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Before your fundraising email can accomplish anything else, your subject line has to grab your donor’s attention and get your email opened.

A subject line that’s able to cut through the clutter of an inbox stuffed with junk is often the difference between an email that gets ignored and one that gets opened … and clicked.

By applying a few evidence-based principals to writing your subject lines, you’ll not only improve engagement rates and AI-proof your emails, you’ll also see better longterm response rates from subscribers on your file.

So before we dive into specific tactics and examples, let’s review some general tips to help you write more compelling subject lines that get your fundraising emails opened.

Then we’ll take a closer look at 6 specific subject line tactics that work well for nonprofits, plus several examples of each, so that you can adapt them to your own fundraising program.

Key Principles for Better Fundraising Subject Lines

The three strategies below will help you write subject lines (and fundraising emails) that are more compelling and persuasive by providing a general conceptual framework to help you press send with confidence.

Write your subject line first

Your subject line is effectively the headline of your email and writing it first can help you frame the body content of your fundraising email.

Think of your subject line as your email’s promise and then deliver on that promise with your email’s body copy. Writing your subject line first helps streamline the rest of your draft and keeps your content focused.

Create momentum with your subject line

You can’t just write a shocking subject line that has nothing to do with the content of your email. Whatever you promise in the subject line needs to be paid off in the body of your email.

For instance, you can’t write a subject line promising free ice cream and kitten videos only to ask for a donation once the reader opens your email. Your reader will feel confused and tricked — and now you’ve lost their trust.

But when you grab your donor’s attention with a strongly written but relevant subject line, and then keep the momentum going in the opening lines of your email, you create a “slippery slope” that leads your reader effortlessly to your call to action.

Use ‘everyday’ language in your subject line

I don’t know about you, but I’ve found there are better ways to open a conversation than by declaring what I’m about to say is URGENT.

At NextAfter, we have a saying: people give to people, not email machines.

What that means is that you should aim to make your fundraising emails feel as though they’re coming from a human, not an organization.

The goal of the next section is to show you how.

5 Subject Line Tactics that Boost Response Rates

If you want to write an engaging subject line, experiment with conversational cues. It’s a subtle but powerful strategy that can help you begin the conversation and “get your foot in the door” before your prospective donor ever opens your email.

The fundraising subject line ideas below have been developed from more than a decade of fundraising research and thousands of fundraising A/B tests.

Fundraising Email Subject Line Ideas

1. Use mystery in your subject line
2. Use a person as your sender name
3. Convey opportunity in your subject line
4. Use the recipient’s name in your subject line
5. Humanize your subject line

Use these subject line ideas correctly and you could instantly see a 2X lift in the open and click rates of your fundraising emails.

Let’s take a closer look at these subject line tactics and some examples of each!

Subject Line Tactic 1 – Use Mystery in Your Subject Line to Create Curiosity

Giving people just a taste of what they could get if they open your fundraising email leaves them wanting more, creating an “itch” of curiosity they almost can’t help but scratch.

In the subject line example below, Subject Line A tells the recipient exactly what they’ll get in the email.

But by giving everything away in the subject line, you’re asking recipients to decide immediately if they want the course or not. And they may not have enough context from the subject line to know if the offer is valuable to them or not.

Subject Line B doesn’t really say much about what’s contained inside the email but instead opens a loop of curiosity as a means of starting the conversation: as a recipient, you very likely want to know what you did to deserve such a flattering email.

In this instance, the tactic led to a 137% increase in open rates.

But remember: you have to pay it off in the email. If you tell a recipient they amaze you, you need a valid response to the question in your donor’s head, “Why do I amaze you?“

In the next subject line example, Version A again states exactly what’s in the email (a webinar invite) while Version B states “I’ve been working on this for you,” leaving the recipient intrigued to find out what exactly it is that the sender has been working on.

This tactic led to a 25% increase in email opens.

Below we see a third example of this tactic with the subject line in version A explaining exactly what’s inside the email while version B is more vague, leading the recipient to want to learn more.

Opening a loop of curiosity in the recipient’s mind led to not only an increase in opens but also created enough momentum and motivation in the reader to produce a massive 53% lift in click rates!

Giving everything away in your subject lines forces recipients to make an uninformed decision. Adding mystery in your subject line gives you a chance to explain your offer.

Additional Subject Line Ideas

• Did you see this?
• You made this child’s day
• This is great news
• Because of you…

Optimization Tip: To activate the element of mystery, you need to leave just enough information out of your fundraising email subject line. Don’t focus on trying to sell the topic in the subject line, just focus on starting a conversation — like you would in person.

Subject Line Tactic 2 – Send Your Emails from a Person, Not a Brand

OK, so this isn’t a subject line concept, per se.

But when it comes to your fundraising emails, it’s useful to think of your subject line in the context of your entire envelope — the subject line, the sender name, and the preview text.

These elements work together to get your emails opened.

For your subject lines to be received as authentic, your sender needs to be authentic. Every other concept shared in this post is based on an assumption of authenticity. And using a real name as your sender is one of the most powerful ways to come across authentically to your recipients.

In the fundraising subject line example below, version A is sent from a person’s name while version B is sent from a brand.

The version sent from a name saw a 28% increase in opens! 

Like all the other concepts, the benefits of humanizing fundraising emails go beyond the open. Our tests have found that using this tactic not only increases nonprofit email open rates but click rates as well.

In the subject line example seen below, simply removing the organization from the “sender name” led to a 102% lift in email click rates, demonstrating that improving your subject line can have downstream benefits for your fundraising as well.

And in a third example, we see the impact of combining concepts 1 & 2 (mystery & personal sender) on email open rates where these two tactics worked together to produce a 330% lift in open rates.

Using a real person in the sender line (and excluding the organization name) can help keep your fundraising emails human and encourage your donors to engage.

Optimization tip: Leverage every part of your email’s “envelope” to entice people to engage with your appeal.

Subject Line Tactic 3 – Frame Your Fundraising Email as an Opportunity

One of the key tactics you can use to improve your subject lines is what we call “utility.”

In short, you want to communicate immediate value in your subject line.

This may seem at odds with concept 1 (using mystery) but this concept is centered more around the idea of making it clear that there is value inside the email, rather than telling them exactly what that value is.

For example, if your recipient is asking “Will this email benefit me today?”, you want the subject line to answer their question with a resounding “Yes!”

It’s simple to communicate value if you’re giving someone a free gift. But it’s challenging if you’re ultimately asking recipients to donate.

One solution is to frame your donation appeal as an opportunity.

It could be an opportunity to help fund a specific campaign, get a new program off the ground, or help a specific family or person in need. Perhaps it’s an opportunity to raise awareness about a social issue.

In any case, giving is an opportunity for your donor to experience the direct impact of creating a meaningful impact on an issue they care about.

And in the subject line of an appeal email, shown below, we see that moving away from this tactic produced a 21% decrease in email open rates. Ouch.

Here again, we see another example of combining more than one subject line tactic (mystery and utility) together to make a larger impact.

Additional Subject Line Ideas

• This is our chance
• Now or never
• Opportunity knocks
• Big change ahead

Optimization tip: To leverage the concept of utility in your fundraising email subject lines, you need to imply that there is something useful to the recipient inside the email, even if that is the opportunity to make an impact by making a gift.

Subject Line Tactic 4 – Customize with Your Donor’s First Name

Dale Carnegie said, “A person’s name is to that person, the sweetest, most important sound in any language.”

Fundraising email subject line concept #4 leverages this truism to create a meaningful bond and inspire donors to engage with your email.

Now, adding personalization isn’t some magic trick or gimmick to boost email opens. It’s a concept to make your email feel more personal and human — because it is.

Calling someone by their name in a natural way is disarming and personable, leading to more opens.

But note in the subject line example below how adding the first name wasn’t the only way the subject line was made to be more personal.

Version A was very straightforward and to the point: “Devotionals for the Christmas Season”, while version B, framed the devotionals as “A Christmas gift for you, Kevin”. (mystery + name).

Using the first name in conjunction with these other personalization techniques led to a 22.5% increase in opens.

In another fundraising subject line example, we saw that appending the recipient’s first name to the beginning of a subject line, changing nothing else, produced a significant 12.6% lift in email open rates.

Additional Subject Line Ideas

• Have a sec, {FIRST.NAME}?
• Hey did you see this, {FIRST.NAME}?
• Your resource is here, {FIRST.NAME}
• {{FIRST NAME}}, meet Maya!

Optimization tip: Using a first name should never feel gimmicky. Always try to keep in mind how it would sound in a personal or professional setting.

Subject Line Tactic 5 – Use Time indicators

Words like today, tomorrow, this week, this morning, next Thursday, etc., can all be effective tools to increase relevance in your fundraising email subject lines.

They’re effective because they give recipients and donors a clear deadline to open the email. If your subject line says, “This Friday…”, I need to open the email by Friday so that I don’t miss out on whatever it is you’re sharing.

If you don’t use time indicator words, you may be giving recipients an excuse to delay reading your email.

In the experiment below, both versions use these time indicator words. But there’s a stark difference in how they’re used.

Version A focuses on the past: “Did you eat too much last week?”

Version B focuses on the present: “What’s special about today?”

As a donor or subscriber, I might see Version A and think, “Why do you care about how much I ate last week? What does it matter?”

But if I see Version B, I may think: “Oh, what is happening today? I better open and find out so that I don’t miss anything.”

And as you can see, focusing on the present led to a 5.5% increase in email opens.

Additional Subject Line Ideas

• Tomorrow will be too late
• Today’s the day
• See you tomorrow?
• This week

Optimization tip: Time indicators can be a helpful way to inject a little urgency into your subject lines without coming across as overly promotional. But remember only to use this tactic if there is an actual deadline. And use it sparingly so as not to diminish its effect.

Subject Line Tactic 6 – Humanize Your Subject Lines

Humanizing your subject lines is one of the most powerful ways to increase the opens and clicks of your fundraising emails.

It combines elements of the subject line concepts shared above to create a subject line that reads as if it could have been sent from a colleague, an acquaintance, or even a family member.

The trick to this technique is to make the subject line read like it’s either a) sharing news they need to hear (good or bad) and/or b) something that might require their attention.

The idea, in short, is to make your subject lines read as they would in an email sent from a colleague, client, friend, or family member sharing news or trying to get their attention.

And like many personal email subject lines, they are brief, conversational, not title case (a dead giveaway that an email is promotional), slightly urgent, and somewhat vague.

It can be hard to hit this concept’s sweet spot, but when you get it right *chef’s kiss*, it can lead to some major boosts in your open (and click) rates.

Remember: these subject line concepts are all about starting a conversation, not asking for a donation. That comes later.

Let’s look at a few subject line examples that illustrate this concept.

In the A/B test below, we replaced a highly promotional subject line, “Deadline today,” with the more casual, personable subject line, “Did you see Kevin’s email?”

Which reads almost like something you’d receive from a coworker, right?

You might see it and think, “I don’t know a Kevin,” followed by, “Wait, do I?”

And it’s very likely that the combination of curiosity and urgency created by this subject line will indeed get even the most hardened skeptic to open your email. And in the case of this example, it led to an encouraging 11% increase in email opens.

Another takeaway from the subject line in the treatment above is that it asks a question, another highly persuasive element that entices recipients to open that email!

“Did you see Kevin’s email?” begins a mental conversation in the mind of your recipient: “What email from Kevin? Did I miss something? Is someone waiting on my response?

In another subject line example, we see that a one-word subject line was able to produce a tremendous 30% lift in email opens. The word?

Reconnecting.

Because who doesn’t like to reconnect? Or, at least, who doesn’t want to know who is reconnecting with them? It’s this kind of humanized subject line that seems too authentic to resist.

Let’s take a look at one more example of this subject line concept that I hope will demonstrate how easily it can be used and the impact it can have on open rates.

In the A/B test above, an obviously promotional subject line was changed to one that simply read, “I’ve got good news.”

This reads like a subject line you’d receive from a friend or family member. Is someone expecting? Getting married? A new job?

Everyone loves good news (sometimes it seems in short supply), and because this subject line is warm and personable, it entices the recipient to open.

Additional Subject Line Ideas

• Thoughts on this?
• About last night
• See you there?
• We’re here
• Hey just following up

Optimization tip: This tactic looks easy when it’s executed well. But it’s tricky to get right. A few things to keep in mind: because these emails can seem generic (it’s kind of their charm), it’s important to vary how you apply this concept. Questions can give them extra oomph. Try messaging that implies there is some action for the recipient to take. And to get it just right, imagine you’re writing an email to a friend, a coworker, or a family member (preferably one you like) … this will help you find the right tone.

Fundraising Email Subject Line Takeaways

• Authenticity: While the tips above are proven to increase opens, you might sound inauthentic if you try to shove them all into a single send. Make sure someone else reviews your subject lines to make sure you still sound like an authentic human.
  
• Humanity: the less promotional (and more personable) your fundraising email comes across in the subject line, the more likely that email will be opened—it’s really as simple as that.
  
• Practice Makes Perfect: for many fundraisers, writing subject lines isn’t a favorite pastime. There’s often a lot of pressure to “make the sale” in the subject line and fit as much into a small space as possible. But with practice applying the concepts in this post, you’ll find that writing subject lines your donors can’t help but open becomes second nature.
  
• Test, test, and test again: Ready to get started with your own a/b testing? You can certainly get ideas from other nonprofit experiments, but running your own a/b tests will tell you exactly what works to increase opens and donations, in your context, with your donors.

Your Next Steps… 

• Try using our subject line worksheet to craft subject lines that lead to more opens. It will give you ideas for how to work each element into your subject line in a natural way.
  
• Dialing in your subject line is only part of the job. Next comes your preview text, copy, design, calls-to-action, and more. Here are 9 questions to ask before pressing send.
  
• Ready to take your email fundraising to another stratosphere? In our Nextafter Institute course, Email Fundraising Optimization, you will learn tested and proven strategies to write, design, launch, and optimize email fundraising campaigns that lead to more donations and revenue.