Ep. 195: 7 Reasons Your Emails Aren't Converting Into Donations
EPISODE 195
7 Reasons Your Emails Aren't Converting Into Donations
About the Episode:
If sending emails feels like something you dread, rush, or quietly avoid, this episode is for you. I walk through the seven reasons nonprofit emails aren't converting into donations, and I want you to listen not for what sounds good, but for where you recognize yourself, because the second you see it, you can change it.
From writing emails that are polished but completely forgettable to stopping too soon just as momentum is about to build, these are the patterns I see across organizations of every size, from solo founders to teams with 100,000 subscribers. None of this is about making yourself feel bad. It's about getting clear on what's actually getting in the way, because most of these are simple fixes that just take a little courage to do differently.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Why "fine" emails that aren't wrong are still completely forgettable, and what a converting email actually does
How your energy and relationship with email show up in your writing and affect results
Why assuming your donors hate email is one of the most expensive beliefs in nonprofit fundraising
The difference between repetition that annoys and repetition that actually lands your message
How to find the micro moments inside your everyday work that make the most powerful emails
Why most campaigns die in the middle, and how to stay in it when it feels quiet
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:
“A converting email is the one that drives action for people to click, donate, or subscribe. That email creates tension and urgency. It pulls people forward.”
“Your energy shows up in your writing. The email is a mirror of how you're feeling about sending it.”
“33% of donors say email is the tool that most inspires them to give.” - 2025 Online Donor Feedback Survey, via Nonprofit Tech for Good Nptechforgood
“Repetition is how your message lands.”
“When the messaging is stuck, people stop leaning in, they tune out, because it doesn't feel alive anymore.”
“You have a story from today that you don't realize would be a beautiful email.”
“Email is your own asset, your own property. It is a foundational asset of now and of the future.”
“You are not bad at fundraising. You just haven't had the right framework for email yet.”
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Easy Emails For Impact™ - enrollment opening on May 7, with 50% off the course
Double Your Donations - Raise More From Your Laptop Without Chasing Grants or Galas
Donations on Demand: Build a $5K Email Campaign System in 30 min/week
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 0:44Let's start today's episode with a question, how do you feel when it's time to send an email? Not excited, right? If you're like most nonprofits I work with, maybe you feel behind. Maybe you're coming to me feeling a little dread, or just not excitement. You feel like I'm not doing it right. You feel like you're bothering you're pestering people. So what do you do? You rush it, or you delay it, or you send something that's fine, but then you wonder why nothing happened. I know that feeling well, and the reason is because I used to feel that way too. Today, I'm going to walk you through the seven reasons why your emails aren't converting in two donations, and I want you to listen differently, not for what sounds good, but really where you recognize yourself, because the second you see it, you can't really unsee it, and then instead you can change it. So today isn't about making yourself feel bad, like, Oh, crap, I'm doing that, but instead just awareness of like, Oh, I think I might be doing that. And there's kind of a simple fix here to do it differently. Now I very much was in this place. I used to think I wasn't really a good writer. I listen, I got B's all through my English classes, through, I don't know, high school and college. Like it was fine, everything was just fine. But I didn't think that I had anything great to say when it comes like pen to paper or what keyboard to screen. I thought somebody could do it better. I had to be professional, and that there was a formula, especially in the nonprofit world, like I needed to stay in these lanes, these guardrails. I also felt like when it kind of came to sending emails, like, I don't want to bother people, I don't want to push too much, what will they think? And what I know now, what I figured out along the way is those were thoughts, not facts. Those were thoughts and not facts, and they were really getting in the way of me reaching the right people and helping more of them. So the first step was just dropping those rules, like realizing that was just an outdated operating system and outdated belief that I didn't need anymore. And the big one that I personally dropped was I'm not a good writer. Once I dropped that, it actually sort of that was the big Domino, and the rest really felt fell very quickly. And the minute I got honest about my voice, who I am, what I believe, what I stand for, what I care about, my emails got so much better. My audience grew very quickly. My net revenue grew, my impact grew. Then I taught my clients to do the same thing. I was like, Okay, I think we're onto something. I think social media is like, 10x harder than email. Email is where the conversions happen. Email is where the money is made. And once I realized that, I was like, let's double down. Let's go all in on email. And I taught my clients to do the same things, and hundreds of nonprofits, solo leaders, all the way to large teams, teams with 50,000 or 100,000 email subscribers have gone through this process I created that's a lot. When you have 50,000 email subscribers, the stakes feel incredibly high. You're like, I don't want to screw this up. I don't want to turn anyone off right? That feels like a lot of pressure. So I'm not guessing about what I'm about to tell you, I've lived it. I've walked in these shoes. I've watched others live it too, and we have improved their conversions, their retention, through this process. So most people are fixing the wrong thing. I see it all the time, especially with small teams, everyone's stretched. There's too much to do and not enough people to do it right. Like this is, this is The Nonprofit cliche. You're wearing a lot of hats. So when email isn't working, you look for a quick fix. You change the subject line. You wonder if it's too long. Long you Google what time to send. That's my favorite, what day of the week. What's the best day of the week to send? Those are low value questions. What is the best day of the week to send? Not the right question.
Christina Edwards 5:21
the real issue is how you how you think about attention, repetition, consistency, that's what drives revenue. Okay, let's get into it. So let's dig it into the seven reasons, and listen, there may be some tough love incoming, especially with reason number one. Number one, your emails are boring. I'm gonna say the thing that very few people say out loud, your emails are fine. They're fine. They're not wrong, they're not full of typos, they're polished, but they're completely forgettable. You're writing updates, what we did, what's coming. Here's the link to give and that doesn't create decision, that doesn't create desire, that doesn't create action, that just creates a scroll, a converting email, one that drives action for people to click, donate, subscribe, whatever you want them to do. That creates tension, urgency. It pulls people forward. It makes them feel something. They feel true connection, like something is happening right now and they're a part of it. If your email can be skimmed and ignored, that's exactly what's happening. Okay? So we've had a lot of clients go through Easy Emails For Impact™ that we're stuck here. They were like, guilty, yes. And the best thing is that these are small changes. These are not like Herculean I have to, you know, kill our CRM and talk to the board. These are small changes that have a big impact. They do take guts, though. They do take courage to do something different. All right, stay with me, because the next one is personal. You have a bad relationship with email.
Christina Edwards 8:02
so maybe this is you. You feel behind on it. You feel like you're not doing it right. It sits in the back of your head and the bottom of yours. You do list every single week. Maybe you rush it or delay it. You send it with low energy, and you're kind of wincing. You're like, do people think this is bad? Is this gonna even work? And the part that is like, the part that may be hard to make peace with is that people can feel that like it comes through. If you're not excited about it, if your relationship is sort of like about it, it's coming through. It's seeping through in the words you choose and the stories you're not telling or are telling in your email, your energy shows up in your writing. So if you're hesitant, your email reads hesitant. If you're disconnected, it feels flat if you read if your story's kind of apologetic, like, Hey, could you could you donate? Please? It's kind of soft. It's all coming through. The email is a mirror of how you're feeling about sending it.
Now. Number three is a big one. You assume everyone hates email because you do, and that is an expensive belief. This one will cost you money if you let it, you unsubscribe from everything you're like, anti email you don't like being marketed to. So you decide your audience must feel the same way you send less, because that is your preference, and that is a huge mistake. Your preference, my dear friend, is not everybody's preference, right? Some people don't like chocolate chip cookies. My kids just bake cookies. I'm like, how do you not like a chocolate chip cookie? But it's not for everyone. I'm a person who doesn't really like ice cream, I know, except for Jenny's ice cream, because her flavors are weird. I'm just not an ice cream person. So for you to blatantly like blanketly decide like everyone. Is just generally annoyed and doesn't like emails, is a very expensive belief, so you send less, you soften your asks, you disappear quickly. Meanwhile, what's happening other organizations are raising the most money, are showing up in inboxes consistently. That could be you. They are showing up not occasionally, not cautiously, but consistently. So your preferences are not a strategy. I have data to back this up, so 33% of donors say email is the tool that most inspires them to give more than social media, more than your website, your donors are in their inbox just waiting send them an email.
So the next one I see everywhere, you're afraid of repeating yourself. You said it. You're like Christina, I asked you sent it, you've moved on and saying it again, or maybe even again after that, it feels annoying, it feels nagging. It's all negative in your mind, but your audience didn't absorb it. First of all, no one's open rate is 100% so a part of your audience never even saw it in the first place. The ones that opened it maybe skimmed it, missed it, thought, I'll come back to this didn't. Repetition isn't ignoring it's how your message lands. Repetition is how your message lands. Think about every song you love. You didn't love it the first time you heard it, every time. I Not every time, but a lot of times we play songs we love. For our kids, it's not like a banger for them, the first go, right? Take some time before they're like, all right, play that one again. Right? Same thing. Like, I'll hear a song and I'm like, now it's a banger. Like, you know, who is that for me? Bad bunny. Like, took me a minute. Now, I'm like, Oh my gosh, obsessed. Took me a while. Slow Burn, all in now. So, like, repetition, key, key, key here.
Christina Edwards 12:02
So if you're not willing to say it again, you're choosing to be missed. You're literally putting yourself out on the sidelines our sprinters and the campaigns our clients, inside the purpose and profit club and inside the sprint method are doing this. They are using repetition, multiple touch points. This is how they achieve and reach new donors, second time donors, reactivated donors and exceed their goal. So let's get to the deeper stuff. Number five, you only rely on a few overused stories. Listen, you've got that good story for a few years ago, or maybe you got that one from recently. That one worked, and you keep going back to it. What happens is your audience starts to feel like nothing's changing. So the words you're using are very repetitive. Because I'm saying repetitive I don't literally mean like, say the same thing over and over. We want to tell it from different stories. So your work is growing, but we're not hearing about that. So your messaging is stuck, and when the messaging is stuck, people stop leaning in, they lean out, they tune out, because it doesn't feel alive anymore. So you need new stories. We have a story banking process that we teach to help you with new stories.
Christina Edwards 13:43
Number six. You don't know how to see the stories inside your work. You're too in it, right? So you're like, is that a story? You don't even realize this is a big one. And I this is a big one we coach on inside the club. I call them micro moments. So sometimes somebody will show me a series of emails and I'm like, let's just talk for a second, because we're missing the micro moment. We're missing the fly on the wall, the juicy transformation. You think every story has to be big, like a big Super Bowl moment, a big transformation, a full transformation, a perfect arc. So you wait for one. Meanwhile, the most powerful ones, the most powerful emails I've seen, are small moments, a conversation you had this week, the phone call you got from that donor out of the blue, that thing that lapse donor said to you when you called them, a donor who showed up unexpectedly, a staffer who said something surprising that stop you in your tracks. You just sitting in on one of your programs, maybe giving a program tour, just observing something that is what creates connection, the small, specific, real thing. If you can't see those moments yet, you'll feel like you always have nothing to say, and part of story banking is seeing these in. Your everyday life. I promise you, you have a story from today you don't realize would be a beautiful email. There was, I was coaching both sprinters and clubbers this week. I don't remember which client it was, but they were talking about their work, and twice I stopped them. I was like, Stop, that's an email. I want you to write an email about that. And I'm like, Stop, that's another email. I want you to write an email about that. It's like pulling these threads, right? That's its own email. That's its own email.
Christina Edwards 15:37
And this last one, this, sadly, is where most campaigns actually die. Number seven, you stop too soon. You stop sending emails too soon. Not at the beginning, but in the middle. You send an email. Maybe two it feels quiet. So what do you think? It didn't work. You pull back right when it's about to turn and you give up quiet, quitting the quiet moment. That's normal. That's not failure. That's part of it. That's where your audience is deciding. Think about any brand business you shop on, you shop at online. Anyone can you imagine if they were like, we already emailed her, we already emailed him. We don't want to, we don't want to push it. It's like, Y'all, we are distracted. We need another email, and we don't need another email that says the same thing as the previous email. We need another email that tells another story. Six years a case study tells another perspective, a different arc. That's it. That's where repetition starts to work. That's where that consistency pays off, and that's the moment where organizations just disappear. So many of our clients, that's the work we do together, especially in the club, is how do we hit the gas in those moments? Right? How do we stay true in those moments? And that's really why I love this campaign arc that I teach inside easy emails for impact, where we teach you how to run an email campaign for fundraising, to drive revenue over a period of time, and so you're staying in it in that period of time. And we teach you that process. Most of our sprinters will add on and go through easy emails because it's a great foundational program. And then we have inside our club for our more advanced teams, more high touch teams, they also go through it as well. It's one of those skills you can't get to get good at. It's why I attend conferences for the most part, outside of our sector that is heavily reliant on an email track, because email is your own asset. It is your own property. It is your place. It's like your house, your rules. It is not borrowed land. It is not Instagram, it is not Tiktok. It is yours. And it really is, when I think about online fundraising, it is a foundational asset of now and of the future.
Christina Edwards 18:07
So if you're thinking, will I run out of things to say no, you're not out of content. I promise you, you're just not trained to see it yet. It's like you haven't put on your glasses yet. And that's a skill that's learnable. We teach you how to do that inside of easy emails. If you're thinking, we have a small team. We don't have time. Most likely, you're spending too much time on social media, let's go buy your time back with an activity that actually drives revenue, not just likes or not even likes anymore. It's like views, it's like so a fraction of your audience can see your see your content. If you're worried about unsubscribes, okay, people are quietly unsubscribing. Even if they're not pressing the unsubscribe button, what are they doing? They're ignoring you, and unsubscribe is more honest, and we want to actually pull the people in into action, into connection, who are on your list, on purpose. So maybe you're thinking like, Okay, now what we're sending emails. We're sending emails like, how do we change this? This is one of those things that may not feel easy, but as simple. So what changes when? When you fix this is, instead of sending one off emails where you're like, donate now or program update, you're actually creating campaigns with momentum. So instead of saying it once, you're repeating with intention, instead of using one or two overused stories, you're using more more specific, multiple micro moments. That's how the momentum builds, and that's how your funding grows. So if you hurt yourself in any of these seven things good, it's not a reason to feel bad. It's a reason to feel clear, like, literally, don't we all have a before and after story, like every and you should one of these, like, big principles I've been thinking about because I am writing a book this year, is this idea of, like, up level, expansion, reinvention and. And like, that's it. You're supposed to have a before and after. Christina 10 years ago is totally different Christina than she is today. The stories I wrote five years ago are a different set of stories that I would write today. And it's almost like, if you find yourself in the stagnation where you're like, I don't think they are. I think I'm kind of reading the same stories I did five or 10 years ago, or the same content, or the same emails, then that is a sign to like, push, to expand to up level. Because your audience is waiting. Your audience is just waiting. They're like, can we get to know you, please? Can we get to know the mission better? We do not want this ominous single voice so you are not bad at fundraising. You just haven't had the right framework for email yet, and I didn't either, until I stopped following everyone else's rules, fake rules, and started trusting my own voice. You can do the same thing too. And when you do email starts stops being the thing you avoid, and actually starts being something you look forward to. This is wild to me, that as someone who once, once avoided, literally, would offload writing to anyone else, my team and my company, wherever that. I'm like, no, no, I'll do it. I'm the one who's like, leaning in, I'll do it. That's me who's now writing a book like wild. To me, it becomes a thing that actually builds your funding. When you see that, you get a lot more motivated to do it, by the way.
Christina Edwards 21:39
So remember, you're not bad at email. You just don't have the right system yet, and this is exactly why I built easy emails for impact. This is what it's there to solve. It's there to tap in your existing gold mine. Those subscribers you have just sitting there on your database that you're emailing once a month, once a week, once in a while, they are an untapped gold mine. So it's not just send more emails. It's a real system for finding your voice and building campaigns and staying consistent. Whether you have a small team or a full marketing department, or you're a solo led organizations or hundreds, literally hundreds of nonprofits have gone through this course, teams with 100,000 subscribers, solo leaders, and it works for them. It has changed so many organizations, and it's a pleasure to have guided so many organizations through this. So if you want to learn more about it, go to splendid courses.com. Forward slash email for details about joining easy emails for impact, we are opening enrollment on May 7, with special bonuses and 50% off the course, I don't want you to miss it all right, I'll see you in the next one. Bye.