2025 Email Marketing Statistics for Nonprofits

Email Strategy

Only 68% of nonprofits utilize email marketing. Of those, 41% send newsletters monthly, 27% quarterly, 17% twice monthly, 10% weekly, 3% twice weekly, and 2% send daily.

Nonprofits sent an average of 62 email messages per subscriber in 2024, a 9% increase in volume from the previous year.

74% of new subscribers expect welcome email after joining a newsletter and these messages have an average open rate of 202% higher than traditional email campaigns.

63% of nonprofits use personalization in their email marketing.

Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened.

Personalized calls to action convert 202% better than default calls to action.

28% use email subscribe popups on their website.

81% of marketers use generative AI for email creation. Of those, 85% report that AI improved content quality.

Email Engagement

Nonprofits have an average email list size of 4,191 contacts (547 for small nonprofits and 6,602 for large nonprofits).

Nonprofits have an average open rate of 28.59% and an average click rate of 3.29%.

In 2023, 9% of subscribers unsubscribed and 7% became non-deliverable due to bouncing.

Email list sizes increased by 4% in 2024– a decline from 6% growth in 2023.

Only 38% of nonprofits delete unengaged subscribers on a regular basis.

Email Fundraising

33% of donors say that email is the tool that most inspires them to give (29% social media, website 17%, print 9%).

Of the 68% of nonprofits that utilize email marketing, 74% send email fundraising appeals — 67% send quarterly, 19% monthly, 7% twice monthly, 3% weekly, 3% daily, and 1% send twice weekly.

48% of donors cite email as their preferred method of hearing updates and appeals from the organization. Direct mail was the second most preferred channel at 21%, followed by social media (17%), text messaging (8%), and phone calls (2%).

35% of those nonprofits that send email fundraising appeals raised the amount of money that they expected, 34% raised more, and 31% raised less than they expected.

Email messaging resulted in 11% of all online revenue in 2024 – down from 14% in 2023.

For every 1,000 fundraising messages sent, nonprofits raised $58 in 2024.

Donor retention increases by 29% for offline donors when you have their email address.

Email Design

49% of email is opened on a mobile device and if an email is not designed for mobile, it’s likely to be deleted in under three seconds and as many as 15% of users will unsubscribe.

Including videos in emails can boost click-through rates by 65%.

Emails with graphics have a 1.12% higher click-through rate than emails without any.

Countdown timers in emails can boost registrations by 30%.

Subject lines comprising 6 to 10 words achieve the highest open rate at 21%.

Email subject lines with questions have a 50% higher open rate and subject lines with numbers have a 17% higher open rate.