Awards season is in full swing, and while we might not have red-carpet hosts like Giuliana Rancic or Laverne Cox to guide us through the glam, the Donor Relations Group was thrilled to don our virtual tuxedos and evening gowns to cover the inaugural Really Good Emails Awards! 🎉 This event exults and showcases stellar for-profit marketing emails that are out there proving inspiration can come from everywhere, and truly knows no bounds.
At DRG, we believe there’s a world of ideas beyond the nonprofit sector, and we encourage you to explore that vast landscape for fresh inspiration. Whether it’s innovation from the corporate realm or creativity in other unexpected places, we’re all about finding insights that elevate our work.
So, as we dive into 2025, we’re excited to share the top 5 email trends that will help you shine like a cutting-edge marketer!
Progress Bars in Emails What it is
A progress bar offers users a clear visual representation of their advancement through a process, such as a multi-step form, survey, or checkout process. It shows how much has been accomplished toward a goal and how much is left. Who is Leveraging This Trend Going
Why It Works:
Progress bars leverage one’s sense of urgency and are especially effective on those with a strong completion bias. The tool gives readers a sense of accomplishment, motivating the user to complete the journey (e.g., finishing a sign-up, donation, or purchase) within an established framework. It also gives the reader a sense of control.
The standard progress bar design also aligns with the F-pattern reading style, drawing the eye toward key actions.
How You Can Use It:
Progress bars aren’t just for showing progress towards a goal you want your donor to accomplish. You can utilize them in your first-time donor journey, as in the email above from Going, to show readers what they can expect to see from you.
Or consider using it to communicate the donor’s dollar at work. For example, consider a progress bar with these milestones:
Gift received > Program officer finding the perfect use > Three coats purchased for unhoused family > Coats delivered to the family!
An impact journey like this is our favorite use of the progress bar, yet it remains a wildly underutilized practice in the nonprofit sector.
The most common use in our sector is showing how close a campaign is to meeting its goal, encouraging donors to "close the gap." Also, don’t limit yourself to the typical design. Think outside the bar with images like these:
Credit: Givebutter.com 
Credit: FundraiserInsights.org Potential Drawbacks
Misleading visuals can break trust if the actual progress doesn't match what's displayed. So be honest.
Calls To Action (CTAs) Placed Above the Fold
What it is
The call to action (CTA) is the action you want your reader to take. Though sometimes a blue hyperlink is used, buttons are recommended.
The fold is a term from the past. It refers to the top half of a newspaper that is visible before opening it completely. In our digital age, the fold simply refers to the visible area of the screen before a user must scroll to read more.
So, the trend is to have your call-to-action button in a location that does not require scrolling. Who is Leveraging This Trend Fitbit
Why It Works
Ending a conversation with a CTA may make sense when you have a face-to-face captive audience. But make no mistake—email readers are no captive audience. As our DRG friend Ashley Budd writes in her book Mailed It!, you have two seconds to convey your message to your reader. And that’s assuming that they opened the email.
Placing a call to action (CTA) at the top of the email or above the fold ensures it is seen quickly and frames the rest of the message.
How You Can Use It
CTAs placed above the fold catch readers before they lose interest.
Be sure to highlight urgent appeals or limited-time matches right at the top.
Think of your communications as a pyramid. Place your main point/CTA at the very top, and then use the body of your email as support for it.
Potential Drawbacks
Top-placed CTAs can make emails feel pushy and impersonal if overused or overly aggressive.
Personalized Subject Lines and Preheaders
What It Is
Subject lines and preheaders should include recipient-specific details (e.g., name, interests) to make the email feel tailored. Merge fields are used at a minimum, though more sophisticated versions include content customized according to data.
Who Is Leveraging This Trend
In this All Trails x Calm collaboration, the duo offers personalized recommendations based on the user’s location. The recommendations feel tailored and relevant.
Why It Works
Personalization builds trust and relevance. In other words, it feels more valuable.
When you earn a reputation for generating valuable content, your emails are more likely to be opened. More people opening your emails typically leads to more engagement with the content.
How You Can Use It
Use donor names. Reference their past contributions or causes they care about. Customize the call to action (CTA) based on where they are in their donor journey. For example, try using “Give Again” vs. “Give Now” depending on whether or not they are a new donor.
Potential Drawbacks
Poor execution (e.g., wrong names or mismatched details) can damage credibility. We’ve said it before and we will say it again: Data integrity should be a top priority. Your competitors (anyone else who sends your donors emails) will leverage this tactic. So do what you can now to ensure that poor data integrity won’t keep you from innovating.
Bold Visual Hierarchies
What It Is
Businesses are leaning into clear headings, bold styling, and intentional white space to create skimmable layouts.
Who Is Leveraging This Trend
Miro Notice how Miro uses bold headings to guide users through onboarding.
Why It Works
Skimmable layouts help readers (and AI robots) find key information quickly.
How You Can Use It
Don’t overlook this easy and valuable tactic. Think about how you like to see information organized. Use headers to break apart your text visually.
Pro Tip: Remember that with the launch of AI-generated email summaries, the preview text that you worked so hard to craft has now been replaced by an AI summary (indicated by the encircled arrows below).
Because of this, clarity is more important than ever. If the content of your email is even remotely confusing, that AI summary may be inaccurate.
Mitigate misinterpretation of your message by using bullets and headers to establish visual hierarchies. Doing so can help steer the robots in the right direction.
Potential Drawbacks
Overuse of bold or colored text = visual clutter. Visual clutter = confusion.Confusion = reader attrition (aka reduced readership).
Interactive Elements
What It Is
Elements like clickable quizzes, buttons, build-your-own products, hover effects, and decision trees create dynamic and engaging user experiences.
Who Is Leveraging This Trend
Why It Works
Interactive email elements work for the same reason that 41 million people took BuzzFeed’s What State Should You Live In quiz. We have an innate desire to be entertained and satisfy our curiosity.
More importantly, interactive elements can guide users towards a concrete answer or solution to a problem with less perceived effort than if they were to have pursued the answer independently. It removes the guesswork by simplifying a potentially complex course of action.
How You Can Use It
Use interactive elements to entertain, inform, or match donors with causes they might support. Many planned giving platforms match donors with giving vehicles based on their financial and philanthropic goals.
Cornell University has a reputation for its engaging newsletters. Notice how they slip in organization-related trivia.
BONUS: Prominent and Highly Visual Hero Images
What It Is
Hero images are large, high-quality visuals placed prominently at the top of an email to capture attention immediately and set the tone for the content. These images often introduce the email’s main message or campaign.
Who Is Leveraging This Trend
Some of the businesses that have embraced this design trend are:
Wildwonder, an organic prebiotic+probiotic sparkling drink brand
Armra, a bovine colostrum supplement
Athletic Brewing Company, a non-alcoholic brewery
EBOOST, an energy drink brand
Take a look through your inbox, and you’ll likely be able to add more businesses and organizations to the list.
Why It Works
Strong hero images like the ones above are attention-grabbers. They are visually interesting and tell the reader what they can expect in the email.
It conveys a lot of information quickly and sets the emotional tone of the email, leveraging the power of visuals to enhance messaging impact.
How You Can Use It
Use hero images to spotlight powerful visuals, such as beneficiaries, volunteers in action, or a key campaign moment (e.g., children receiving school supplies or wildlife being protected).
Pair with a bold headline and a direct CTA to drive immediate engagement.
Potential Drawbacks
Potential downsides of hero images include accessibility issues due to lack of alt text, slower loading times for users with poor internet connections, and the risk of appearing overly commercial or misaligned with the campaign's message.
Furthermore, there is increasing chatter about how images are (or will be) conveyed via AI summaries. As of iOS 18.3 Beta, Apple Intelligence provides summaries of images sent via SMS, but not email. And based on the fact that the SMS summary does not currently take into account any text presented in the image, it may be a while before we get there with email. What this means is you shouldn’t rely on imagery to convey your message—at least for now.
As we step away from the glitz and glamour of the inaugural Really Good Emails Awards, it’s clear that the stars of email marketing are shining brighter than ever with these emerging trends.
From progress bars guiding recipients through their journey to strategically placed CTAs that roll out the welcome mat right at the top of your inbox, 2025 is set to be a blockbuster year for fundraisers and marketers alike.
As any red carpet pro will tell you, it’s all about captivating your audience and leaving them wanting more.
Now, are you ready to take the spotlight?
Want More?
If you liked this blog post, here are some other things we think you may find helpful:
Mailed It Email Companion (free)
The Mailed It! Email Companion is trained with specific instructions from the book Mailed It! by Ashley Budd and Dayana Kibilds, including subject lines that summarize the email, simplified language, optimal link and button text, and the most popular reading patterns. It’s better than an untrained AI tool, but it’s not perfect. If you’re not getting results you like, start over. And always edit and review — you know your reader best.
Gamification Webinar recording In this innovative hour, we dive into gamification in fundraising and donor relations. Learn how to turn your fundraising and engagement campaigns into immersive, interactive experiences that captivate donors.
