How to get your emails opened
I did it…. I hosted my FIRST of what I hope to be many live workshop last week. Together about 40 nonprofit fundraisers came together to learn, connect and get inspired.
One thing I could feel was the thirst for how to do things. Now, I’m an outside-the-box thinker (surprised?) naturally - and I believe there are generally more than one way to do things, but it was clear that people in the room just wanted to know they were doing things correctly. Or, at least, are on the right track.
Makes sense to me.
Sometimes I just want someone to give me a “thumbs up” so I stop swirling the “what ifs” in my head (my personal biggest waste of time…well, that and scrolling on Instagram).
One basic, but very important topic came up at the workshop: email. How to get emails opened, what’s a good open rate, what’s a good click rate, text vs. images and more. As a business owner - I’m thinking about these things too. So, I thought I’d do a little research for ya and give some resources too.
We are all (hopefully) about to send a high(er) volume of emails to our audience trying to capture as many online donations as we can before December 31st. Luckily, you can implement these must-do’s NOW to increase your open and read rate (and hopefully your donation rate too).
To start us off, some benchmarks.
Average Email Open Rate: According to Campaign Monitor, a company that produces a report every year that analyzes billions of emails by industry, the average email open rate is: 17.92% across all industries. Specifically to the nonprofit space, the average open rate is slightly higher at: 20.39%. If you are thinking “Ughhhhhh these aren’t very high numbers.” The nonprofit category has the highest open rate across all categories.
Average Click Through Rate: The Campaign Monitor Report shows us that the average click through rate, the rate at which people click on your email links, is: 2.69%. In the nonprofit category - it’s 2.66%.
Average Unsubscribe Rate: I know every time we see that group of people unsubscribe from our list - we feel a little pinch in our chest. Ouch! I want to make this clear: these are not your people and will likely never be your donors. They are doing you a favor - especially if you use an email service provider that charges you based on your list size. If you haven’t checked out my post on who your ideal donor is - head on over there now. That being said, the average unsubscribe rate across all industries is .17% and specific to the nonprofit sector is also .17%.
Click To Open Rate: Different from the click through rate, the click to open rate is the unique opens and clicks on an email measuring its overall performance to determine how interested your reader was. The average click to open rate across all industries is 14.10% and in the nonprofit sector specifically is 12.99%.
Now that we’ve determined the benchmarks - I’d suggest going back 3-6 months to average your rates to determine how you are performing. If you are higher - AMAZING! Keep up the great work. If not, here are some email best practices.
You need to to be consistent: The number one mistake I see nonprofit’s make is that they are flighty when it comes to their emails. For whatever reason, a lot of nonprofit professionals “feel bad” for sending emails on a regular basis, yet when it comes time to raise money - they bombard their list with 5-7 emails in a short period of time. That is a sure fire way to get unsubscribes. You need to nurture your list - and one way to do that is through consistency. So pick a frequency (1x per month, 2x per month, 1x per week, etc) and stick to it. Over time, you will train your audience to expect emails from you based on that frequency.
You need to send high value content: I live in a world where I wake up to no joke - 75+ emails after completing inbox zero the night before. Throughout the day I can rack up hundreds. The point: everyone gets a lot of emails. So what are YOU going to do to make yours stand out? What can you GIVE in your emails? Maybe it’s a story about impact showing where their money goes. Maybe it’s a success story that relates to your mission. Maybe it’s an accomplishment of a staff member - whatever it is - give something to your email reader WITHOUT asking for anything in return. Not every email needs to have an ask to do any of the following (donate, like, share, take a survey, etc).
Watch the number of images you have in your email: Reports show that the more images you have in your email - the click through rate decreases. I’d aim for 2-3 max.
Play around and be strategic with your send times: This is a little bit of a guessing game, but you need to test the best time to send your emails. For example, Thursday have the best open rates across all industries, but Tuesdays have the best click through rates. With one organization I work with, we’ve actually had a lot of success sending emails on Sunday afternoons - when people might be on their phones before the week. The point is - try things out and then when you find a good one - use it.
Subject lines: not to bury the lead - but subject lines matter. I could probably do an entire post on this (would that be helpful?). Here are some subject line best practice:
Keep things short and sweet
If you can, personalize the subject line with a {{First Name}}
Do not overuse CAPS or punctuation (ex: !!!)
Watch out for these subject line trigger words (via Hubspot)
There are plenty of free tools out there to help you grade your subject lines
Subject lines should be 20-50 characters long
If you have a second to read, I found this article on Medium helpful in general.
Last thing: the number one way to get the emails you send into people’s inbox vs. their spam folder is to: send them a welcome sequence once they join your list AND in that first email - invite them to “hit reply” to ask a question, want to meet for coffee, etc. Once an exchange begins - the likelihood of your emails going to their spam folder drops significantly.
Let’s review:
Figure out your email stats and evaluate. Where do you compare to the industry averages
Be consistent in your email frequency
Send high value, worth-reading content that GIVES to your donors
Limit your word to image ratios
Experiment with your send times
Practice (and test!) your subject lines
Invite people to respond to an email (and actually answer them back!)
Email is the best, most productive marketing tool we have. Unlike Facebook or Instagram which could disappear tomorrow - we will always own our email lists. Which is why it is critical to not only grow, but nurture our lists on an ongoing basis.
So curious to know, how does your organization compare to the industry averages?
xo,
