According to the new data, there was no correlation between email volume and fundraising response rates. “Organizations that send a lot of fundraising appeals have roughly the same response rates as organizations that don’t. There are many reasons why some emails perform better than others – but it doesn’t appear that message volume is one of them.”
While the study says that their findings showed that message volume didn’t greatly impact response rates, that doesn’t mean your nonprofit should start sending daily fundraising alerts to your supporters and burn out your list.
The average unsubscribe rate in the study was 0.23%. The new research also showed that nonprofits who had higher unsubscribe rates also had more donations. Why? Groups that spend more time cultivating their donors and sending quality online fundraising appeals generate higher response rates and have more active members. Their members open and read their emails more than organizations who sound out generic, boring online fundraising appeals that basically say “give me, give me, give me.”
Put Churn Rates Into Perspective
Organizations who have active online lists are also likely to be doing a lot of recruitment to fight list churn and grow their base of supporters. The study found “that new subscribers are very active – but for every fired-up new donor you convert, there’s a new subscriber who just isn’t that into you. Maybe they were confused about your mission when they signed up. Maybe they can’t even remember how they signed up for your list.
So if you see a spike in unsubscribes after a big recruitment campaign, don’t let it get you down – it’s all part of having a fresh, active, engaged list!”