Our latest survey is on nonprofit email newsletter strategy (please take it if you haven’t already!) and one of the questions asks if you are happy with the performance of your email newsletter.
Here’s how the results shake out so far, based on answers from 484 people:
That’s about a quarter who are happy, a fifth who are not, and over half who are somewhat happy.
We also asked why you picked yes, no, or somewhat, and here are some of the responses.
Yes, we are happy with the performance of our e-newsletter.
- >50% open rates, positive feedback.
- Our open and click thru rates consistently out-perform nonprofit average rates.
- It is the single most visible way we reach thousands of constituents.
- We hear positive feedback, and actions demonstrate success.
- Our twice-monthly newsletter consistently drives traffic to our site, and feedback from our readers about individual articles is mostly positive.
- Has contributed to steady increase in online donations.
We are somewhat happy with the performance of our e-newsletter.
- The way I measure the success of the newsletter feels convoluted not precise.
- Wish we had a higher open rate. It’s only 18-20%.
- People are inundated by email. Even if they want to hear about us, they have little time for newsletters.
- It takes a lot of time and we’re not 100% clear on it.
- Some months are better than others, but would like more interaction or feedback from readers.
- Just started an e-newsletter last month. Happy that it is up and running, but also know I could do more to maximize effectiveness.
No, we are not happy with the performance of our e-newsletter.
- Open rate is slowly falling, list is getting out of date, hard to keep updated.
- A lot of work for small return – too much to share in short space – lack of strategy – only publication we send so pressure to be all things.
- Can’t really tell whether the newsletter is having any impact!
- Our open rates are good, but don’t get enough action.
- It does not do what we need it to do. It is ineffective.
- We send out probably three emails a week – it’s way too much, and people are missing good info because we’re trying to cram everything in there.
Please add your voice now. We’ll close down the survey over the weekend.
I will share the results and lots of advice and best practices on newsletter strategy during webinars at CharityHowTo on April 16 and May 2. We will also release a new free e-book later in May.
