Forum - April 2012

BRAINSTORMS

Email
Excellence

SL

Sometimes, email marketing feels like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey: When you can’t see your target, your chances of hitting it are slim.

Luckily, benchmarks and metrics can point you in the right direction, according to email marketing firm MailChimp, which recently surveyed 570 million emails sent by its customers in order to establish email marketing benchmarks by industry — including the nonprofit sector, for which its findings were:

•;Average;Open;Rate: 20.43%
•;Average;Click;Rate: 3.54%
•;Average;Soft;Bounce;Rate: 1. 13
•;Average;Hard;Bounce;Rate: 1.51%
•;Average;Abuse;Complaint;Rate:

0.05%

•;Average;Unsubscribe;Rate: 0.17%

To help associations improve their email marketing performance alongside industry benchmarks, MailChimp offers the following tips:

1. Use;simple;subject;lines. When you write your subject line, don’t sell what’s inside; tell what’s inside.

2. Control;your;vocabulary. To get past spam filters, avoid using “spammy” keywords and phrases, and avoid using all caps or too many exclamation points.

3. Refresh;your;list. Too many hard bounces is a sign of an old, stale list.

People change email addresses every few months. Make sure you keep in touch with your list at least once a quarter so they can stay subscribed to your emails.

4. Be;persistent. Soft bounces usually mean the recipient is "temporarily unavailable." Maybe they're on vacation or their mailbox is full. You can keep those emails and re-try them later.

5. Investigate;hard;bounces. Hard bounces mean an email address failed. Maybe it no longer exists, or maybe someone typed their email wrong when they subscribed to a list. But hard bounces might also be spam filter rejections. If you see an abnormally high number of bounces after a campaign, you should read your bounce-back records for any messages or "clues" from spam filters.

25%75%

6. Avoid;anonymity. Abuse complaints happen when recipients click the "this is spam" button in their email programs. That usually means they don't remember you. Make sure your "From" and "Subject" lines contain your organization’s name so recipients will instantly recognize you.

Mobile
Mandates
SL

Although the Chinese calendar says it’s the year of the dragon, most marketing experts agree that 2012 is actually the year of the smartphone.

Indeed, “social” is quickly giving way to “mobile,” and smart organizations are taking notice, suggests Doug Plank, CEO of MobileCause, a Calabasas, Calif.-based provider of mobile solutions for nonprofits. Based on his work with nonprofit clients, he offers the following tips for successfully launching a mobile marketing strategy:

1. Start;building;mobile;lists. Collect mobile numbers alongside email addresses from everyone who opts in to your mailing list. “What development professional wouldn’t want access to the most effective ubiquitous communication device being carried by literally every current and prospective donor, board member and person they serve? Open rates for text messaging of [more than] 95 percent should be incentive enough. Compare those rates to the decreasing email open rate of 35 percent and diminishing direct mail rates of single digits... Start somewhere — even with your most loyal donors, current staff and volunteers.”