Don't Let Your Email Appeal End Up in Spam

For the last few months, we have been constantly talking about the sector’s changing landscape and how it’s leaning digital. There have been countless reports on the benefits of utilizing different kinds of technologies—especially to communicate to your donors through emails—and how this is the way of the future.

While that’s all great, let’s talk about email deliverability. According to the “2017 Nonprofit Email Deliverability Study,” a good chunk of money from email campaigns is being flushed down the toilet due to the fact that those emails are ending up in spam folders. People are marking them as spam, immediately deleting them, never opening them and/or not engaging with those emails.

This causes emails sent from that IP address to have a high-spam rate, which can also be caused by the following: Making unsubscribing difficult, using an out-of-date email list, sending irrelevant email and/or high complaints.

The study reported that improving email deliverability would increase email fundraising revenue by 22.2 percent. Last year, the average nonprofit suffered a $24,522.52 loss due to emails being sent to spam folders. In 2016, one percent of spam equaled $1,308.85 lost compared to $833.34 lost in 2015.

What can your organization do to improve its email deliverability, so it’s not losing out on revenue?

The study recommends for organizations to ask recipients to opt-in and confirm; ramp up messaging with a “welcome series”; look beyond opens and clicks; focus on bounces; pay attention to inactives; check HTML; and choose the best provider. To read the full study, visit goo.gl/DzEgPM