Why your best email needs SMS

The appeals you send during Giving Tuesday and year-end are some of the most important emails you’ll send all year. 

A well-timed text can make each one hit harder.

Many programs run email and text on separate calendars, which means your strongest appeals might be missing the follow-up that could close the gift.

Getting both on the same page is a small shift that changes Giving Tuesday and year-end performance.

Where SMS fits right now
According to M+R’s 2026 Benchmarks report, nonprofits have 176 mobile subscribers for every 1,000 email subscribers.

Mobile revenue jumped 48% in 2025, even as SMS list growth slowed to 4%. 

The revenue is growing faster than the lists are, which, to me, points to smarter use of the channel during the moments that matter most. 

Avalon Consulting’s 2025 year-end report showed that texting was most effective for their clients at peak moments, reinforcing AM/PM email sends and amplifying match deadlines.

It makes sense: Email carries the story and the case for giving. Text shows up as the short, urgent follow-up.

Avalon also found texts re-engaged lapsed audiences who had gone quiet in email. 

A text puts you back on their radar through a channel they haven’t tuned out yet.

Case in point: Defenders of Wildlife reached 140,000 lapsed donors through P2P texts who’d stopped opening emails, raising $29,000 with a 420% ROI.

The follow-up window
The Tatango/MissionWired 2025 Texting Insights Report analyzed 138 million nonprofit texts. 

It found that following an MMS fundraising message with an SMS reminder within three days lifted conversions by 53% and ROI by 46%.

That’s a text-to-text finding, but the logic extends across channels.

A well-timed follow-up in a different format consistently outperforms a standalone message, and the gap between sends matters.

How to make this work for your program
Put both channels on one calendar. If email sends and text sends live in separate spreadsheets, merge them before Q4 planning starts. 

You need to see where they overlap and where a timed text could reinforce an email.

Give each channel a clear role. Email makes the case for giving with story and context. 

Both SMS and MMS texts are generally shorter than emails, making them ideal for deadline reminders and last-chance follow-ups.

Think about using text engagement to sharpen your email segmentation. Someone who clicks a text but doesn’t give is showing you something different than someone who ignores both channels. 

If they’re on your email list too, and you have the capacity, feed that signal back into your segmentation — so the next email they receive acknowledges where they are in the decision process, rather than starting over.

The bottom line
Your email and text schedules should work together.

December gets a lot less chaotic when your channels are already talking to each other.

Check our events list for more or reply to this email to submit one for consideration.

‘Til next time!
Sara