Emails

The Fundraise Up platform includes transactional email tools that automate receipting, acknowledgement, and action-based notifications for your organization. These emails are configured and customized at both the account and Campaign levels in Fundraise Up.

This article specifically covers how to configure and customize emails and sequences from the Dashboard settings. To learn more about how emails are configured and customized at the Campaign level, refer to this article.

Templates

Below are the categories for the emails and sequences available in Fundraise Up and the related email templates.

Enabling and disabling emails

The configuration view for every email includes a Send email dropdown. This dropdown enables you to toggle whether the email should be sent. When the option is set to Do not send, Fundraise Up will not send that email. Toggling-off certain emails is helpful if you have a separate system in place for sending transactional emails to supporters.

As a best practice and where possible, we recommend using Fundraise Up’s built-in emails, as they have a high deliverability rate, are designed to render correctly in all modern email clients, and often contain deeplinks that enable supporters to easily access information within Donor Portal or other supporter-facing areas of the platform.

Opting individual supporters out of installment receipts

In a campaign where installment receipt emails are turned on, individual supporters can opt out of receiving these emails. Recurring supporters will be able to opt out of installment receipt emails by clicking the link found in the footer of their installment receipt emails. This link will be included from the second installment receipt email onwards.

Organizations can also do this on the supporter’s behalf by going to the Recurring tab in the Dashboard, clicking on any recurring plan, and clicking Edit in the Recurring plan block. This will open a small window with a checkbox option to opt supporters in or out of installment receipt emails.

Previewing and sending test emails

Viewing templates

The configuration view for every email includes an option for previewing emails. When Show preview is selected, a modal is launched that renders the email template and any customizations that have been applied to it.

Sending test emails

The preview modal contains a Send test email button. When the button is selected, you are able to input an email address where a test version of the email will be sent. You can use any valid email address. Emails sent using this function include a test mode heading to help differentiate test emails from production emails.

Email sending domain

By default, platform emails are sent from noreply@fundraiseup.com. However, you can configure a custom sending address to send emails from a domain controlled by your organization.

To set up a custom email sending domain, follow these steps:

1. In your main organization settings, under the Emails then Customization, enter the sender email address you would like supporters to see.
2. Click the Verify button.
3. Configure your DNS server with the settings provided by us.
4. Return to the dashboard and click Verify again to complete the process.

Account-level customizations

The Emails page in Dashboard Settings includes tools for configuring and customizing emails at the account-level. Any modifications to emails in this area of the platform will be used as the default configuration for newly created Campaigns.

Customization settings

At the account-level, you can define boilerplate details and styles for all emails. These settings are described below.

• Sender name: This is the sender name that will appear in a recipient’s inbox. It is best to use a recognizable label such as your organization’s name. Avoid frequent changes to this label to make it easy for supporters to identify emails from your organization.
• Sender email: This is the email address that will be used as the reply-to address in your emails. When a supporter selects the reply option in their email client, the reply-to field will be pre-populated with this value. Underneath this field, there is a Verify button that can be used to verify and use a new sender email.
• Primary color: This color value is used to define color styles for buttons, borders, links, and other elements displayed in emails. The color selector allows HEX, RGB, and HSL values to be input.
• Body background: This value defines the background color of the email. The color selector allows HEX, RGB, and HSL values to be input.
• Header color: This value defines the background color of the header area of the email. Since the header area also contains a logo image, we recommend ensuring that there is an appropriate level of contrast between the background color and logo. As a best practice, this contrast should adhere to WCAG standards. The color selector allows HEX, RGB, and HSL values to be input.
• Logo: The logo image is displayed in the header of the email. The minimum resolution requirements for the image are 160 x 160px. We recommend using an image with a resolution of 320 x 320 px.
• Logo height: This slider controls the vertical sizing of the logo image. This option is useful for resizing images where the height of the image exceeds its width.
• Logo position: This dropdown control lets you define the position of the logo within the email header. Available positions: Left, Center, Right. By default, the logo is center-aligned.
• Text color: This value defines the color of body text. As a best practice, ensure an appropriate level of contrast between the body color (which is always white) and the text color. This color contrast should adhere to WCAG standards.
• Social links: You can customize your emails to include links to your social media profiles. Currently, you can include links to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn profiles. Include the entire URL (including https://) of your profiles in the input fields.
• Footer background: This value defines the background color of the footer area in emails. The color selector allows HEX, RGB, and HSL values to be input.
• Footer text color: This value defines the color of text displayed in the footer area of the email. As a best practice, ensure that the color contrast between the footer text color and footer background are WCAG compliant.
• Footer text: This is a textarea input that enables your organization to include custom text in the footer area of emails. By default, we include boilerplate text that references your organization’s tax ID. We recommend modifying this text to include the tax ID and any other important or required content. The input allows for rich content editing. You can include links, images, and some merge tags.

Campaign-level customizations

While customizations at the account level are useful for defining the default appearance of emails, it is also helpful to configure emails for specific use cases. To accomplish this, each Campaign includes email settings that enable you to override the customizations set at the account level. Learn more →

Localization

If you have enabled Localization for your account, a Localization item is displayed in the Emails settings menu. Selecting this menu item provides access to localization tools for the contents of each email template. The layout of the Localization view displays the labels for your emails using your account’s default language in one column, and the properties for inputting translations in a second column. A language selector in the header of the layout enables you to toggle the languages you have activated for Localization. By default, Fundraise Up includes boilerplate translations for each enabled language. We strongly recommend customizing these labels to meet your organization’s needs. Learn more →