Does Mobile Matter To Fundraisers?
If you’re an online fundraiser, it sure better! Mobile phones and tablets now account for 41% of all email opens in the US, up from 27% a year ago, according to this study from eMarketer. Epsilon goes further, and says that for most of their clients, mobile now accounts for 60% or more of opens.
For online fundraisers, obviously this means that your online appeals must be designed with mobile in mind. Not only is there a high probability they will be read and acted upon directly via mobile, but additional evidence from Constant Contact suggests that many consumers use their mobile at moments of convenience to screen which emails they’ll save for later viewing on the ‘big screen’. And if they can’t get a ready sense on their mobile, if the message doesn’t render well, 75% of consumers are ‘highly likely’ to simply hit Delete.
So, just to get to first base with your email is a technical formatting challenge.
If you get by that hurdle, next is the content itself.
Here is the best list I’ve seen in a long time on email effectiveness — 37 Tips for Writing Emails that Get Opened, Read, and Clicked. Courtesy of Copyblogger.
To tease, a few of my favorites …
- Write as if you’re emailing one person only.
- Use numbers, ‘power words’ (sensory, emotional), and occasionally bizarre words — all of these get readers to stop and pay attention.
- Ask questions — you want engagement, don’t you?
- Break high school (writing, grammar) rules! Be short and strong, not pure.
Most of the tips include links that further illustrate the point or provide evidence. A keeper!
Tom
2 responses to “Does Mobile Matter To Fundraisers?”
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We have had success with using pictures to try to tell the story in case people don’t want to read it.
Mobile is a huge deal in the UK right now. For a simple reason!
As a nation we’re obsessed by our mobiles. We’re emailing, tweeting, texting, web browsing, reading, shopping and Facebooking whenever we get the chance. Our phones are probably the most personal device we have, they are always with us and always on.
And all mobiles have an amazing feature built in. Nearly every phone in the world comes with the ability to send an SMS and if you can send an SMS you can send a text donation. And you can send it in seconds. If you’re moved to give, the act of giving is frictionless.
So we’re seeing SMS breathe life back into channels that weren’t working as well as they once did. Outdoor advertising being one of them. You can see some examples here: http://openfundraising.com/blog/categories/mobile/
And once we’ve got a single text donation, we apply all we learnt at fundraising school, so we’re planning for second donations and conversion to monthly giving.
Great article, as ever.
Paul