Hello! In this lesson, we’ll learn about Funraise’s automated Peer-to-Peer email notifications.
Keeping fundraisers updated and encouraged is critical for successful Peer-to-Peer campaigns. In this lesson, we’ll see how we can use Funraise’s prebuilt automated emails to deliver timely and branded email notifications to our fundraisers.
To access your campaign’s automated emails, click Campaign Emails, in the side menu. And then select the campaign.
It’s important to note you’ll only see P2P Notifications for a campaign site that has had Peer-to-Peer features activated.
It’s good to know that this section also provides access to a few other prebuilt automations, but for today’s lesson, we’ll just be learning about the P2P notifications: emails we can toggle on or off and use to communicate personally with each fundraiser at important milestones in their fundraising journey.
There’s a lot of automation here and editing all these emails can seem like a lot of work, but we’ve got a few tricks that have made it easier. Keep in mind these emails will be sent day and night as activity is happening on your campaign; this is an important part of keeping fundraisers motivated!
It’s also not required to use all of these emails—you can choose which emails are important for your campaign. We’ll provide suggestions and a description of each email later in this lesson.
Before we can toggle on an email, we’ll need to configure its contents. Let’s start with an easy email… the email that is sent to a fundraiser after they receive a donation to their page.
We highly recommend activating this email because it’s a moment of joy and success for your fundraisers. It can also provide the fundraiser a reminder to go thank the donor by commenting on the donation.
If we click to edit this email, we can see items that can be edited on the left and a live preview of the email on the right. Well… what will be a live preview once we start adding some pizzaz.
Ok first, the subject and sender.
We’ve provided a quick default for subject lines, but you may want to customize your own subject. Keep in mind, that it’s important to be concise and clear; your fundraiser will receive this email every time they get a new donation.
Personalization is important! Don't forget that you can insert data merge tags into the subject line.
For example, you can insert the donation amount or the fundraiser’s progress to their goal percentage. Learn more about merge tags in our written documentation.
The From address could be a custom sending address that you can configure in your platform settings. Keep in mind that organizations on Funraise’s free plan may not be able to configure custom sending email addresses.
Alright, onto the fun part—design…
Here we can set a header image for this email and add a link for that image.
We can set the email background and the text area background colors. In most cases, we recommend using white for both backgrounds, but if you’ve got a creative vision, have fun!
Because there is only one header image, you might want to create an image with both your logo and a banner image; this will provide a professional and brand-consistent look for your emails.
Next, the most important part—the words. In the body text editor, we can add text content. In this case, we just want to notify the fundraiser that they’ve received a new donation towards their goal.
We’ll enter a quick message.
Cool, but boring.
Let’s style this text and add some merge tags for personalization! We can address the fundraiser with their first name using a merge tag. Plus, it would be nice to add the actual amount of the donation.
Alright, good, but not great. There is no action for the fundraiser to take.
Here’s where you can add a single button to your email. You can configure the button text, link, and colors. You can also use merge tags in this button, which is wonderful… because we really just want to provide a link for the fundraisers to view their page… so we can use a merge tag for the fundraiser’s personal page link. Easy.
You can also configure the footer of the email, which includes an option to add a footer logo image and edit the footer text color.
Now we can save our changes. It’s a good idea to send a test email to yourself or a teammate for review. When you send a test email, we’ll use placeholder content for any data merge tags.
Okay! Our first, and most important email automation is ready. We can activate this email by toggling it on. Now when a fundraiser receives a donation to their page, they’ll receive this email.
Before we go through all these emails, we've got a quick tip.
Because we have edited and saved an email for this campaign, we can use that email as a starting point for our next email.
In the actions menu of the email editor, we click Clone template and then select the email we just created.
When we clone a template, every field will be replaced, which is great; now we can just edit a bit of this text, or maybe change the image if we have a designer who’s gone the extra mile to provide multiple images for us.
If you clone a template, just remember that every field will be cloned, so don’t forget to update the subject line!
Okay, let’s talk about other email automations for your campaign. We cover these in more detail and provide templates for these emails at our knowledge base. For this lesson, we’ll do a quick review.
You can send an email to the donor when a fundraiser comments on their donation. You’ll be able to add a merge tag that includes the fundraiser’s comment. Just keep in mind that this email is going to the donor.
Send an email when a fundraiser gets a donation! We already know what this email does, but as a reminder, this email will send after a fundraiser receives a donation on their page.
Send emails to celebrate important milestones in your fundraiser’s journey as they reach their goal. These emails are sent when the fundraiser has reached 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of their goal. Make these emails a celebration. Funny GIFs usually work well here.
Send an email to the fundraiser when they create their page. This email can be used to welcome or provide resources to the fundraiser to help them succeed.
And finally, there is a set of emails that can be sent to a fundraiser that has created a page but has not received a donation after a specific amount of time. We don’t recommend using all of these emails. Using a few of these emails to encourage your fundraiser and provide resources to help them succeed may provide the lift or reminder they needed.
All emails for this campaign will include an unsubscribe link; when a recipient clicks an unsubscribe link, we’ll provide a default page that confirms their request. Here, you can provide a unique unsubscribe confirmation URL. In most cases, you’ll want to leave this blank.
Excellent! Now you know how to manage a complete and automated communication plan for your Peer-to-Peer fundraisers. See you soon!
