Email Best Practices

After adding content to your email, test that it is properly formatted and can be received through popular email service providers, on a variety of screen sizes, and in light and dark mode.

If your organization sends communications to Canadian residents, even if your organization is based outside of Canada, your communications must comply with the 2014 Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). This law requires a respondent to take an action of consent to receive emails, and for organizations to show records of consent confirmations, among other requirements.

CASL-related features are now available to facilitate compliance with the law in these areas:

• Get express consent from Canadian contacts for email subscriptions.

• Review email address collections and opt-out modifications.

These features are specific for CASL-compliance, and do not represent the only actions that you should take to comply with the law. To review what actions you should take for complete compliance, you can review the official page. Discuss full compliance with legal counsel. You can also review Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation and Luminate Online.

Enable CASL-compliant features for eCards

See Create an eCard Campaign.

1. Clear the Email Opt-in Checkbox Default checkbox under Sender and Recipient Options when customizing the eCard.

2. Contact Blackbaud and request the TAF_OPT_IN_DEFAULT site parameter be set to false. This clears your email opt-in checkbox by default.

3. (Optional) Run the Email Opt-In Status Report to view the opt-in and opt-out modifications made by constituents.

Data protection laws across Europe are undergoing their first substantial changes in approximately 20 years. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which became law on May 25, 2018, is at the center of the change and has received intense coverage across the nonprofit sector and mainstream press. The rationale behind the changes is modernize aging data collection practices and incorporate data protection, privacy mandates, and best practices.

At Blackbaud, data protection and privacy are a priority. We continue to design new functionality that marry data compliance with fundraising best practice, and our new communication preference management features are designed to provide organizations with the tools they need to ensure their data collection and usage practices meet the requirements of GDPR, as part of your compliance process.

If you are an EU organization, please refer to Luminate Online GDPR documentation and our GDPR Toolkit and Collecting Consent Customer Hub for more information and GDPR resources.

Use two-step verification or double opt-in to verify email addresses of new constituents and avoid invalid email addresses. Targeting responsive recipients can help improve email delivery and open rate.