Getting your emails delivered

Following prior thoughts about high-converting content, peer-to-peer stewardship and advanced automation, we wanted to share the technical foundations of effective email fundraising, in case you have any gaps. Missing anything will hamper the deliverability and effectiveness of your campaigns. Apologies in advance since it is quite dry, hence we saved the science part till last. Good luck!

1. Email service provider (ESP)
   Your choice of ESP is key. While frequency of communication with your supporters, technical set-up and relevance all impact deliverability, you need a partner that really cares about helping to build and maintain deliverability. There are a handful of things to consider, each of which helps:
   
   
   • Aim for dedicated IP addresses if you communicate to a well-managed list regularly. If you are sending less frequently you may benefit from an ESP’s shared IP solution
   • Ensure you have access to ESP sender reputation monitoring tools, and follow their advice regarding issues such as unsubscribes or spam notifications
   • Ask them about their deliverability reporting capability and advice to improve it
   • You might seek some support with authentication (more on this next)
   • Ideally the ESP will offer compliance tools to help you manage segments and handle unsubscribes

3. Sender identity matters – a lot
   Your ‘From’ name and sender email address are crucial. Most organisations invest in email communication as part of supporter experience, to lift loyalty, lifetime value and participation. It is very hard to achieve these objectives via an obviously anonymous, one-way broadcast of demands. ‘Extractive’ fundraisers love this approach since it reduces the time needed to properly engage with actual supporters. However, it wastes the investment, generates poorer results and overlooks the fundamental aim of the communications – to nurture a relationship. We therefore strongly recommend using recognisable, trustworthy sender names and email addresses linked to a monitored inbox.
   Consider testing a range of options to see which work best for your cause:
   • Organisation, appeal or event name
     Staff member’s first name from [event name] or [charity name]
     A campaign- or appeal-specific identity

Let’s make 2025 a year to celebrate a different set of ‘wins’. Permission-based lists of eager supporters motivated to actively engage with our cause. A well-tended, possibly smaller, list will improve your campaigns, deliverability and churn performance.

Excellent list management goes beyond basic local privacy legislation / GDPR and Code of Conduct compliance. Ensure you’re putting good quality data into your database and maintain proper permission records. While preference centres were once popular, many mainstream ESPs now require single-click unsubscribe options to be displayed in the footer of all emails.

5. For emails, as with comedy, timing is… quite important?
   Review the effectiveness of your sends and optimise the time you send. This may vary based upon the time of year, content, calls to action or data segment. Observe your supporter segment behaviour patterns and shape the campaigns accordingly.
   
   Once you have determined the rules by which to shape your email cadence, feel free to break them from time to time should you have an urgent or exceptional need. But, reference the urgency or the exceptional nature of the email in the subject and content to justify the supporter also changing their habits.

Thank you for reading this far. You deserve a medal! We hope you discovered plenty of actionable tips for your eDM campaigns and peer-to-peer experiences. 

Questions about setting up a new email service? Looking for help implementing a marketing automation platform? Seeking journey perfection and great fundraising results? Email us and we’ll happily assist you!