E-Mail Readership Rate for Charities Fell in 2007

April 24, 2008

E-Mail Readership Rate for Charities Fell in 2007

The number of people who opened or responded to e-mail messages sent by 21 large national nonprofit organizations dropped in 2007, even as the amount of money those organizations raised online increased, according to a new study.

The percentage of people who opened messages from the charities, which included Habitat for Humanity, Oxfam America, and the Environmental Defense Fund, fell from 21.3 percent in 2006 to 17.6 percent in 2007, while the percentage of recipients who clicked through to a Web link included in the messages decreased from 4.9 percent to 3.8 percent. But the amount of money that the groups raised over the Internet increased 19 percent from 2006 to 2007.

The study’s authors say part of the explanation is that organizations are sending their messages to a larger number of people. The annual rate of growth for the e-mail lists of the groups in the study was 29 percent in 2007, up from 24 percent in 2006.

“It feels like e-mail marketing isn’t the same as it was two years ago or even a year ago,” says Sarah DiJulio, executive vice president of M+R Strategic Services, the Washington consulting company that conducted the study together with the Nonprofit Technology Network.

E-mail messages are still an effective way to communicate with supporters, but there is reason to be concerned for the future, says Ms. DiJulio. She believes that the growing use of cellphone text messaging and social-networking sites like Facebook might be responsible for some of the declines in open rates, and that charities need to figure out how to take advantage of the new technologies.
Supporters also have more and more information coming into their inboxes, says Holly Ross, executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network.

“The competition for attention, not just from other nonprofits but in general, is huge,” she says. “We’re going to continue to see people struggle with how to get their e-mails read.”

The study also found that gifts of $1,000 or more made up just 1 percent of the organizations’ total number of online donations in 2007, but that together those gifts accounted for 20 percent of the amount raised online.

— Nicole Wallace

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E-Mail Readership Rate for Charities Fell in 2007