The Fundraising Email Deliverability Storm
The holiday season of 2016 wreaked havoc on email fundraising. It was a storm that was brewing for a while, as ESPs (email service providers) like Google and Yahoo modified their email algorithms to deliver more relevant emails to the inbox. Once the holidays hit, many emails from nonprofits that used to go to the inbox were now going to spam or bulk item folders, rendering those emails practically invisible to the donor. Nonprofits that spent thousands of dollars building up their email lists were suddenly left with a decline in email revenue. In some cases, as many as 85 percent of emails from organizations were not being delivered to the inbox. It doesn’t get more “code red” than this.
Picking Up the Pieces
As with the aftermath of any disaster, it takes time to assess the damage, create a plan, and move forward after experiencing loss. The loss in this case was thousands of email addresses with organizations that could no longer be used because they were deemed “non-responsive” by ESPs. Almost a year later, we go into the holidays of 2017 still feeling the impact of the previous year’s email deliverability issues. The rebuilding of email lists has been underway, but it takes time to recover. Gone are the days of “quantity over quality” of email list-building, because a majority of those e-appended email addresses on your file were the culprits that created the catastrophe.
The Charge Toward Normalcy
Growing your prospect and donor email file size back to what they were pre-holiday 2016 will take time, especially since the goal is to have quality email addresses. It won’t be inexpensive, and it won’t happen quickly, but it will provide more value to your organization over time. It will require testing, failing, testing again, and succeeding. Fail fast. Learn fast. Adjust fast.
How can you increase the size of your email subscriber list with people who will be engaged in your organization? The following are four effective ways that have been proven in both the nonprofit and commercial sectors:
- Website Modal/Lightbox
Your organization’s website is its top real estate in the cyber world. It’s where donors go to give, advocates go to volunteer, prospective donors go to learn more about your organization, and constituents go if they need assistance from your nonprofit. At TrueSense, we’ve noticed that around 75 percent of visitors, in general, to a nonprofit’s website are first-time visitors. This means it’s a great time to capture an email address from someone who is actively engaging with your organization. According to M+R’s Benchmark Report, approximately 1 percent of website visitors will convert as an email subscriber. Do the math, and make this easy for your website visitors. Add a modal (also referred to as a lightbox) to the homepage that will capture the name and email address of the visitor. Tell them why they should sign up, so they understand what to expect and what they will get in return for providing their email address.
- Digital Asset Exchange
Create a useful e-book, tip sheet, white paper, or other creative asset, and provide it as a download in exchange for an email address. The keyword is useful. This should be something of value that is unique and would appeal to your donors or advocates interested in your cause. As a litmus test, I always ask myself or others, “Would YOU provide your email in exchange for this?” A word of caution, though: This is not a “If you build it, they will come” type of tactic. It’s most effective when amplified by a complete campaign that includes digital media, social media posts, and website banners (and lightboxes) to help market this digital asset.
- Facebook Lead Generation Ads
One of the great, underutilized features of Facebook is its Lead Generation ads. Unlike other Facebook ads that point to a donation page or website, the experience stays within Facebook and pre-populates the name and email address of the Facebook user. This makes it really simple and easy for subscribers to complete, since the work is already done. The degree of targeting of these ads allows you to define the audience in which you’d like to increase your email subscriber base.
- Sign-Up at Events
Events are powerful for nonprofits. They provide an experience to go along with the cause, and can raise a lot of money. Whether it’s a luncheon, a 5K run, a golf tournament, or a gala, events make the most of the captive audience and use the emotion of the experience to initiate action. At a minimum, you should capture email addresses at the event sign-ins or registration. Ideally, you will be able to do this in a digital format, but if all you have is pen and paper, then that’s better than nothing. In that case, identify before the event who will be responsible to transfer the handwritten emails and names into a digital database.
BONUS: The Cost of Growth
All of this email acquisition talk sounds great, but the question you may have now is: “How much does it cost to gain an email address?” A report from Wordstream in 2016 had cost-per-advocacy-email-lead at $37.31 for AdWords search ads, and $86.49 for display ads. These are generalizations and don’t take into account the fluctuations between the cost-per-email for different organizations. At TrueSense, we’ve seen the cost-per-email-address fluctuate widely across different clients that are using the same list-building strategy and tactics. However, using the Wordstream data, paired with what we’ve observed with TrueSense clients, here’s an example of what the cost of an email address may be by tactic:
- Google AdWords Search Ads: $37.31 per email address (according to Wordstream)
- Online Display Ad: $86.49 per email address (according to Wordstream)
- Digital Asset Exchange (with digital media campaign): $6.85–$33.70 per email address
- Facebook Lead Gen Ads: $7.25–$15.63 per email address
- Website Modal/Lightbox and Sign-Up at Events: Free!
As you acquire these new email addresses, it’s important to track them by channel if you have the capability to do so. This will help determine the long-term value of emails acquired through event sign-ups, versus those acquired through downloading a PDF from your website, as an example. This will inform you how to invest in email acquisition efforts in the future. And it will also determine the quality of the emails acquired by channel. It’s a new world out there in email fundraising, and every day is one that brings change, learning, tweaking, and moving forward.
If you need help with any of your email-list-building efforts, ask us a question in the comments section below, or reach out to set up a meeting with one of our fundraising experts so we can learn more about your goals. We’d love to be a part of your heroic fundraising story!