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September 13, 2007

Tips for Perfecting the Email Newsletter

By Marla E. Nobles
Lining the streets of lower Manhattan, one indistinguishable delicatessen is followed by a second and a third and so on, with similarly indistinguishable signs offering up the expected fare: deli sandwiches, wraps, the requisite hot and cold salad bar smorgasbord. A lone neon sign flashes in the distance, "EAT HERE." Okay.

Nonprofit organizations would be smart to take a cue from the strategy used by the owners of, well, EAT HERE, and appeal to their donors' "appetites," i.e., their dislikes and likes, and that metaphorical grumbling stomach of what's timely and actionable.

Two separate studies of nonprofits' e-newsletters came to similar conclusions, that if done right the e-newsletter can be an effective tool in an overcrowded nonprofit space to capture list members' attentions and drive them to your Web site.

According to the latest M+R Strategic Services study of five national nonprofits, newsletter open and click-through rates averaged 20 percent and 4 percent, respectively. Karen Matheson, co-author of M+R Strategic Services latest survey of e-newsletters, said these numbers are desirable.

Similarly, a separate study by Internet software and service provider Convio, The 2007 eCRM Nonprofit Benchmark Index™ study, found an overall open rate of 22 percent and a 4 percent click-through rate using data from July 2005 to July 2006.

The M+R study, which took place between February and June of this year, looked at standard monthly e-newsletters sent to the majority of the participating organizations' email lists and sought to target ways to effectively grab readers' attention and draw them in. Both studies examined messaging metrics such as click-through and open rates, while the M+R study took a deeper look at design, content and link popularity.

Findings yielded the following recommendations:

• Place the Most Important Articles at the Top. The top two articles, referring to placement, received an average click through of 0.8 percent, while articles below the second slot received 0.4 percent click through.

While those rates are considered low, "It's fine for specific links and again depends on the kind of link," said Matheson. "You can't compare a new story link to a donation link or action alert link," for which good to excellent click throughs are between 4 percent and 10 percent.

• Send Compelling Content. Both open and click-through rates are heavily influenced by the quality and relevance of the content to constituents. Test personalizing content to individuals based on where they live, what they care about, or what they've done in the past.
  
  
• Give People an Opportunity to Donate or Take Action. E-newsletters that included links to donate or take action resulted in readers clicking on those links.
  
  
• Consider Frequency and Timing. E-newsletter subscribers expect predictability around when messages are sent. Acceptable frequency is driven by the nature of your mission and audience.
  
  
• Include Fun Stuff in the Sidebars. Test fun or interactive features such as trivia questions or an action counter in the sidebars under the menus that link to articles. Readers clicked on these links, despite their lower placement in the message.
  
  
• Test Different Subject Lines. With so many other urgent messages competing for attention - "Urgent Vote Tomorrow!" "Your Account Balance Is Overdue" - try different message variants to learn what subject line or creative performs the best.
  
  
• Relocate that Tell-A-Friend Link. Unfortunately, friends don't tell friends about e-newsletters, as was shown by the extremely low click-through rates on tell-a-friend (TAF) links, less than 0.05 percent. This could be a result of poor placement -- the majority of TAF links were located at the very bottom of messages -- or that the messages weren't urgent enough. Test placing the link either at the top or near an interesting article.
  
  
• Don't Skimp on Design. It's important to have a clean, easy-to-navigate layout, as well as a consistent banner and a prominent sidebar. Also try trivia questions, casual updates from the executive director or a staff member, or activist and staff spotlights. The use of images may cause a message to be sent to a SPAM folder, display poorly, or take a long time to load, so maximize HTML to give your e-newsletter an exciting, interesting layout with less reliance on images.
  
  
• Consider Cultivation as a Goal. E-newsletters offer a monthly forum to tell the full story about your work, and can build and deepen your list members' relationships to your organization.

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This article is from NPT Instant Fundraising, a publication of The NonProfit Times.

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