How To Add Personalised Donation Links To Your Emails – GiveEasy

Personalised donation links or personalised URLs (PURLs) allow you to provide your supporters with a unique URL to a pre-filled donation form like below.

When donors click this unique link to donate they will find their donation form already filled in with their details, ready to donate. All the donor has to do is then check their details are correct and make the payment.

How to create pre-filled donation links for your email database

In order to create pre-filled donation links first you must have the donation page you wish to use created. If you have not created this yet please log in to the GiveEasy platform and go to My Appeals > Manage Appeals > Create A New Appeal. You can select any template as pre-filled donation links will work with all donation page templates.

Once you have created your donation page you will then need to email theteam@giveeasy.org with the following information:

The donation page URL you wish to use. For example: https://mycharity.giveeasy.org/donationpage

If you are using multiple tracking URLs (e.g. https://mycharity.giveeasy.org/edm1, https://mycharity.giveeasy.org/edm2) then please provide all the relevant tracking links you wish to use.

An excel spreadsheet of your supporter database with the columns:

First Name
Last Name
Email Address
Donation Amount 1 (this is the lowest dollar handle amount you wish to ask of the person)
Donation Amount 2 (this is the middle dollar handle amount)
Donation Amount 3 (this is the highest dollar handle amount)

Note: You can also pre-fill other custom donation form fields you may have (e.g. postal address) you just will need to include this data as a new column in the spreadsheet.

If you have different databases being used for different emails then you will have to provide these as separate spreadsheets indicating what spreadsheet is associated with what donation page URL. It may also be easier to do these as separate emails for each.

Once these details have been emailed through our team will then take this information, process it and email you back a CSV file with all the relevant pre-filled links for your database.

This document will look like the below example:

As you can see the GiveEasy team will have added ‘Link 1’ ‘Link 2’ ‘Link 3’ and ‘No Amount Link’ columns to your spreadsheet. These are unique pre-filled links for each person in your list as well as for each donation amount asks you have, including a blank ‘your choice’ option which allows your donors to still have all their details filled in except for the amount which they can type in themselves.

For example, If Jane Doe receives the following email and clicks the $50 button she will be taken to a donation page with all her details filled including the donation amount field as $50.

If Jane clicks on $25 then $25 will appear in the amount field. If Jane clicks on $100 then $100 will appear in the amount field. If Jane clicks my choice then the form will appear with no amount like below.

How to add your pre-filled donation links into your EDM

Adding personalisation to your EDMs is different depending on your email marketing provider. It’s important that you follow your own provider's instructions on how to add personalisation to your emails.

The following steps are generic instructions on the process of adding pre-filled donations links to your EDM. Please refer to your email marketing provider’s support information for detailed instructions on how to implement these actions in their system.

Upload your pre-filled CSV audience file provided to you by GiveEasy into your email marketing system. Please ensure you select that you would like to upload from a CSV file.
Next select the columns you wish to import. It is important that you select all columns in the spreadsheet.
Then you will need to match up the columns in your spreadsheet with any existing fields you may already have. For example, “First Name” = “First Name” , “Email” = “Email Address”. For columns such as “Donation Amount 1”, “Link 1” etc that do not have a matching field, please add a field in your email system for these. Name these fields whatever you find easiest to remember. We often suggest you name them exactly the same as the columns to avoid confusion.
Complete any other relevant steps to finish the upload.
Next you will need to identify these new fields as ‘Merge Tags’. Merge tags are what allows you to include personalisation in your emails. To do this you will need to go into your email merge tag settings to ensure the ‘Donation Amount 1’, ‘Donation Amount 2’, ‘Donation Amount 3’, ‘Link 1’, ‘Link 2’, ‘Link 3’, and ‘No Amount Link’ are added as merge tags.
Once you have done this, note down the merge tags for all these values as you will need them for the next step. For example:

Donation Amount 1 = *[MMERGE4]*
Donation Amount 2 = *[MMERGE5]*
Donation Amount 3 = *[MMERGE6]*
Link 1 = *[MMERGE7]*
Link 2 = *[MMERGE8]*
Link 3 = *[MMERGE9]*
No Amount Link = *[MMERGE10]*

Finally, it is time to add your pre-filled donation links into your EDM. To do this you will need to locate your intended email and click edit.
Once you are in the email editor add your relevant copy. If you would like to insert a personalised donation amount ask (as seen in the example below) simply add in the relevant merge tags.

If you wish to add a button all you need to do is add the ‘Link 1’, ‘Link 2’ etc merge tags into the web address field.

It’s important to note that merge tags are case-sensitive so if you have a typo it will not work.

Once you are happy with everything simply click save and test your merge tags are working as they should.

Again every email marketing system is different so it’s important you refer to their instructions when uploading your audience, setting new merge tags and adding personalised fields into your EDM.

Not all email marketing systems include personalisation features so it’s important to check your provider supports this functionality. If you can personalise your emails with First Name it is likely you will be able to add pre-filled donation links.