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Are There Nonprofit E-mail Lists Available for 'Rental'?
A colleague recently asked this question. Here is our answer. There are a handful of nonprofits who are willing to send an e-mail message to their house file from a compatible organization. They may do it on exchange or for a rental fee. No one, of course, is actually sending their e-mail addresses to another organization, a la traditional list rental. Instead they're taking the other party's message and sending it along with an explanation. This is sometimes called "chaperoned e-mail" and it should actually lift response rates because the donor is getting e-mail from someone they know (the organization they're used to receiving e-mail from). There aren't many of these lists available, and they're more particular about who they'll deal with than traditional list rental (after all, tracing the message back to the list owner is much easier!). Quantities are smaller (most non-profits only have e-mail addresses for 1% to 10% of their direct mail house file). Prices run from the very affordable $50/M range to the ridiculous ($200/M+). Tony Murray Assoc. has a dozen or more e-mail lists, and they're the only broker/manager I know with more than a few. Many list people are still a little uncomfortable with e-mail, and since there's not much profit there (even $250/M x only 25,000 names x 20% = $1250 total commission for a full run!) they are rightfully not devoting lots of resources to this. We've had some success with such lists for one of our clients and expect this to be a significant part of our work in the coming months, so we're compiling data on programs that would be available to nonprofits. Besides "chaperoned e-mail" other nonprofits are allowing brief advertisements inserted into their regular e-mail newsletters. Generally these are four to six lines of text copy, including a link, at a rate of $10 to $20/M (full run only). Distribution depends on the nonprofit's e-newsletter schedule. If you have an online marketing program (e.g. a list, e-newsletter, etc.) that you might make available to nonprofits, or if you are a nonprofit looking for such programs, contact rick@npadvisors.com. February 2003 | ||
