Ben Smith and Karen Matheson of M+R Strategic Services presented the results of their recent study on e-mail messaging metrics. The study included environmental, human rights, and international aid organizations, and looked for benchmarks around both donation and taking action:
Results from other types of nonprofits weren't included in this research, though I particularly wished that arts and/or community organizations had been included. (What can I say, that's what is near and dear to me.) With that grain of salt in mind, here are some of the more useful benchmarks shared at the 2006 NTC:
These are the median results for the mailings in the study:
- Open Rate: 25% (opening an email, or downloading the pictures for it)
- Clickthrough Rate, Advocacy: 9% (clicking on one or more links in the e-mail)
- Clickthrough Rate, Fundraising: 1.5% (clicking on one or more links in the e-mail)
- Response Rate, Advocacy: 10% (indicating interest in the requested action)
- Response Rate, Fundraising: 0.3% (indicating interest in the requested donation)
I was struck by the far greater clickthrough and response rates for advocacy e-mail, as compared to fundraising e-mail. I wouldn't have expected this, given that I have more arts organization experience. Smith also pointed out that online activists become more active online after they've had some form of offline activity such as Meetup.com. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is an investor in Meetup.) So, to drive online activity, get folks together in person periodically.
The M+R study also took on another bit of fundraising marketing lore: what's the best day of the week to get your e-mail read? As it turns out, the end of the week is no longer no-man's land:
- Monday: 26% open rate/12% clickthrough rate/11% response rate
- Tuesday: 23%/12%/10%
- Wednesday: 25%/12%/8%
- Thursday: 27%/18%/11%
- Friday: 26%/18%/11%
Note that these numbers are across both e-mail requests for both dollars and direct action. From now on, I'll try to drive outreach on Thursday or Friday. There was a lot of theorizing in the room about why this might be the case, but neither the presenters nor the audience had a good explanation for what drove the 50% uptick in clickthroughs, or why the response rates didn't rise along with clickthrough rates. Frankly, even with the response rates steady across all days, I'd like to capture the increased clickthrough rate just to drive engagement and mindshare.
Getting a handle on list churn was extremely helpful. List churn for most organizations is 28% per year. So, if you plan to grow your e-mail list, you need to take this annual loss into account when setting goals for the number of new e-mail subscribers. In a related takeaway, it's important to engage members so that they stay on your list rather than churn off. On average, two-year-plus list members are almost three times as responsive as a new list member. The big lesson? Keeping down churn not only keeps your list growing, it also makes the names that you have more valuable.
Some other best practices that M+R recommends for nonprofits to think about:
- Budget for success. There is a clear, proven relationship between yout online communications budget and both your online fundraising totals AND the total advocacy actions taken
- Invest in list growth. Larger email lists are associated with better online activism and fundraising results.
- Anticipate and track list churn. You must plan on compensating for 28% average list churn when you are planning for email list growth. Keep an eye on which list sources tend to generate more churn than other sources do.
- Improve retention of list subscribers. Lists that have an "older" subscriber base have higher action rates, and will generate more citizen letters. They also noted that the age of the organization is not what matters; it's the age of the program.
- Carefully track recruitment efforts. If you really want to know how you're doing, you need to take a snapshot of your action level before you start recruitment.
- Carefully target and segment e-mail messages.
What does this all boil down to in dollars? Fewer than 5% of the gifts from online campaigns were for over $250, but that 5% represented almost 40% of the total dollars raised. Some folks in the room shared averages -- the average gift from direct mail is $45, but the average gift online is $120. Read: There are many small gifts being given in online campaigns, but at the same time, the large gifts are very large.
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