Five Tips to Better E-mail Campaigns

Jan. 10, 2006

By Abny Santicola, associate editor, FundRaising Success

In her session "Internet and E-mail Prospecting: How to Do It Right" at the List Vision conference in New York over the summer, Anne Holland, publisher and editor with marketing research firm MarketingSherpa, shared practical advice on what works and what doesn't for e-mail campaigns, including the importance of landing pages, tracking and testing.

Holland's session highlighted the following five statistic-based tips from MarketingSherpa research:

1) Welcome messages are the most read e-mails. Most people have automated messages that go out when someone opts in to their e-mail list that say something like, "You have subscribed," and think of these messages as routine administrative e-mails that no one pays attention to. But those messages, Holland says, are read by more people and capture more attention than any offer or newsletter your organization ever sends them again.

"You've got the biggest opportunity with that first welcome message to really get their ear because they actually are paying attention, and you want to grab them while they're paying attention," Holland says, adding that while you don't want to be too promotional, adding a link to your best article, a link to your calendar of events or a special offer can be useful. "Those kinds of things tend to be very compelling in that welcome message, and consumers tend to respond very well to them."

2) Twenty percent to 40 percent of e-mails aren't delivered. Understand how to read the report that your e-mail system gives you on delivery, and understand that the numbers you get on delivery do not include e-mails that were swallowed by filters.

"So you have to know that there's a bigger problem with delivery than you think and there's a variety of things you can do about that ... one thing to look at is ... any people on your list who have not opened or responded to an e-mail in a long time. Maybe you're being filtered there," Holland adds.