 strategic ways email can power your nonprofit based on the latest 2025 data,
Christina Edwards 1:01
plus details about easy emails for impact my self study course, which is opening doors soon, with a very special bonus I don't want you to miss. So let's dig into the 10 ways that email can supercharge your nonprofit,
Christina Edwards 1:38
Number one, email is actually a tool to create donations on demand. So if you need $5,000 next week and you can't throw a gala, you can actually fire off a series of high converting emails to bring in that funding. The average nonprofit pulls in about $1.11 per email contact. That's for larger organizations, for smaller orgs, it's $6.15 per email contact.
Christina Edwards 2:17
Reason number two, email is a loyalty builder in the inbox. Email beats direct mail and social media for updates and asks, because 48% of donors actually prefer email versus just 21% for direct mail. I want you to think about the loyalty that a weekly or bi weekly email creates, the retention, the connection, the stickiness that it creates when you email your subscribers at a better clip, with better content than a quarterly update or a year end appeal letter. Okay, the number one reason why donors lapse is, number one, you didn't ask. And number two, they forgot about you. So email helps build that loyalty in your inbox very, very quickly and at scale. Speaking of scale, let's move in to
Reason number three. Email scales intimacy. It's like whispering to 2000 people all at once. If your story lands, each reader feels seen. So you can't call every single person in your CRM in your database today, right? If you have 1000s and 1000s of people in your database or email list, it's impossible. But email is a way to scale intimately. Now I'm going to give you an asterisk. One of the reasons why I created my course Easy Emails For Impact is because I noticed that the type of emails that nonprofits were sending were anything but intimate. They were sterile, they were generic. They were formulaic. Those are intimacy blockers, right? I want you to think about the nonprofit leader that gets vulnerable for a second, or the person who maybe shares the icebreaker at a, you know, women's networking dinner, right? Suddenly you feel, Oh, that's me too. You feel seen. That's the power of using a little bit of intimacy in email. Okay? So you create, create that connection very, very quickly, but it does require you to ditch the formulaic, generic, old school nonprofit emails from, you know, early 2000
Christina Edwards 4:34
Reason number four, email reactivates lapsed donors without you ever having to pick up the phone, sent a handwritten note, sent a mailer or another direct mail piece. So I want you to think about your lap stoners, people who gave last year but not this year, right? People who maybe even fell off two three years ago, as some of your warmest once engaged folks. Now you may. Be saying, Christina, I don't have time. I'm a solo fundraiser, or we've got our big event, or we've got something else going on, so I don't have time to do any outreach. And what I want to say to you is, the cost of acquiring a new donor is way more time than bringing a lapsed donor back. So how do we do this at scale? We use email. We have our clients in Easy Emails For Impact actually put their lapsed donors through an automated series. I like to think of it as Build it once, then you can automate it, set it and forget it. So when somebody is flagged as a lapsed donor, they go through a automated email series to re engage, reconnect with them and bring them back. And it works. We see retention increase after going through that series. We see people re engage many, many times lapsed donors don't even realize they've lapsed. Y'all, they think they probably gave last year, but isn't time such a weird thing? One year is actually two years, and before we know it, they've forgotten about giving. They think they gave, but they actually didn't give. So when we address that, we remind them who we are, we give them an invitation to take a next step to give again. We see that convert really, really well. And this is something that you do have an upfront lift for. And then your email marketing tool, you stick this on an automation very, very simple, okay.
Christina Edwards 6:33
Reason number five, email is a robust data tool. It is a window, a glimpse into who your audience is, what they like, what they don't like, right? What gets them interested and hyped up? So I want you to think about click through rates, open rates. Those are all inputs. Those are all data points that tell you about your audience. Those are ways that you can find out more about them, what program or service they're interested in, what which ones they weren't interested in. I'm thinking of one of my clients recently who just ran a campaign, and one of the pieces we looked at made campaign. Was her open rate and her click through rate, right? Because we knew based on how that was reporting. Let's say low opens tells us we have a subject line problem, or a preview text problem or a deliverability problem, right? Those are things we can address in the middle of the campaign and right side them so robust, or maybe click through rate. So say you have a high click through rate, but not a lot of donations coming in beautiful. Now we know what to do. We need to take a look at your actual fundraising page. There's a conversion optimization problem there. Now that might have just sounded like a bunch of fancy words, but all it means is when people landed on your fundraising page, they were not moved to click donate. Those are problems we can solve very, very quickly. So when we have the data, it's like we know where to triage, right? We know where to go first. I love it for that. The final thing is, the data shows us your evangelists, your super fans. You have maybe never met them before. You don't know them personally. Maybe you're an international organization, so there's no in person component to what you do. But you know those super fans who read every single email, maybe they sometimes reply to emails. Maybe they are your Super Star supporters, where you know they're the first to donate on any fundraiser. Email tells you about them. It shows them. It's like, I'm picturing them like waving their hand at you. They're like me, I'm the super fan, right? So the data is right there in email.
Christina Edwards 9:01
Reason, number six, habit hurting. Here's what I love about this, setting a consistent email cadence so your donors and subscribers start opening habitually, not just when you ask. Habit hurting is a way to stay top of mind for your email subscribers, right? So that your audience of subscribers, which are not always donors. That's why I'm using different words here, right? You're there are people on your email list who have never donated before, and then there are donors. Of course, there's both, right? You're setting a habit of you. You can rely on me. You can rely on me. I'm going to be in your inbox every Tuesday morning, or I'm going to be in your inbox twice a month, every other Friday. That habit creates neural pathways in them where your nonprofit remains top of mind. Think about it, they maybe be subscribed to a dozen nonprofit email lists over the years, right? But when you set that habit cadence for them, it's. Stickier. It's more connective. It's more intimate.
Christina Edwards 10:20
Yeah. Reason number seven, this may be one of my favorite successes. After building Easy Emails for Impact, we've had so many clients experience this, it primes your big asks. So yes, cold calls may be awkward, warming donors through email, storytelling makes major asks and follow ups so much easier. We've had clients go through the email course and have major donors respond to their emails, mass emails, emails they sent to 10,000 people, emails they sent to 3000 people and so on. But we've had major donors respond to their emails and say, Hey, let's Let's book a meeting. Hey, you're on my mind. Hey, can we have lunch? Imagine that. Imagine if email marketing was a tool that booked you meetings so that you didn't have to cold call and like white knuckle, your major gift follow up process, right? That's the power of using email the right way. And I really feel like I want to make the distinction between the right way and the wrong way. The wrong way is sterile, generic, boring, infrequent. the better way is a consistent email cadence that is intimate, that is fun, that is uplifting, that is uniquely in Your brand voice, right? That is The difference there.
Christina Edwards 12:00
reason number eight, email is a campaign multiplier. So you can use email in conjunction with social media or in conjunction with direct mail or some other platform, right? And the two together is where the conversion happens. I like to think of social media as great for awareness and visibility and getting that initial traction. But email is where the money is made. We see higher open rates, higher click through rates. We see better conversions when we actually use the two in conjunction together. So email is a great way,
Christina Edwards 13:22
to recapture the intention, so maybe people who visited your site but didn't actually make the gift bringing them back. That's almost like a cart trigger email we would see in the E commerce world. So email is great for campaign multiplication.
Christina Edwards 13:43
Reason number nine, urgency works better in inboxes. And here's what I mean, your campaign may have a natural built in urgency. So this could be a deadline, a matching gift expiring, etc, right? Maybe there's even an event, right? So it's leading up to a specific event date. But emails carry better urgency than a noisy social feed, because with social media, you're competing with an algorithm. You're competing with a small amount of your actual followers seeing your content. Email is an owned asset, and you can use that urgency where you actually ramp up the frequency of email for a specific campaign, right and then kind of taper off as the campaign is ending.
Christina Edwards 14:46
reason number 10 email has almost zero extra cost and is all impact. So there is a small cost associated with your email marketing tool to send emails. Yes, but that cost is a tiny. Fraction of what you create. Email is scalable. It is on brand, and works while you sleep. You can create an email welcome series, which I highly recommend you do if you're finding that your first time donor retention is very similar to what we see in the sector, which is 8 out of 10 donors only give one time. You guys, that's terrible, right? You spent all that upfront lift, bringing in that initial donor, right? Bringing that first time donor only to see them be one and done. Email can be automated Retention Machine. So you create a five email welcome series. This is what we teach you to do in easy emails for impact, you create it one time, and it is rocking and rolling in the background. So email is scalable. It is impact forward. It is creating that connection. It is on brand, and it is working in your sleep. You can schedule it out. We have clients who schedule out email campaigns and go on vacation, because remember vacation, right? We have clients who do short email campaign sprints and schedule those out ahead of time. We have clients who are scaling up their emails and able to repurpose emails. Because did you know you're allowed to repurpose emails? You are are allowed to repurpose emails. So it really is a very, very little extra costs and very high on the impact side. And if you're thinking our list is too small, here's what I want to tell you, a tiny engaged list beats any day, a cold, massive one. Okay, so if you've got 200 people opening emails and giving that's more than 2000 ghosts in an email database that are taking no action. So we really do care more about quality over quantity. Here, it really isn't the size of your list. However, if you're some of the larger organizations listening, and maybe you have between 10,000 20,000 plus email subscribers, what I want to say to you is you're sitting on a gold mine. You are sitting on an untapped gold mine because the frequency in which you're currently sending emails and the quality of your stories and the lack of conversion campaigns are costing you money, are costing you dollars. So there's so much opportunity if you're over there in this scaled size of your list to tap into that gold mine.
Christina Edwards 17:29
We have clients who have used the easy email system doubled their Giving Tuesday results. We have clients who went from emailing quarterly to emailing monthly, and then bi monthly and were scared. They thought that their email open rates and click through rates would actually drop. We have clients who have gone through easy emails and started at a 20% open rate and shot up between 40 and 60% that's the norm. That's what we want to see. So we have clients who have reactivated 10% of their lapsed donors in 30 days with a simple re engagement sequence. The big shift here is realizing that if your organization is an emerging nonprofit, or a large, established nonprofit, or somewhere in the middle, middle, email shouldn't be a side dish. It should be a main course, even if you aren't a born writer, I'm wasn't either you become one through rhythm, testing and bold, honesty and authenticity, that connection will drive donors to take action faster
Christina Edwards 18:56
and at higher generosity than organizations who don't prioritize this way to email storytell. So if you're thinking, I know emails powerful, but where do I start? What do I write? How often do I write it? How do I make sure it's consistent? Or I don't have time to do this at all. That's exactly why I built. Easy emails for impact. We give you the frameworks we give done for you, email templates, the strategic muscle you need to turn your inbox into an income engine. Okay, so go to splendid courses.com forward slash email to join me for my upcoming webinar. I'll be excited to cheer you on and see you inside.