How to Design Email and Text to Work Together in Digital Fundraising

Email and text are often evaluated side by side — open rates, click rates, and response times compared in search of a clear winner.

The real performance gains come not from choosing a superior channel, but from designing a communication strategy that allows each to do what it does best, presenters argued in the session, “Email Versus Text: Is There a Champion?,” at the 2026 Peer-to-Peer Professional Forum.

But before deciding how email and text should work together, nonprofits may need to take a step back and determine who should receive which message in the first place.

Performance Starts With Segmentation

More is not necessarily better when it comes to sending emails, Charlotte Conmy, associate director of national marketing at the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, said. For Take Steps, the organization’s signature walk and largest fundraiser — which raises $10 million annually — her team has deliberately reduced email volume since 2023 while improving segmentation. 

“Our open rate has climbed, our click rate has climbed, and our unsubscribe rate has dropped,” she said. 

That improvement, Conmy said, began with audience clarity. Sending fewer emails reduces email fatigue and makes the content they do receive more relevant.

“Back in that embarrassing 2023 and prior era, we were just blasting our entire database with the same message,” she said. “Now we really thoughtfully segment and change up our messaging based on who we’re speaking to. And also smaller targeted emails tend to perform better than large-scale sends.”

Messaging today differs between team captains and general participants, new and returning fundraisers, and “warm” leads identified in the organization’s donor database based on prior engagement. Someone who attended an educational program or gala receives different messaging than someone brand new to the organization.

Segmentation also shapes how match campaigns are framed. In one example, an email promoting a fundraising match urged unregistered supporters to take their first step and register. A separate version encouraged recipients who were already registered to begin fundraising.

The strategy continues even in the off-season. Conmy’s team sends a monthly cultivation series to past participants in advance of walk season, focusing on program education, research updates or even gut-friendly recipes. 

“We really try to stay away from making any asks during this time,” Conmy said. “We don't ask for money, don't ask people to take any actions. We simply just want to keep in touch with them, and therefore, the hope is that when we launch our next campaign, that they'll be a little more likely to come back.”

Email Provides Context, Coaching, and Control

Despite a multichannel approach, email remains the backbone of Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s communication strategy, taking supporters on a journey and building trust and loyalty in the process. 

Unlike social media, where algorithms determine visibility, email provides a direct line to opted-in supporters.

“So it's a really low-cost and high ROI platform for you to use,” Conmy said. “Email is a direct, personalized line to your target audience. Once someone opts into your emails, they're probably a little more warmed up to your programs. They're a little more likely to get involved … and you really just have to start guiding them toward the call to action that you want them to take.”

Email is less invasive and particularly strong for storytelling, Conmy said. Supporters can also reopen or forward emails — strengths that make it well-suited for coaching participants and amplifying beneficiary voices. But that storytelling must adapt to shrinking attention spans.

“It's no secret that the average American has zip, zero, zilch attention span,” she said. “We cannot be sending full paragraphs of emails anymore. They don't want to do any reading. They want you to tell them exactly what you want them to do, right there, right then, right front and center.”

To achieve that clarity, the organization reduced copy, increased visuals, embedded videos and GIFs directly in emails, and emphasized a single prominent call-to-action button. Previously, linking to YouTube or an external webpage often meant supporters never returned to complete the desired action.

“We still have some text, but the text is relevant because we segmented to the audiences, and that video is embedded, so it's not taking people to YouTube,” she said of the organization’s current email tactics. “We're all keeping them on our email, keeping them more likely to click the call-to-action button.”

Text Delivers Immediacy — and Demands Intention

At Susan G. Komen, participants have increasingly expressed interest in receiving updates via text, particularly around events, Julie Brock, the organization’s senior manager of race and walk fundraising platform, said.

“That is just amazing to think about how quickly not only are you able to deploy and send a text message, but also how quickly the response turnaround is going to be for those messages,” she said.

Komen began texting three years ago by piloting one-to-one messages for four events. As the program expanded to all 45 5Ks and community walks — collectively raising $20 million annually — the organization shifted more communication to broadcast messages due to bandwidth constraints while scaling volume.

“If they received those messages, they were fundraising more,” Brock said. “They engaged … as we brought in those one-to-one messages back in 2025, we saw those numbers go up.”

In its third year, the organization rebuilt one-to-one strategies, creating milestone and challenge touch point templates to make it easier for staff to maintain personal outreach at scale.

The rapid scale-up is not something Brock recommends without robust planning. Organizations must consider budgets and additional staffing. 

“I guarantee you that the ROI for texting is going to give you the backbone to say, ‘We can cover their salary. We just need them here to do it,’ she said. “So I would say, fight that fight because our plates are full.”

Brock described texting as “one of the hardest communication channels to ignore.” 

“You can see a weather alert [that says], ‘Sorry, we canceled the event’ — the message that you never want to send out,” she said. “… How many people are seeing it in the first five minutes when they're up at seven o'clock in the morning and schlepping in the rain — bless them — to come to an event?”

Orchestrating the Donor Journey

Ultimately, Conmy and Brock encouraged fundraisers to move past channel comparison and think in terms of experience design.

Rather than layering email and text independently, nonprofits can reduce email volume by reinforcing key messages with well-timed texts to move supporters forward.

“So for instance, you might send a ‘register now’ email on a Monday,” Conmy said. “And then instead of hitting up those same people three days later with email again, you might consider sending a text to the same people with a really quick note like, ‘Hey, you might have seen our email the other day. Take this action now. Here's the link. Get registered.’”

Their examples centered on peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, but the framework extends well beyond events. 

The question is no longer which channel performs better. It is how deliberately they are paired. Email builds context over time. Text delivers urgency and immediacy when it matters most.

When sequenced intentionally, each reinforces the other — reducing fatigue, increasing clarity, and guiding supporters toward action.