Blog: Email Campaigns

Well Written, Unique Emails Stand Out in Crowded Inboxes

I’m still deciding which candidate to support in the primaries. This means I get a lot of email every day from the several candidates I’m following. I don’t pour over every message that hits my inbox. Usually I delete most without a thought and only read the ones that really catch my eye, which doesn’t happen all that often. Today I was excited to get an email that not only caught my eye but also kept my attention. 

There were two reasons this particular message worked – it was a clever idea and it was incredibly well written. The message itself was essentially just an email forward. Senator Chris Dodd forwarded me an update he got from his online director on how his online campaign is doing in comparison to the other campaigns. (Disclaimer: We designed the Senator’s first presidential website at the end of last year and helped with online strategy but haven’t worked with his team recently.)

The mass email forward has been done before by candidates and advocacy groups, but this one surpassed other efforts I’ve seen. Its personal tone and great writing throughout made me scroll down to read the entire email chain – and happy that I did. The email even made me want to donate so Dodd can beat John Edwards’ fundraising goal, and I like both candidates.

Kudos to the Dodd team for sending out a superb email – I think you’ll see a good boost to your fundraising numbers from it. I’d love to see some smaller organizations try to replicate this message for their causes. The returns will easily transfer to many issues, and sending supporters an honest and unique email like this will make a good impact when it’s well done.

Read the message and pay special attention to the tone and writing style throughout it – that’s what really sets this apart and makes the message work.

How You Can Fix It

In my last post, I took a quick spin through some email deliverability stats and explained how to judge how much deliverability should matter to you. Today I'd like to share some quick ideas about exposure to deliverability issues and what you can do to diagnose and treat the problems, if you have any. If you are using an email provider you're probably okay, but it's always good to know about deliverability to make sure that your vendor is on top of it.

State of SPAM Filtering by Email Providers

You may wonder why your email could be filtered or blocked in the first place. Well, back in the day most SPAM filtering was based on keywords in your email. That's no longer the case, and now ISPs are paying much more attention to the behavior (reputation) of you as a sender or more accurately the reputation of the IP address that your email is sent from. Ken Magill explains in Direct what he identifies as the three biggest factors leading to deliverability problems:Spam complaint rate: the percentage of people complaining that that a marketer's email is spamUnknown user rate: the percentage of the mail going to email addresses that no longer existHitting spam traps: ISPs often turn unused addresses into spam traps - hit these, and there is going to be troubleThe first and second issues are functions of your opt-in policy. If you are making sure that your users actually sign up for your emails, have a solid opt-in list, and are clear to prospective signups that you are going to email them on a regular basis, then you should be good to go. If you are just subscribing every email address you come across or don't clearly tell users that you are going to email them, then you are going to get a lot more complaints. If this sounds like you, it's time for a new opt-in policy.

The last issue - the unknown user rate - is even easier to control. First, check to make sure that your email software isn't repeatedly sending messages to addresses that bounce. If there is no way to prevent this, that means you'll need to clean your list after every send. This will be fairly time-consuming, but it is something you should do (or signup with a more robust email system). Really it comes down to a math problem - cost of lost revenue/action/education and manual cleanup   vs. subscription fees and transition costs). Your answer may vary depending   on your needs.

In a World Where ISPs Hate Your Email Campaigns...

I was at an open house for Nonprofit Tech Geeks last week and had a great discussion with Charles from Wired for Change about email deliverability. Since we know and have worked with a lot of nonprofits that don't use a full-service email provider to handle their deliverability, I thought it would be helpful to write about why email delivery matters and what to keep an eye on to make sure your emails show up at their intended destination. 

There have been a number of reports released in the last year about email deliverability, or the lack thereof. Mindshare Interactive's Ongoing Study - most recently released in September 2006 (contact info required for download) - found that up to 24% of email coming from nonprofits goes directly into a spam filter or is blocked by an email service. On the other hand, Dr. Bill Pease from Convio pointed out last year that the average number doesn't reflect users of systems like the dearly departed GetActive, where he only saw a 5% non-delivery rate. 

Corporate reports tend to show a higher incidence of non-delivery, which is to be expected given the nature of commercial email. For more information on that I recommend reading Media Post's article on the topic, statistics from the Email Stat Center, IAB’s 2006 White Paper (PDF Format), and Lyris’ most recent Email Report card (PDF).

The Bottom Line

If you use email to raise money and spur advocacy (if you don't, drop me a line, we should talk), there is an easy way to estimate how much poor email deliverability hurts your efforts. Say you send a monthly email fundraising appeal to a list of 10,000 people that gets a 1% average conversion rate, and your average online gift is $50. In order to calculate your total revenue, just multiply it all together.12 sends * 10,000 members * .01 donation rate * $50 =  $60,000 annual gross revenueSo, if your emails aren't getting to 24% of your subscribers (or conversely, you ARE reaching 76%) you just add that term to the math above.12 sends * 10,000 members * .76 deliverable rate  * .01 donation rate * $50 = $45,600It is entirely possible that your deliverability issues will cost you $14,400 in a year. Add to that the lost advocacy/engagement of your non-fundraising emails and it probably makes sense to either pay a professional firm to handle your email sending or spend some quality time fixing the problem. In my next post, I'll describe how you can fix the issue yourself. 

On the other hand, if you are only losing 5%, or less, you probably can get a much better return on your investment by implementing a testing regime and spending more time on your landing pages. Those kinds of programs can significantly improve your bottom line. Feel free to contact me about how to do that too. 

Stay tuned for more on deliverability next week. In the meantime, feel free to add your horror/success stories in the comments – I would love to hear your experiences!