Infographic: Why Email Is Still a Must for Nonprofit Fundraising

Email. Love it or hate it, one thing is for sure: You need to be using it in your fundraising efforts. But email is no longer new—in that regard, it has more in common with direct mail than it does with 
social media or other app-based channels. For some, 
it’s become routine and unsexy, and with that comes a dangerous tendency to view email as a necessary evil, rather than a bonafide fundraising and marketing workhorse.

“Why Email is Still a Must for Nonprofit Fundraising,” an infographic from Salsa Labs, is here to prove otherwise. Some of the big takeaways:

• Email’s return on investment is higher than any other marketing channel, at $40 for every $1 spent
• Email audiences are about five times larger than social media audiences
• About one-third of nonprofits’ online fundraising revenue is generated by email

These are promising indicators of email’s powerful fundraising potential, but they represent the best-case scenario—you can’t just blindly send email and expect to attain these results. The infographic points out that the average person receives a ton of email (76 messages per day) and that 97 percent of all email is marked as junk, trash or spam. There’s also the risk of email fatigue, which could lead to recipients “tuning out” your communications.

What can you do about it? The infographic 
offers a few tips, including target word counts (500 words is ideal for newsletters) and subject line lengths (28 to 39 characters). It also includes some jaw-dropping statistics: Personalized emails yield 
a 244 percent increase in open rates and a 161 
percent increase in click-through rates.

View the full infographic here for a more detailed look.