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Easy Ways to Improve Email Response
When I worked in direct mail fundraising, we said that 90% of prospective donors didn’t even open our envelopes. Yet, comparatively little time and effort was put into testing outer envelopes. The same is true with email. Many of your emails aren’t being opened. There are four possible reasons: - It isn’t being delivered: It’s vital that you make every possible attempt to keep email addresses accurate and current. When emails from past donors bounce, you need to reach out to them via postal mail and ask them for an updated address. Gift Receipts are a great, low-risk way to ask for email addresses.
- It’s ending up in their spam folder: Don’t be too cute with your content or subject line. Your donors are using ever-more-devious ways to cull spam from their inbox. Test your letters with a group of insiders to make sure each issue is being delivered before you send it to the whole list.
- Your subject line is vague, too-cute, or suspicious. Again, don’t be too clever. The key word or words of your issues (animal safety, kidney research, etc.) should probably be in the subject line of every email.
- Your “from” address is suspicious or unknown. I used to get emails from the Legislative Information office of a nonprofit. Unfortunately the “from” address was just “LegInfo” and it looked like junk to me. Why not use a short form of your organization’s name, like “Kidney Assoc.” as the from address? Better yet, test two different “from” addresses and see which one produces the better results.
October 2005
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