In doing research for next week’s webinar Email Marketing Trends for Nonprofits webinar series, I came across the 2020 Email Deliverability Benchmark Study done by Validity.
According to their report:
Globally, the average inbox placement rate was 83 percent in 2019—meaning one out of every six messages failed to reach the inbox. Global deliverability saw a slight decline of two percentage points from the 2018 average of 85 percent.
And those stats hold true for North America as well (although Canada fares slightly better).
One of the suggestions Validity shares in order to keep you from being in the 17% that doesn’t make it to your supporters’ inboxes is to keep your email list clean.
We have been stressing this for a few years now.
Unfortunately, our 2021 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report shows most nonprofits still aren’t following email marketing best practices that lead to healthier lists.
We suggest you:
- Personalize subject lines or email body content
- Split or A/B test emails
- Use UTM tracking codes
- Send an email welcome series
- Run re-engagement campaigns to unengaged subscribers
But as the chart below says personalizing emails is really the only best practice the majority of nonprofits do.
As far as keeping up with list engagement, last year’s report had 77% of nonprofits saying that they never cut back the quantity of emails they send to unengaged subscribers, with 69% saying they never stop emailing, even if the subscriber is clearly no longer engaged.
These trends do not fare well for holding off what we called The Nonprofit Email Apocalypse.
As the Validity report says, “Keeping a subscriber list free from spam traps, unknown users, and inactive subscribers will help boost your reputation and your ability to reach the inbox.”
The best practices we list above can help with all of that. If you haven’t already started implementing them, start now!
Learn more about email deliverability in these two reports from Validity:
Want more help implementing these best practices?
Join us for these email marketing training sessions later this month:
February 9 & 11: Email Marketing Trends for Nonprofits with Kivi Leroux Miller. [Two-Part Webinar Series] We will talk all about email deliverability and engagement as well as creating and designing emails for 2021. Registration for this series is $199 or FREE with an All-Access Pass
February 18: Jump Start Your Email Welcome Series with Kivi Leroux Miller. [60-Minute Workshop] Learn why email welcome series are important and the process behind creating them before customizing our samples and templates to fit your organization’s needs. Registration for this workshop is $49 or FREE with an All-Access Pass
February 25: Jump Start Your Email Re-engagement Campaign with Kivi Leroux Miller. [60-Minute Workshop] Learn why email re-engagement campaigns are important and the process behind creating them before customizing our samples and templates to fit your organization’s needs. Registration for this workshop is $49 or FREE with an All-Access Pass
