3 Best Email Marketing Software Apps for Nonprofits

Deeksha Malik profile picture
By Deeksha Malik

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If you don't have enough time to focus on your nonprofit's mission because you're constantly strategizing about how to raise funds or how to engage volunteers and donors, you need better tools.

Without supporters who are willing to contribute both time and money, your organization will struggle, but if you can't focus on your mission, then you won't attract supporters.

Fortunately, there are many email marketing software solutions that can help nonprofits reach their fundraising goals, build rapport with volunteers, educate supporters about their cause, and personalize their brand.

Nonprofits that use email marketing to engage donors and volunteers will witness a greater degree of participation among volunteers, increased levels of engagement from supporters, and more generous giving from donors.

Consider the following. In 2017:

In this article, we'll discuss three top-rated email marketing apps that nonprofits are using to effectively manage their donors, funds, and other tasks. We'll also see what feedback users have about these apps.

The three top-rated email marketing apps for nonprofits are:

(Note: The feedback given in each of the “Common user feedback trends" sections are the opinions of the user reviewers and do not represent the opinions of Capterra. Read more about our methodology at the bottom of this article.)

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MailChimp: Easy customizations and performance tracking

MailChimp is a cloud-based marketing automation platform. It offers custom templates to create email campaigns to encourage donor participation. You can choose from a standard template with prebuilt themes or design your own.

Create email campaigns based on audience behavior, preferences, and past donations. MailChimp suits nonprofits that want to perform A/B testing to find out what sort of email content drives the highest engagement.

View reports for individual campaigns to track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and campaign engagement. You can also view other details such as bounce rates, unsubscribes, and subscriber email activities.

MailChimp offers mobile solutions for iOS and Android to create and send email marketing campaigns as well as manage subscriber lists, track campaign performance, and do more from your mobile device.

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List of standard email templates in MailChimp (Source)

Common user feedback trends

Based on an analysis of user reviews on Capterra from users in the nonprofit sector, here's an overview of the areas of MailChimp they like best and those that can be improved.

What users like:

  • Helpful email management: Users mention that the email list feature helps them manage email addresses efficiently. The tool sends notifications to each recipient to verify their subscription.

  • Easy-to-use email designer: Reviewers say the drag-and-drop functionality in the email design feature makes it easy to customize emails. The built-in email templates help them design professional-looking emails.

  • Responsive customer support staff: Users also say that the customer support team seems to be very knowledgeable and responsive. They also find the live chat support helpful.

What users think could be improved:

  • Limited email sharing in free plan: Users would like to see an increase to the limit of emails they can send in the free version. If you have up to 2,000 subscribers, MailChimp allows you to send up to 12,000 emails per month for free.

Who should use MailChimp?


MailChimp's Forever Free pricing plan makes it an attractive option for nonprofits or startups. You'll pay less than you would for similar tools in the market, even if your subscriber list grows beyond 2,000 subscribers.

Constant Contact: Analytics, email formatting, and event registration

Constant Contact is a cloud-based email marketing app that features hundreds of customizable templates and editing tools to design and create email campaigns. Its autoresponder functionality lets you automatically send personalized emails to individuals or groups.

Customize email sign-up forms and embed them on your website or Facebook page to capture new contacts and build up your email list. Import lists of volunteers, donors, and supporters from third-party tools and apps, such as Excel, Gmail, or Outlook. The app automatically updates the database based on unsubscribes, bounces, and inactive email addresses.

Constant Contact lets you share email content to your social media accounts directly from the app. While posting the emails, the tool will also suggest captions and images as well as track metrics, including email open rate, clicks, and shares.

If you regularly hold events, Constant Contact also offers features for managing event registration.

Constant Contact's mobile apps for iOS and Android devices let you create, send, and track email metrics (opens and clicks) from your mobile device.

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Real-time reporting and analytics functionality in Constant Contact

Common user feedback trends

Based on an analysis of user reviews on Capterra from users in the nonprofit sector, here's an overview of the areas of Constant Contact they like best and those that can be improved.

What users like:

  • Easy-to-create email lists: Users like that they can easily add subscribers to certain lists and add tags. With tagging, users can classify email contacts even further for targeted outreach. For example, they could use one tag for all the contacts in a specific geographic location.

  • Professional-looking email templates: Users like that the app's customizable templates make it easy to create professional emails for large audiences.

  • Effective email tracking: Users find the email tracking functionality helpful as it allows them to track metrics such as clicks and open rates.

  • Affordability for small nonprofits: Users find Constant Contact a reasonably priced software solution for nonprofits that have limited budgets.

What users think could be improved:

  • Tedious text formatting: User reviews mention that the text formatting is not very responsive. Some tasks such as changing the font, making the print bold, underlining, or adding text color are tedious and it takes users multiple attempts to achieve the desired results.

  • Limited images in the library: Users would like to be able to store more images in the app's library, since the limit is fairly low compared to similar products.

Who should use Constant Contact?


Constant Contact is suitable for nonprofits that are looking for specific functionalities such as email tracking, email list management, and custom templates at an affordable price. Users that want greater customized design options for emails and ready-to-use email templates should check out this app.

Delivra: Targeted campaigns with user segmentation, drip campaigns, and analytics

Delivra is a cloud-based email marketing and marketing automation platform. You can use prebuilt email templates or create customized email content with its built-in design tools that feature a drag-and-drop editor. The email previewer lets you preview the content and design of emails before you send them to subscribers.

Delivra lets you create and customize email newsletters to inform your volunteers, donors, and supporters about upcoming events and other general updates.

Its social sharing functionality lets you customize settings to automatically share email content on Facebook and Twitter, helping you reach a wider audience. Additionally, the app's A/B testing functionality lets you find the type of email content that drives the highest engagement.

Delivra

Multichannel drip campaign designer in Delivra

Common user feedback trends

Based on an analysis of reviews on Capterra from users in the nonprofit sector, here's an overview of the areas of Delivra they like best and those that can be improved.

What users like:

  • Ease of use and short learning curve: Users find Delivra intuitive and feel that individuals with minimal technical know-how can quickly come on board. They like that it comes with many options for automated emails and drip campaigns.

  • Customizable email templates: Users like that the tool offers customizable email templates with the drag-and-drop editor, which lets them customize color schemes, edit photos, build content blocks, create hyperlinks, and more.

  • Useful email list segmentation: Users find the email list segmentation beneficial as it helps them ensure their emails reach the right audience.

  • Insightful reporting functionality: Users say that the reporting functionality helps them evaluate the performance of email campaigns.

  • Knowledgeable and responsive customer support: Users find that the customer support staff at Delivra is prompt, responsive, and knowledgeable.

What users think could be improved:

  • Email previews: Users say the email preview feature doesn't always fully display the correct design, and it can be hard to spot the differences.

  • Email formatting options: Users want more formatting options for emails, such as subscript and superscript.

Who should use Delivra?


Delivra works well for nonprofits that are looking for reporting and analytics functionality along with all the core email marketing functionalities. Users with little technical know-how should also explore Delivra, since reviewers give it high marks for ease of use.

Next steps

While Constant Contact and Delivra offer free trials for 14 and 60 days, respectively, MailChimp has a Forever Free Pricing plan.

If you think any of these tools suit your nonprofit, you should sign up for a free trial. The free trial period allows you to explore all the offerings in a tool. This way, you can choose the right email marketing app for your nonprofit.

Capterra recommends that you evaluate between three and five systems as you research software tools. You can check out more email marketing software solutions for nonprofits on Capterra's email marketing software directory page. Read reviews and filter products by rating, features, and more.


Methodology


The solutions highlighted in this article are the email marketing software systems for nonprofit that have the highest average overall user rating from nonprofit organizations at the time of writing. For this article, we evaluated 237 email marketing software systems and a total of 4,947 user reviews on Capterra's website for email marketing. Of the total user reviews, 135 reviews were exclusively from users associated with nonprofits.

Here's an overview of our method for choosing this list of top-rated apps:

  • We analyzed reviews from users in the nonprofit sector and shortlisted those products that had four-plus out of five stars with a minimum of eight user reviews.

  • From that list, we considered only those which are listed on Capterra.

  • The "common user feedback" sections include "what users like" and "user recommended improvements" for each product, based on feedback from users who left reviews.

  • The "who should consider this software" section is a summary of analysis conducted on the general comments from software users. This section highlights the most popular features of the software product and recommends who should consider buying that product and why.


Looking for Nonprofit software? Check out Capterra's list of the best Nonprofit software solutions.

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