Welcome to my 2024 Giving Tuesday Endless Emails Review!
Each year I open, read and analyze all the Giving Tuesday (GT) emails that arrive in my inbox. And this year was no different.
627 emails from 108 nonprofits of all sizes- tiny, small, midsize and large- landed in my inbox between November 4 (29 days before GT) and December 10 (a week AFTER Giving Tuesday). I used a spreadsheet to record 23 different elements of each email.
Overall? The emails weren’t great. As with every year, it was a big cash grab. Ugh.
Full disclosure: I do not like Giving Tuesday. As a Boston Red Sox fan, GT is the Yankees of the fundraising calendar. That’s how much I dislike it.
But my goal with my email analysis is not to hate on the day. My goal is to help nonprofits learn what they should be doing and should avoid when it comes to their email fundraising and marketing efforts.
When I read the emails, I don’t just read them as someone with 25 years of sector experience. I consider myself one of their subscribers and ask: Would this email mobilize me to take action (i.e. donate)?
If you’d like to learn more about email best practices, sign up for my Email 366 enews and have a look at my 2023 GT review and my 2022 GT review.
This is the first of three blog posts where I’ll be sharing what I received in 2024 and what we can learn from it. Let’s get to it!
The Data
➡️ Data point: 11% of email addresses (from and reply to) had a name of a person on at least one of them. 14% had a from address of info@orgx and a reply to address of info@orgx. Some of those using it are on the 100 largest U.S. nonprofits list.
Verdict: Ewwww
Best practice: Email is one-to-one communication between someone at your organization and an individual subscriber. This means the email address you use should be from a person’s account. This helps you better connect with each subscriber. Using info@, office@, donations@, hello@, media@, noreply@ are impersonal and show subscribers you don’t want them to respond. That’s the opposite of encouraging conversation with them.
Bonus: I’m all for learning from what the “big boys” do. The largest NPOs in the U.S. have the budgets to hire the best people in their fundraising and marketing departments. But that doesn’t mean copy everything they do! They also use some terrible practices when it comes to email. Know what to copy and what to avoid.
➡️ Data point: 5% of subject lines were personalized
Verdict: Yuck
Best practice: People’s inboxes are overflowing. Want to catch their attention? Add their first name to your subject lines! You’ll get more opens that way.
➡️ Data point: 7% of emails included a story
Verdict: Sigh
Best practice: Storytelling is central to your fundraising and marketing program. Email is a great platform for sharing a story. Tell subscribers the story of one person/one family, the problem they’re facing and how a donation can solve that problem. But so many of the GT emails were about WE WANT YOUR MONEY NOW that they didn’t bother with a story.
➡️ Data point: 6% of emails included a quote/social proof
Verdict: Boo
Best practice: When people look for a recommendation of what to buy, they ask their network. They look at the product reviews. Want more people to donate? Add a quote from a beneficiary in your email. Share a story and/or quote from a donor, monthly giver, volunteer, staff or Board member. Let readers see others talking supportively about the impact your organization has. That will positively influence their giving decision.
➡️ Data point: 14% of subject lines included at least one emoji
Verdict: 🤷♂️
Best practice: You need to test whether emojis in a subject line work or not. For some organizations they do and for some they don’t. However, one thing I can say: The four most popular emojis were 🚨 ⏰ ⌛️ ⚠️. Draw your own conclusions.
➡️ Data point: 76% of emails mentioned a matching gift (Highest was 10x. Most common was 2x)
Verdict: YAY!
Best practice: Matching gift campaigns raise more money from more donors. Definitely mention them in your fundraising emails- and in the subject line as well. As far as how you present the match, I prefer that you lead with double the impact rather than double the dollars. But showing readers (with a graphic, image or GIF) how their donor dollars get doubled or tripled (so they visualize the total amount given) does help.
➡️ Data point: 23% of emails offered “early access”
Verdict: Blech
Best practice: I understand it’s been a tough year for many charities. They wanna get their hands on donor’s money NOW. So they sent pre-GT emails and asked subscribers to give before the deluge of GT asks arrive in their inbox. Honestly? I don’t have any data on this but I’m willing to bet this doesn’t bring in too many donations. What it does is make donors feel pressure to have to give. (More on that in “the ugly” section at the end of this post.)
➡️ Data point: 9% of emails told me my donor status was “pending”
Verdict: 🤮
Best practice: Fundraising and giving should not be transactional. It should make me feel good to give and help a worthy cause. When you put in big red letters at the top of an email “Status: Pending” you make a reader feel like they have to give. Like they already promised to donate but haven’t yet. That’s not how you build relationships with subscribers. That’s how you turn them off.
The Good
Operation Warm gave a good shoutout to its corporate partners.
Shine a spotlight on your corporate partners! Highlight them in your emails and let subscribers know that these businesses and corporations are part of the overall effort. (It’s also helpful because certain business partners will vet your nonprofit. This helps establish trust in your organization. If corp X says it’s worthwhile to give to this charity…)
I really liked what Roots Ethiopia did with their GT fundraising. First, here’s some great content from their email: “Why choose a gift? Because this gift will keep on giving… and giving… and giving! (Kind of like that aunt who won’t stop sending you holiday scarves, but WAY more useful.)”
The money their donors donated would go to buy a gift that wasn’t a one-off gift. Your donation helped buy a chicken, a goat or a cow which will be used by a family in Ethiopia over and over again. Great idea!
Not Sure
Two weeks prior to GT Conquer Cancer sent an email with this call to action:
I honestly have no idea if people would do this or not. Would you add GT to your calendar as a reminder?
It could be that worked for their audience as a way to remind them of the upcoming fundraising campaign. If more people have it on their calendar, they’ll be looking for Conquer Cancer’s GT emails in their inbox.
I don’t know. If you have done this for GT, please email me and lemme know what the results were. Thanks in advance!
The Bad
Part one: Twice Houston Food Bank used a tactic that I would avoid.
Four days before GT their email opened with: “This Black Friday, instead of trying to save big on TVs and gadgets, why not help a family facing holiday hunger?”
The day after GT, with their extended campaign, this was the subject line of their email: “e, Skip a Coffee, Give 3X Hope Today!”
The email said: “Want to make an even bigger impact? Consider becoming a Faithful Friend by starting a monthly gift. For just the cost of a cup of coffee, you can provide nourishing meals every month and bring hope to our neighbors year-round.”
The organization is asking people to deprive themselves of something or exchange something they want for a donation.
A bunch of years ago I asked a fundraising expert about these campaigns. Their response: “Don’t do it. People don’t like to give up certain habits. You’re asking them to take a negative action (not buying coffee). Why do that? Share with them the impact of a gift and ask them to help solve a problem.”
Part two: On Giving Tuesday Samaritan’s Purse asked me to give a gift from their catalog, a life-transforming gift which would deliver urgent relief. The idea of asking people to choose a gift is an okay one.
But this catalog contained 35 different gifts. That’s too many possibilities for people. It becomes decision overload. People don’t have time to review all the gifts and decide what to donate.
The Ugly
I was in touch with a fundraising professional whose organization didn’t publicize a GT campaign. However, they had donors calling them who felt great pressure to donate TODAY. They saw GT campaigns and emails from other organizations. The amount of pressure everyone was placing on them to give TODAY caused them to reach out and ask if they have to give on Giving Tuesday or not.
RIDICULOUS!
You never want donors feeling pressured to give. You send them letters and emails, make them feel good and maybe they donate.
But their donors saw other organizations pressuring them to give and they felt pressured to donate to their regular charity.
This is the first time I’ve heard about something like this happening around GT. Has this ever happened to you? If yes, please email me and share details. I’d like to hear more!
That’s it for post one of three of my GT email review. I’ll be back next Tuesday with part two.
Does your nonprofit want to use email to help it grow and thrive? Check out the variety of email services I offer to help organizations of all sizes.
