Boost Email Fundraising Open Rates by Sounding Like Grandma

By Alan Sharpe, CFRE
The secret to persuading your donors to open and read your direct email fundraising messages is to make them sound like a note from grandma.

Your donors receive three kinds of email:
1. Email from family and friends (personal)
2. Email from colleagues and suppliers (work)
3. Email from advertisers and fundraisers (legitimate and
spam)

The least important of these emails, in the mind of your donors, are the promotional messages from you and me. Most donors say granny comes first, the boss second, and purported wives of deposed Nigerian leaders last.

That’s because your donors and prospects read newspapers and magazines, and watch television, for the news and entertainment, not the advertisements. Your request for funds is an intrusion. Same goes for the phone. Your donors use it to talk with people they care about, which does not include telemarketers. Same goes for email. Your donors and prospects read it primarily to learn stuff and to do stuff, not to give money away.

Which is why I unsubscribed from a popular email newsletter. All it seemed to do was pitch products. Just about every issue tried to sell me something instead of teach me something. The author is a well-known and well-liked consultant and author. I like him. I signed up to learn from him. But just about all that he did was pitch me his products week after week. So I said sayonara.

Start with your subject line. “Grandpa is in hospital” will arrest the attention of your reader sooner than a subject line that says “Donate now to our annual fund.” So think of how you would grab the attention of a loved one in a letter or phone call, then write your email subject line using that same visceral power (while telling the truth, of course).

Next comes your salutation. Don’t use “Dear Friend” or any of its lame cousins. Address your reader by name. Say “Dear Alan,” or “Dear Mr.
Sharpe.” You address family members, colleagues and vendors by name because you have a relationship with them. Extend the same familiarity to your donors and opt-in email prospects and they will immediately feel more inclined to read your offer.

Then, write only about things that are of the greatest concern to your readers. Appeal to their self-interest. You mail birthday cards to your friends and family. You phone mum and dad on their wedding anniversary. Do the same in your fundraising emails, sort of, by putting your readers first, making them
the star of every email, and making them feel important to you and appreciated.

They’ll love you for it.


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