Your donors’ email inboxes now have the most strict and heartless guardians ever: AI bots.

As human beings with inboxes that have become a burdensome search through piles of spam messages every single day, most of us are happy for the AI help.

For hardworking fundraisers using email to connect with donors … not so much. Not like it was easy to get through to people before, but AI screening is making it harder than ever for donors to even see your messages. Much less open and respond to them.

But all is not lost. There are things you can do that can help you get past AI email screening.

The most important thing to know is this: The bots really care about Engagement. If your donors engage with your emails – that is, open them, click through, reply, forward – almost anything – the bots will be far more likely to let you through.

If you are not sparking engagement, your emails may be “deprioritized” – hidden away. Possibly even deleted. Emailers used to focus on not getting marked as spam. Now the barrier is even harder. Your messages may not be going into “spam jail,” but they can become just as invisible to your recipients.

This means we have to prove our messages add value to our recipients’ lives. Every single time. Here are some ways to do that:

• Write like a human. AI has become adept at spotting marketing and other less-relevant messages. Now more than ever you need to write like a human to make sure your emails are landing in inboxes and not filtered into Spam or Promotional tabs.
  • Don’t write like your English teacher taught you to. Use contractions, start sentences with And. Even mistakes and odd grammar – the kind real people make – can work to get past the bots.
  • Look out for common go-to phrases that normal people don’t use, but marketing leans heavily on. Like “Act now,” “Time is running out,” “Match expires at midnight.” Even “You can make a difference” may push the robot toward seeing your message as unwanted marketing. Read your copy out loud. Any time you hear a phrase that real people would be unlikely to use in conversation, look for different ways to say it.

• Subject lines:
  • Shorter subject lines are better. Try not to go beyond 55 characters.
  • Recipient’s first name in the subject line isn’t working like it used to. (It’s still working in the preview text, BUT preview text is going away as AI summaries take over.)
  • Curiosity and mystery subject lines are also not as effective as they were. I’m really struggling with this one!

• Email content
  • AI likes bullet points in your emails. At least for now!
  • Don’t use “click here” for links. It’s a phrase the AI will spot and use against your message. (Anyway your friends don’t use that language in their emails to you. I hope.) Instead make your button text or link text the reason why they should click. ‘”Feed a family today” rather than “click here to make a gift today.”
  • Vary email length. Send some longer ones, send some shorter ones.
  • Don’t use the same template for every email you send! Red flag for the bots.
  • Invite replies. When people reply to your emails, your engagement score goes way up. Make it easy. By all means don’t have the return address be an unseen address. See what you can do to invite people to respond – but don’t let it become formulaic

One of the hard things about this is that anything we know now about beating the bots can change. In fact, it will change. Because senders figure out these things, word gets around, and pretty soon all the spammers are doing it. So the algorithm changes.

Which leads us to the most important thing: You must keep on top of these things. In the comfortable old world of direct mail, truths stay true for years, even decades. For email, everything changes all the time.

It’s a new world. With some new rules. But you can win by being human. With knowledge.

Want more support, ideas, and proven strategies? Join the waitlist for The Fundraisingology Lab — our year-round learning community for fundraisers who want to grow their skills, income, and impact. You’ll be the first to know when doors open.

Related Blog Posts:

• 4 Almost Magical Ways to Get People to Read Your Fundraising Emails
• The Top Secret for Raising Funds Online
• More Is Better: 4 Steps to Boost Your Email Fundraising