There has been growing volume of interest in 'cause' in the domain of marketing. The aims of cause‐related marketing (CRM) are to build favorable corporate image associated with cause and to increase consumers’ purchase intention to the cause‐related product. In the perspective of CRM effectiveness, this study is interested in the role of donation framing in CRM message (absolute vs. percentage), the number of target victim (one vs. many), and gender. Moreover, this research focuses on the mediating effect of empathic processing. The results of 2 (message framing) × 2 (the number of target victim) × 2 (gender) between‐subjects design show that the main effect of target variables is significant. CRM effectiveness is higher in the absolute (vs. percentage) framing and one (vs. many) target conditions. Females are more favorable to the CRM message than males. Both for male and female participants, the interaction between donation framing and the number of target victims is significant. In detail, when donation is based on absolute Korean won, participants are more favorable to CRM message for one (vs. many) target. However, when donation is based on percentage of sale price, the CRM response between one target and many targets is not significantly different. The results of bootstrapping tests confirm that empathic processing mediates the effect of the number of target victim and gender on CRM. Finally, we address theoretical and insightful managerial implications of this study and discuss about the limitations and future research directions.