3 Text Tips to Repurpose Your Emails Into Text Messages

Email and Texting: Powerful Tools for Nonprofits

Nonprofit organizations rely heavily on donations to carry out their missions and make a positive impact on the world. In today's digital age, email and texting, when used in tandem, have become two of the most effective tools for nonprofits to engage donors and increase donations. By using these two channels together, nonprofits can create a powerful strategy to help them achieve their fundraising goals, engage their supporters, and amplify their mission.

In this guide, we'll explore how nonprofits can use email and texting together to engage donors and increase donations.

Why Use Email and Texting Together?

Email and texting are both highly effective channels for nonprofits to communicate with their donors. According to a report by Nonprofit Times, the average open rate for nonprofit emails is around 25%. This means that for every 100 emails sent, 25 are opened and read by the recipient. This is a higher open rate than many other industries, including retail and healthcare.

Text messaging, on the other hand, has even higher open rates. With momoGood Messaging, your organization can achieve a 99% open rate with texting. This means that for every 100 text messages sent, 99 are opened. This is an incredibly high open rate, making texting an excellent tool for nonprofits to engage their donors.

The data from M+R Benchmarks reinforces this pattern year after year: email remains the workhorse of nonprofit digital communications, but its click-through rates have been declining steadily, hovering around 1% or less for many organizations. Meanwhile, SMS click-through rates routinely exceed 10%. Using both channels together lets you leverage email's storytelling capacity and SMS's immediacy to create a communication strategy that's stronger than either channel alone.

By using email and texting together, nonprofits can create a powerful communication strategy that can help them increase donations and engage donors. Here are three tips on how to use email and texting together effectively.

Tip 1: Use Email to Drive Donors to Text Messaging

One way to use email and texting together is to use email to drive donors to text messaging. Nonprofits can include a call to action in their emails, asking donors to text a keyword to a specific number. Once the donor texts the keyword, they can be added to the nonprofit's text messaging list. For more ways to build your subscriber base, see our guide on 20 ways to grow your text messaging list.

This approach can be highly effective because it allows nonprofits to capture the donor's attention through email and then engage with them more directly through text messaging. Text messaging is a more personal and immediate communication channel, which can help nonprofits build stronger relationships with their donors.

How to structure the cross-channel CTA: The most effective email-to-SMS calls to action are specific, simple, and benefit-driven. Rather than a generic "Sign up for texts," try a value proposition: "Text IMPACT to 55555 to get exclusive updates on how your gift is making a difference." This gives the donor a reason to opt in beyond just receiving more messages. Place the CTA prominently — above the fold in your email or immediately after a compelling story or statistic.

Consider timing, too. The best moment to invite an email subscriber to join your text list is right after they've taken an action: made a donation, registered for an event, or clicked through to read a story. That's when engagement is highest and the ask feels like a natural next step, not an interruption.

Tip 2: Repurpose Email Content for Text Messaging

Another way to use email and texting together is to repurpose content from email into a text message. Nonprofits can take content from their email campaigns, such as newsletters or fundraising appeals, and condense it into a shorter text message. This allows nonprofits to reach donors who may not have read the email or who prefer to receive information through text messaging.

When repurposing content for text messaging, it's important to keep the message short and concise. Text messages are most effective at 160 characters or fewer. Extract the single most compelling point from your email, whether it's a story, a statistic, or a deadline, and make that the entire text. Including a call to action in the text message, such as a link to a donation page, can also help increase donations.

For example, a 500-word email appeal about a matching gift deadline becomes a two-sentence text: "Your gift is doubled until midnight. Give now and 2x your impact: [link]." The urgency and simplicity drive action in a way that a longer email sometimes cannot.

The anatomy of a repurposed text message: Every effective email-to-SMS conversion follows a predictable pattern. Start by identifying the single strongest element of your email — the one line that would make someone stop scrolling. Then build your text around it using this structure:

• Hook (first 40 characters): The attention-grabber. This is what appears in the notification preview on a locked phone screen. Make it count. "Your gift was just doubled" is stronger than "We have exciting news."
• Context (next 60–80 characters): One sentence that explains why this matters or what's at stake. "A generous donor is matching every gift through midnight."
• CTA + link (remaining characters): A clear action and a short URL. "Double your impact now: [link]"

The entire message should be under 160 characters if possible. According to the Campaign Monitor email marketing benchmarks, the average marketing email contains 434 words. Distilling that into 160 characters forces clarity — and that clarity is exactly why SMS messages drive higher response rates.

What to repurpose and what to leave in email: Not every email translates well to SMS. Here's a practical guide:

Tip 3: Use Text Messaging for Urgent Appeals

Text messaging is an excellent tool for urgent appeals. If a nonprofit has an urgent fundraising need, such as a disaster relief effort or a matching gift deadline, they can use text messaging to quickly reach their donors and ask for support. Text messaging is a more immediate communication channel than email, which can help nonprofits raise funds quickly in times of need.

When using text messaging for urgent appeals, it's important to be clear about the urgency of the situation and include a clear call to action. Nonprofits should also follow up with donors after the appeal has ended, thanking them for their support and letting them know how their donation made a difference. Learn more in our guide to nonprofit text messaging.

Timing your SMS around your email sends: The relationship between email and SMS timing can make or break a multi-channel campaign. Research from Litmus shows that most email opens occur within the first hour of delivery, with a long tail over the next 24 hours. This creates a natural coordination strategy:

• Day 1: Send the email with the full story, context, and multiple CTAs.
• Day 2 (or same-day afternoon): Send the SMS to the segment that didn't open the email. The text becomes a second chance to reach non-openers with the core ask.
• Final day: If there's a deadline (matching gift, event registration, campaign close), send a last-chance SMS to anyone who hasn't acted yet. This is where SMS urgency shines — a text that says "4 hours left to double your gift" feels immediate in a way that email cannot.

This staggered approach respects your supporters' attention while maximizing the chance that they see and act on your appeal. It also avoids the common mistake of sending email and SMS simultaneously to the same person with the same message, which can feel repetitive and erode trust.

Bonus: Segment Donors for Targeted Communication

Segmenting donors based on their interests and giving history can help nonprofits create more targeted and effective communication campaigns. Nonprofits can use email and text messaging to communicate with different segments of their donor base, providing them with personalized messaging and appeals.

Channel preference segmentation: Beyond traditional demographic and behavioral segmentation, consider segmenting by channel preference. Some supporters consistently open and act on emails but ignore texts. Others are the reverse. Over time, you can identify which supporters respond best to which channel and adjust your strategy accordingly. The goal isn't to blast every message through every channel — it's to reach each supporter through the channel where they're most responsive.

This is where a unified platform matters. When your email and SMS tools are separate systems, coordinating campaigns requires manual exports, imports, and list management. When they're unified — as they are in momoGood — the segmentation, send logic, and reporting happen automatically. You can see which supporters opened the email, which ones didn't, and send the SMS follow-up only to the non-openers, all without touching a spreadsheet.

The best way to get the engagement you want to amplify your mission and increase donations is to use email and texting together. By repurposing the stories from your email into texts, you don't even have to worry about creating new content. For a broader view of how texting fits alongside other outreach channels, see our guide on direct mail vs. mobile marketing.

Start Repurposing Your Email Content for SMS

If you don't currently use texting as part of your digital strategy and are ready to get started, momoGood Messaging makes it easy to coordinate email and SMS in one platform. With no-code integrations that connect to your email tools and CRM, your team can run coordinated campaigns without manual data work. Talk to our team to get started.