Dotdigital for charity
The complete guide to charity and nonprofit marketing
Discover the key tools, channels, and features you need to build a marketing strategy that will engage your charity's whole audience.
Introduction
As a charity marketer, you need to keep your audience engaged, inspired, and informed. To do that you need reliable data, a cross-channel approach, and a platform that works intuitively with you so that you’re able to work quickly and efficiently. Dotdigital gives you all the tools that you need to engage your supporters, in one place.
Reaching supporters across multiple channels keeps your organization front of mind and meets your audience on the channels they prefer to hear from you. Alongside email, channels like push notifications, SMS, MMS, WhatsApp, and social media retargeting ads can reinforce your message and keep supporters connected to your cause.
Most charities already hold valuable supporter data — from engagement and donation history to the causes people care about most. With Dotdigital, you can bring this data together and use it in real time to shape marketing campaigns that are personal and relevant, resulting in stronger supporter engagement.
As a charity marketer, you know how important a personal approach can be when it comes to engaging supporters. With Dotdigital, your customer data is always easily accessible with seamless integrations with Donorfy, CharityBI, StratusLIVE, Beacon, donorflex, and more.
As you explore Dotdigital, you’ll often see the word “customer.” It’s our simple catch-all term, used across sectors. For charities, that could mean donors, volunteers, service users, supporters, or customers.
Jump ahead
Customer data
Understanding your charity audience
Knowing your audience so that you can send them relevant messages that resonate is important in any business, and for charities it’s imperative. Supporting a charity is often a deeply personal choice; it can be due to personal ties and experiences, so getting the emotional connection and understanding right is important.
Gather customer data immediately
With Dotdigital’s on-site popovers and customizable preference centers you will get to know your audience quickly. Once you’ve captured name and contact details via a popover or webform, you can then encourage new subscribers to let you know their preferences. Signpost your preference center in any welcome emails and best practice is to have it visible in the footer of all future email communications too.
Begin by asking customers for their preferred name, whether they’re a service user, donor, volunteer, etc., as well as their preferences for messaging frequency, channel, and topics. This gives you a great baseline of zero-party data to send personalized and engaging marketing from the get-go. You’re also enhancing the customer experience by demonstrating responsible marketing practices. By giving your audience some flexibility and control, you’re starting the relationship based on trust and respect for their time and preferences.
As the relationship with your audience progresses you’re going to gain a host of insights. From web pages browsed, to links clicked in an email, your supporters will show you what they are interested in with every interaction. Dotdigital collects this data and compiles it for you, so you can see at a glance what’s important, without needing to sift through spreadsheets to get there. Our platform also syncs with all of the leading charity CRMs to ensure your data is always accessible and up to date. We like to say our data is comprehensive but never complicated.
Why you need to segment your charity audience
As a charity marketer, you have your work cut out due to the different types of people you need to engage. Segmenting your email marketing campaigns makes sure everyone gets marketing messages that are relevant to them.
Dotdigital’s single customer view (SCV) unites data from across your marketing stack to create a unified customer profile. Easily see a customer’s engagement data, marketing preferences, program enrolment, and more. This allows you to truly understand your supporters and market to them effectively.
With the insights you’ll gain from SCV, you can target your audience and create segments of like-minded customers for targeted campaigns. This could be people who regularly donate, one-off anniversary donors, volunteers, fundraisers, trustees, service users, and so on. With segmentation, personalization takes no time at all. You can be confident that each campaign will resonate with the recipient and reduce spam by reducing generic messaging sends.
Creating segments is a smooth and logical process in Dotdigital. You can choose to make a segment from one of our pre-made templates for ease, or create a brand new segment using your own unique contact behavior and data fields. Each segment can be as detailed or as simple as you choose.
Use Dotdigital to:
- Develop full, engaged marketing lists using personalized on-site popovers that are triggered based on customer actions like visiting a high intent page.
- Collect valuable data through bespoke preference centers with custom data fields that allow you to gather unique insights that matter to your charity.
- Easily identify different customer groups to target with segmentation, easily send a fundraising request to people who have donated previously but not recently.
MARKETING CHANNELS
Cross-channel marketing with Dotdigital
Cross-channel marketing is the creation of seamless, connected customer touchpoints across all marketing channels, and it is essential for successfully motivating supporters. Cross-channel marketing is growing and charity marketers now have more and more ways to reach their audiences. Using Dotdigital, you can create a connected cross-channel campaign that spans email, SMS, WhatsApp, and retargeting ads to better engage your audience.
By adopting a cross-channel marketing strategy, you can communicate with your supporters on the channel that makes the most sense at the time and stay front-of-mind as they move about the web.
With Dotdigital, you can create and manage campaigns across multiple channels from one platform. Instead of switching between different tools, everything sits in one place — along with all your supporter engagement data.
For charity marketers, that means less time juggling systems and more time focusing on meaningful connections. By streamlining your tech stack, Dotdigital helps you save time, reduce manual work, and make the most of your budget.
Email for charity marketers
For charity marketers, email is a great channel as it allows you to send relevant, and engaging content to your audience regularly. Emails can easily be personalized, ensuring every campaign is relevant and engaging for each recipient.
Our 2026 Global benchmark report found that for charity marketers, email is driving average open rates of 67.43% and click-through rates of 6.59%.
Email is a powerful channel for charities because it gives you the space to tell meaningful stories and build lasting relationships with your supporters. It’s also incredibly versatile. You might send a newsletter sharing the impact of recent fundraising, a campaign highlighting a specific appeal, or a personalized update showing a supporter how their past donation has made a difference — all with clear next steps if they’d like to get involved again.
SMS for charity marketers
SMS is a great channel for marketers that need to get a message out there and fast. SMS messages land on a customer’s cell phone lock screen or notification bar, so it is more likely to be seen than an email. Use SMS to update volunteers of location information and timing around a fundraising event, or to update donors on your fundraising targets.
Our 2026 Global benchmark report found that SMS campaigns sent by Dotdigital customers generated an average global click-through rate of
How Action for Children combined email and SMS for engagement
Action for Children needed to utilize online marketing tools to generate revenue after in-person fundraising events had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The charity opted for a virtual event to drive fundraising revenue, adopting a cross-channel approach powered by Dotdigital to keep supporters informed and engaged.
To engage participants, Action for Children utilized SMS as an additional communication channel alongside email. As well as using SMS to confirm event registration, the charity also delivered key announcements on this channel.
SMS was the perfect channel to use as the event was progressing at such a speed that the organization couldn’t add all the developments to its email campaigns in enough time. SMS, with its non-existent design requirements and high read rates, meant competitions, prize incentives, and celebrity announcements were delivered quickly and efficiently without a huge uplift from the team.
WhatsApp for charity marketers
Messaging apps such as WhatsApp are popular with audiences and
These apps allow you to engage in a two-way conversation with ease, creating a better customer experience. At Dotdigital we integrate with these apps to make it simple to communicate with your audience on their preferred messaging app.
WhatsApp is a great channel for charities and our 2026 Global benchmark report found that the average click-through rate for the channel is a huge 51%. Plus, as a two-way channel, it’s great for mobilizing volunteers or providing vital service updates when they’re needed.
If you’d like to learn more about WhatsApp marketing, our WhatsApp playbook has everything you need to get started — including practical advice, real examples, and guidance on the technical and legal considerations.
Retargeting ads for charity marketers
Supporting a charity is often an emotional decision and people take time to research and consider different ones. A cross-channel approach that includes ad retargeting will keep your charity front-of-mind throughout this research and consideration process.
Utilizing a channel like targeted ads means that whether a prospective supporter is actively checking their inbox, or simply browsing social media in their free time, your charity and its mission will be on their mind at all times. Use the data you have on these leads to ensure these ads speak to their interests by including content they’ve shown interest in already such as browsed pages and topics on your website.
The benefits of a cross-channel approach to charity marketing
A cross-channel marketing strategy amplifies your message and your mission. If you’re only sending out emails, your audience will probably only think of you when they go to their inbox – and that’s only if you’re at the top when they do.
When you add in a mixture of SMS, WhatsApp, and ad retargeting, you’re going to be front-of-mind a lot more often. We never want to spam supporters and leads, so when you naturally integrate with your customers’ day-to-day channels, your marketing will feel more natural and be more successful. Marketing across multiple channels is now simpler than it sounds, and you can do it all on one platform with Dotdigital.
Use Dotdigital to:
- Use WhatsApp to enable a two-way conversation with your supporters – these apps are especially valuable to charities as it enables a natural, human-to-human connection to form.
- Use push notifications to alert volunteers of important event updates and provide a direct link for them to find more information on your app.
- Utilize retargeting ads in your holiday automation program to engage non-openers of your email campaigns.
- Target your audience with dynamic and personalized email content and SMS messages that will drive engagement and boost emotional connections.
- Turn an existing email into an SMS in just one click thanks to WinstonAI. Cross-channel marketing doesn’t need to take up your entire day.
Marketing personalization
Personalization for charity marketers
Why personalization is important for charity marketers
Supporting a charity is a very personal thing, and for some, it makes up a huge part of their identity. People often choose a charity based on their own experiences, or those of their loved ones. As supporting a charity is often an emotional decision, it’s important you build that emotional connection with your audience to gain lifelong supporters.
Personalization makes your messages more relevant to the people supporting your cause. Tailoring updates around their interests, involvement, or past donations shows supporters the part they play in your work.
Sharing the impact of their support can help strengthen that connection, keeping your cause meaningful and front of mind.
Personalize your charity website and boost engagement
Fresh Relevance, Dotdigital’s personalization tool, allows you to personalize your website without needing any support from your website development team.
Our personalization platform helps charity marketers deliver bespoke, relevant, and consistent experiences for supporters who land on your website.
“Before Fresh Relevance, we had one of those homepages that was stuffed with information. But now we can tailor the homepage to each person. We’re able to listen to website visitors and serve them what they need rather than broadcasting the same content to everyone.”
Use Dotdigital to:
- Personalize the supporter journey from the very first interaction thanks to sophisticated data capture.
- Use dynamic content to personalize your homepage to greet visitors based on their persona, such as volunteer, fundraiser, service-user, etc.
- Use geo-targeting to provide relevant information to your supporters when they’re volunteering at an event by providing handy ‘what to wear’ tips based on the weather at their location.
- Use customer data to inform when you send campaigns as well as deciding the content inside. For example, send supporters who donate on a special anniversary a timely and sensitive reminder.
MARKETING AUTOMATION
Automation and triggered marketing for charities
How charity marketers should utilize automation
Marketing automation can be a real lifesaver for charity marketers. It lets you set up campaigns in advance so supporters receive the right message at the right time — without adding to your already full plate. Think welcome journeys, pre- or post-event emails, or gentle reminders for those who’ve shown interest.
By responding to these moments with timely, relevant content, you can keep supporters engaged and supported — all without needing extra hours in your day.
Use Dotdigital to:
- Ensure all leads are actively nurtured with a triggered welcome program that outlines ways to get involved and collects vital data and preferences.
- Send pre- and post-event check-ins full of relevant information or feedback requests to ensure your supporters feel appreciated and informed throughout their experience.
- Use Dotdigital’s persona movement report and automation program builder to create a triggered campaign to re-engage otherwise lapsed contacts.
- Save time with automations, and know that every time a supporter makes a relevant action, they are going to be served with the perfect message to continue their journey.
TECH INTEGRATIONS
Integrations with your charity tech stack
Dotdigital integrates with hundreds of world-class platforms and specialist agencies to enhance your marketing and streamline workflows. You can be sure of a reliable data feed from your CRM, and any other tech you rely on, straight into Dotdigital.
Easily connect with charity-specific marketing agencies, CRM platforms, and more that are experienced with Dotdigital. To deliver an informed and seamless customer experience, you need to be able to access and understand every step of a the customer journey in one place. With Dotdigital you can do just that and be confident that your marketing messages are always accurate, reliable, and relevant.
Dotdigital charity partners spotlight
Dotdigital and Donorfy
Key features:
- The ability to update contacts in a Dotdigital list with constituent data from a Donorfy list. This update process can be configured to send data held about a constituent in Donorfy, mapping this information to either data fields or preferences in Dotdigital. Updates can run either on-demand or according to a schedule.
- Constituents in Donorfy are updated according to their Dotdigital campaign activity, For example, activities are added to constituent timelines when Dotdigital campaigns are emailed to them, or they open or click such campaigns.
- Donorfy triggers may be used to either enrol a constituent in a Dotdigital program (customer journey) or send them a one-off transactional email.
- Donorfy can be linked to one or more Dotdigital accounts simultaneously, and all the above features are available for each linked account.
Learn more about Dotdigital and Donorfy.
Dotdigital and Beacon
Key features:
- Intuitively manage your data while keeping supports engaged.
- Wave goodbye to CSV uploads and manual data entry, Beacon does it for you.
- Segment lists of contacts in Beacon and send them to any Dotdigital address book in just a few clicks.
- Sync opt-outs automatically so you never have to worry about emailing someone who has asked you not to.
Learn more about Dotdigital and Beacon.
Raiser’s Edge and Dotdigital
Key features:
- Hourly sync of contact/constituent data from Raisers’ Edge to Dotdigital.
- Map and sync custom constituent fields for segmentation.
- Integrate your giving history for constituents.
Learn more about Dotdigital and Raiser’s Edge.
You can learn more about Dotdigital’s host of integrations here.
REPORTING AND ANALYTICS
Reporting and analytics for charity marketers
86% of marketers report that they have issues with data. Our reporting dashboards are built so that it’s as easy as possible for you to see all of your data in one place, and be able to analyze and learn from it. You’re also able to personalize elements of the reporting and analytics tools to ensure that these insights fit your goals and consider the typical lifecycles of your charity audience.
Reporting and analyzing campaigns may feel like the final step of a campaign, and it should always be the start of the next one as you learn and optimize with every send.
Dotdigital’s campaign reporting and analytics tools for charity marketers
Dotdigital’s reporting and analytics dashboards are designed to show you the important parts without being labor intensive. Essential campaign metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, etc. are shared in a digestible format so that you can see how your campaigns performed instantly.
Gain a single customer view
Deliver a seamless customer experience when you can understand your audience’s entire journey by accessing every interaction in one place.
Single customer view (SCV) shows you every touchpoint a customer has experienced and every interaction they’ve made. See a supporter’s experience and demographic data in one place to gain a detailed understanding of them. From here, you can generate a lookalike segment that automatically collates other contacts like them.
SCV in action
There are a wide variety of ways SCV can be implemented to improve your charity marketing.
Here are a few of our favorites:
- Track engagement trends to create personalized donor journeys
- Discover optimal email send times based on a supporter’s location
- Create segments based on your ideal volunteer persona in one click
- Personalize content based on donation and engagement history
Dotdigital for charity marketers with an ecommerce store
At Dotdigital we have lots of features to support your charity ecommerce store. Dotdigital has created an eRFM customer modeling tool that builds personas based on your customers’ spending and engagement habits. It combines traditional recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) scores with engagement scores to give a much fuller picture.
RFM scores depend on customers’ order data:
- The number of days since the last purchase
- The total number of orders made
- The average value of all those purchases
Engagement scores are measured by:
- Email opens -this is the weakest scoring criteria
- Email clicks -this is the middle scoring criteria
- Viewing your webpage for five seconds or more – this is the highest scoring criteria
You can utilize these insights to create segments, enroll customers into automations, and to inform your promotional planning.
These insights are combined with AI-powered predictive analytics. AI analyzes reams of your customers’ data in the background, then shows you the opportunities identified, ready for you to capitalize. These predictive analytics give you the heads up on when to target customers based on their likely next move.
The different types of predictive analytics in Dotdigital:
- Churn probability: (e.g. this customer is 40% likely to churn)
- Predicted next purchase date: (e.g. this customer’s next purchase date is predicted to be June 3)
- Predicted customer lifetime value: (e.g. this customer’s predicted CLV is $360)
- Predicted total future orders: (e.g. This customer is predicted to have three future orders in total)
SUSTAINABILITY AND SECURITY
Dotdigital is compliant with data and sustainability regulations
Dotdigital makes data security a breeze
Data privacy regulations are of paramount importance to you, so compliance tools have been built into everything the Dotdigital platform. The Dotdigital data watchdog uses AI to run a complex set of algorithms and checks to predict, detect, and prevent abuse. By assessing and blocking problematic data, you’re protected from complaints and potential ISP blocklistings, and guarding your all-important delivery rates.
Dotdigital is ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR data processing agreements and EU Model Contract Clauses are in place between any service providers processing data held by Dotdigital. We believe in data being secure, but never complicated. Rest assured that all data we hold is protected and secure, and know you’re able to action data subject requests in a timely fashion thanks to our logical and easy to navigate data reporting tools.
Dotdigital helps you with your carbon footprint
Sustainability is of ever-growing importance to consumers, especially those engaging with charities as it shows that they are ethically minded.
At Dotdigital we make it easy for you to reduce your carbon footprint as the world’s first carbon neutral cross-channel marketing automation platform – we’re also committed to being net-zero by 2030.
Dotdigital customers have access to a designed badge for their email footers to proudly showcase its carbon neutral credentials, thereby boosting your brand image to your customers with none of the legwork required.
Dotdigital support you can rely on
At Dotdigital our customers’ experience is paramount and it’s something we pride ourselves on. Whilst we’ve built the Dotdigital platform to be incredibly easy to use, we know that sometimes you will run into something new or unexpected and want some support. Our friendly, knowledgeable support team are on hand to help you out.
When you are a Dotdigital customer you gain access to the Dotdigital Academy which is full of educational content to ensure you are getting the most from the platform. We also have a huge library of educational ‘how to’ pages that break down everything you could ever imagine.
“The impact of Dotdigital on our operations has been profound, enabling more nuanced and efficient engagement strategies that are critical in our fight against poverty. For any charity seeking a reliable and supportive email marketing solution, I can confidently recommend Dotdigital.”
Conclusion
To keep your supporters engaged, you need a platform that’s easy to use, reliable, and backed by helpful support when you need it.
For charity marketers, having strong data capture and reporting is key — it lets you create personalized campaigns that connect on a personal and emotional level. Accurate data means your triggered campaigns, from welcome emails to pre-event info or thank-you messages, hit the right people at the right time, on the right channel. This keeps your audience informed and motivated.
Supporting a charity is often an emotional decision, so a cross-channel approach helps keep your cause front-of-mind throughout their journey. Dotdigital makes this simple, giving you the tools to capture data, deliver engaging campaigns, and track performance — all in one place so you can focus on what really matters: your supporters and your cause.
