Email Outreach Overview
DonorDock provides tools to create, send, and track personalized email communications with your contacts. You can send newsletters and fundraising appeals to groups of contacts, send individual emails directly from a contact record, automate follow-up communications, and send transactional messages such as receipts and contribution statements.
Email activities are recorded in DonorDock, so your team can see how contacts have been communicated with and, for bulk outreach emails, review delivery, engagement, and gift conversion statistics.
Marketing Emails vs. Transactional Emails
DonorDock classifies emails as either Marketing or Transactional. Understanding the difference matters because these email types have different purposes, sending rules, templates, and limits.
Marketing Emails | Transactional Emails | |
|---|---|---|
Purpose | Outreach, fundraising, newsletters, updates, and other relationship-building communication | Communication related to a specific gift or pledge |
Examples | Newsletters, fundraising appeals, event announcements, individual Send Email activities | Gift receipts, Pledge Reminders, and Contribution Statements |
Templates | Marketing Templates | Transactional Templates |
Bulk sending | Sent through Outreach > Emails | Sent through Reports |
Individual sending | Can be sent using a Send Email activity, either manually or through an automation workflow | Individual receipts can be sent from a transaction activity, automatically through a giving page, or through an automation workflow |
Unsubscribe rules | Bulk marketing emails are subject to the contact's Unsubscribe Status | Transactional emails can still be sent to contacts who have unsubscribed from marketing emails |
Monthly email allotment | Counts toward your organization's available Outreach Emails | Does not count toward your monthly Outreach Email allotment |
Marketing and Transactional Templates are not interchangeable. A Marketing Template is designed for outreach communication and can be used for bulk emails or individual Send Email activities. DonorDock uses Transactional Templates to generate transactional communications such as receipts.
Building Your Email Audience
Before sending a bulk email, you first need to determine who should receive it.
DonorDock provides several ways to organize and segment contacts.
Forms allow supporters to submit their information and sign up for communication from your organization.
Marketing Lists allow you to create reusable groups of contacts, such as Newsletter Subscribers, Volunteers, Event Updates, or Monthly Donors.
Reports allow you to build audiences based on information stored in DonorDock. Report filters can identify contacts based on giving, activities, contact information, communication preferences, and other criteria. You can then add contacts from a report to a Marketing List for future outreach.
Marketing Lists may also be configured as Available for Opt Out, allowing contacts to unsubscribe from a specific type of communication while remaining subscribed to other marketing emails from your organization.
Creating Emails
Bulk marketing emails are created from Outreach > Emails.
When creating an email, you can:
Select the recipients
Choose the team member the email should be sent from
Enter a subject line
Associate the email with a Campaign or Appeal
Build the email directly in the editor or load a Marketing Template
Personalize the content with merge tags
Send a test email
Send immediately or schedule the email for a future date
For example, a merge tag such as {{donor.name}} can insert information from each recipient's contact record into the email so the same email can be personalized for every person receiving it.
Ways to Send Email from DonorDock
Sending Method | Best Used For |
|---|---|
Bulk Outreach Email | Newsletters, fundraising appeals, announcements, and other communication sent to a group of contacts |
Individual Send Email Activity | One-to-one communication with a specific contact |
Automation Email | Follow-up communication automatically created after a configured Trigger occurs |
Individual Transactional Email | Sending a receipt or other transaction-related communication to one contact |
Bulk Transactional Email | Sending receipts or contribution statements to multiple contacts |
Track an External Email | Recording an email sent from your regular email inbox on the appropriate contact record |
Setting the Send From Address
Emails sent from DonorDock must use an email address associated with a DonorDock team member.
You can send from an existing team member or create a Non-Interactive team member for a shared organizational email address, such as info@yourorg.org. Non-Interactive users cannot log in to DonorDock and do not count toward your organization's user limit.
For organizations sending marketing emails through DonorDock, we strongly recommend completing domain authentication.
When your domain is authenticated, email providers can verify that DonorDock is authorized to send email on behalf of your organization. This can improve deliverability and allows your messages to be sent using your organization's authenticated domain rather than appearing as sent from noreply@donordock.com.
Communication Preferences and Unsubscribes
DonorDock includes several fields for tracking a contact's communication preferences.
Setting | What It Does |
|---|---|
Do Not Solicit | Identifies contacts who have asked not to be included in solicitation efforts. This is primarily used for reporting and segmentation. |
Unsubscribed | Prevents the contact from receiving bulk marketing emails sent through DonorDock Outreach. |
SMS Unsubscribed | Prevents the contact from receiving text messages through DonorDock. |
Bulk marketing emails automatically include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email when sent to comply with federal requirements. You may also control the placement of the unsubscribe link within your email using the {{unsubscribe}} merge tag.
The unsubscribe merge tag is intended for bulk marketing emails and does not populate in Transactional Templates or individual Send Email activities.
A contact who has unsubscribed from marketing emails can still receive an individual email sent directly through a Send Email activity as well as transactional emails such as receipts.
Tracking Sent Bulk Emails
After a bulk email is sent, DonorDock creates an Email Details page where you can review the results.
Navigate to Outreach > Emails > Sent, then select the subject line of an email to view its details.
The page includes information about the email itself, including:
Sent date and time
Recipients
Sender
Subject
Associated Campaign or Appeal
Public URL
It also includes statistics showing how recipients interacted with the email.
Statistic | What It Tells You |
|---|---|
Total Sent | Number of email activities created and sent |
Delivered | Emails reported as successfully delivered |
Unique Opens | Number of individual recipients reported as opening the email |
Opened | Total number of recorded opens, including multiple opens by the same recipient |
Clicks | Interaction with links included in the email |
Bounced | Emails that could not be delivered |
Dropped | Emails DonorDock did not send because the address previously experienced a hard bounce |
Unsubscribed | Contacts who unsubscribed after receiving the email |
Gift Conversions | Gifts attributed to recipients clicking a tracked giving link in the email |
Gift Amount | Total value of gifts attributed to the email |
Understanding Opens and Clicks
Email statistics are useful, but not every metric can be measured perfectly.
Some email providers block or alter the technology used to determine whether an email has been opened. Privacy features such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection can also create false opens or prevent an actual open from being recorded.
Because of this, treat open rates as one engagement indicator rather than an exact measure of who read an email. Clicks are generally a stronger indicator of engagement because they show that a recipient interacted with a specific link in your message.
Tracking Gifts from Emails
When a supported giving page link is included in a bulk email, DonorDock adds tracking information to the link before the email is sent. If the recipient clicks the link and completes a donation, the resulting gift can be connected back to that email.
Conversion tracking is supported for DonorDock Giving Pages and supported GoFundMe Pro/Classy giving page URLs.
Email conversion statistics can include:
Number of gifts
Total gift amount
Conversion rate
If the email is associated with an Appeal, that Appeal may also be inherited by the resulting gift when the giving page does not already have its own Appeal configured.
Bounces, Drops, and Bad Email Addresses
Delivery issues are generally classified as either a soft bounce or hard bounce.
A soft bounce is usually caused by a temporary issue, such as a full inbox or temporary server problem. DonorDock may attempt delivery again.
A hard bounce indicates that the address cannot receive the email, such as when the address is invalid, the domain does not exist, or the receiving server permanently refuses the message.
DonorDock maintains automatic Bad Email and Bad Spouse Email fields. When an address hard bounces or drops, the corresponding field is set, and the address is excluded from future sends.
If the email address is corrected or replaced, the flag automatically resets.
Regularly reviewing dropped emails and correcting invalid addresses helps maintain a healthier mailing list and better email deliverability.
Email Sending Limits
Your organization's DonorDock subscription includes a monthly allotment of Outreach Emails.
You can view your available emails from Outreach > Emails. Your available count can include:
Monthly Emails included with your subscription
Emails already sent during the month
Additional Emails purchased by your organization
Emails reserved for scheduled sends
Total Emails currently available
If your organization needs additional marketing emails, Administrators can purchase additional email packages from the Billing page. Purchased additional emails are stored separately from your monthly allotment and roll over from month to month.
Automating Email Outreach
DonorDock Automations can create follow-up email sequences based on activity in your database.
A member of your team needs to configure and publish automations before they can run. This can create drip-style email campaigns that run automatically based on donor interactions with your organization.
Email Design and Deliverability
When creating marketing emails, we recommend balancing text and images rather than designing the entire message as a single image.
Text-based content is more accessible, adjusts more reliably across devices, and remains visible when an email provider might block images-only emails. Large or image-heavy emails can also load slowly or be more likely to trigger spam filters.
DonorDock does not support sending file attachments with emails. Attachments can negatively affect deliverability and increase the likelihood of messages being identified as spam.
Instead, upload the document to an appropriate online location and add a link to it using a button, text link, or linked image in your email.
When copying text from Microsoft Word, Google Docs, websites, or other applications, remove the original formatting and apply your desired formatting within the DonorDock email editor. This helps prevent hidden formatting from causing unexpected spacing or layout differences across email providers.
We also recommend always sending a test email before sending your message to a larger audience.