The Anatomy of an Email Campaign
From MMTNewMedia
Holly Ross presents to breakout session participants on email campaign design, management, and utility.
Contact Holly: email: holly@nten.org Phone: 415.397.9000
Resources from presentation
Download Holly's presentation here: http://www.mmt.org/newmedia/HRossEmail.ppt
Study looking at the effectiveness of major American nonprofit organizations using the Internet to raise money and influence public policy: http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/
Information from NTEN about raising money online with emails: http://nten.org/node/1064
Excerpt from Raising Thousands (if Not Tens of Thousands) of Dollars with Email: http://www.guidestar.org/news/features/money_with_email.jsp
Session Notes
Benchmarks to think about during email campaigns: Read this report, take this action, email fundraising
How would you repeat this in organization? Your experience with constituents is unique and need to test what works for you
Keep in mind:
Who are you messaging (know what you know about who you’re messaging) – be personal Know what you don’t know so you can learn Test, refine and repeat (recipe for email campaign) Test to smaller audience before sending it to public Track open, click rates
Example:
Breast Cancer Fund Primary audience 20-65 women. Challenge grant $10,000 in two weeks. Only email Knew had 7000 emails, but didn’t know how many good. Benchmarks: 1% conversion (receive and give) rate = 70 people out of 7000 What is average gift size? $35-75 for them, so about $50 $3500 ($6500 to go) Focus for them was message envelope (Subject and From lines” Message body also important, of course When sent out campaign, sent out in way that would increase response rate on 2nd mailing
Envelope
First place to decide whether to open or not From: = everyone had commonality of breast cancer survivors, so they identify with foundation and founder. This email was from founder Subject: = active, not passive. Super-relevant and clear about what email is about (otherwise email is deleted). On average, 40 characters (others said 8 characters). The subject should be nugget Tailor subject lines for each community: Their line: Help us meet “ . . .” Challenge Went out on Wednesday. Initial push was 25% of what they needed. Sent out a 2nd email, taking out those who had donated. Sent out on Saturday (had many personal emails, so people were checking individual emails on weekend). They met the rest that Saturday.
Message Body
Key to writing good emails: Be more concise. They will not read that far down Less formal in tone (hey, how are you?) Really short sentences. NO semicolons Short paragraphs. Chunk it out If you have call to action, it should be called out with link closely behind “here is my compelling message, here is what I need you to do” with big breaks between Think Point, Support Support. Clear, concise, direct Bullet points = love them 4-6 meaningful paragraphs. Lots of link Plaintext email = pull link out with breaks surrounding One link has to be more clear than others and above the fold without needing scrolling Use words in context for links, not separated by content. It’s stronger in context
Example:
Banner with pretty pretty photos, one compelling message, and call to action box with donate button. Buttons get huge click-through buttons. People love them! They expect to connect emotionally, be urgent without being frantic (deadlines are good, “now” is not enough and more doomsdayish) Ask once. Do not ask for more than one thing You are asking them to take action and go somewhere. The destination (“landing page”) should be just as thoughtfully crafted. Might have 5 donation pages
HTML
Geeky folk prefer plaintext, but everyone else in the world loves HTML Easy to read if images don’t display
Images
People v. landscapes? Good thing to test with 2 test sets
Sending
(email list management) What people use = Constant Contact, ERY, Cooler, Emma, Vertical Response, What Counts. GroundSpring also has now. When use tools, the vendor has responsibility to maintain good relationships with servers. Outlook can be problematic and be blocked if anyone flags as spam Do NOT send list of people that have not given you permission
Kintera, BlackBlock, but they are rather pricy.
Test emails
5 people with yahoo, hotmail, gmail ? = reaching out to people. Older populations are more donors. They don’t use email. Email campaigns are skewed towards younger range
What Will Work for Me?
Open Rate = how many people are opening. How compelling is envelope?) What’s a good open rate? renewal is 25%, news is 30-40%, fundraiser is %10 Click-through Rate = seeing message, clicking, going to landing rate (how compelling is message?) Conversions = took action (how compelling is landing page?) Forward Rate =
Set up spreadsheet for self
What was message, who did I send it to, how many people, how many delivered to , open rate, click-through rate, conversion Test Subject Lines Take mailing list of 7000 people, dump into excel spreadsheet, cut in half, send to each list with different subject lines. Then can check subject lines Test Images Test Link Location GroundSpring, for example, will check which links people are using. Sometimes after content, sometime Test Landing Page One message links to one, one links to other. Does tailoring text? Can only test one thing at a time (must isolate variables). AB testing for results Keep it simple. Can get too minute and not learn anything
How to do Tracking
Example: messaging people as joint fundraiser, 2000 people that didn’t know a great deal about. Decided to test offer – 10% discount, others nothing. Sent both to same landing page, so set up page that they would pass through to landing page. Got open rate from provider, click through from landing page using Analytics (Join1 page v Join2 page). Landing page, back in database.
Analyzing results from surveys
(how often do you forward, etc.)? Surveys better for interest in content. Self-reported data is not what people actually do Have to give them a reason to give you their email (book, newsletter). Very prominent space for giving. If don’t have form online, can create image or box to draw attention to it
Embed iframe or 1x1kb to check open rate If switch providers, open rate will change because tracked differently
Email newsletter by RSS Publish by both. For NTEN, every story on newsletter is on blog, which swings RSS
Need Volunteers
Volunteermatch.org, Tap Root Foundation (not Portland). Government program, AmeriCorps Vistas to work for a year ($300 fee plus stipend).
RSS FeedBurner
TechSoup Stock does product distribution
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