Wearing Out The Email Welcome Mat
Don’t like the political candidates?
Here’s one more reason …
They’re flooding your donors’ e-mailboxes. [As are all the online merchants who have already begun their Christmas pushes.]
Here’s a good analysis from Politico.com on what the candidates are doing in terms of online fundraising.
The report cites online email consulting firm Silverpop as saying email open rates have declined from about 25% in 2004 to 20% now. So email is 20% less effective, just on the basis of lower open rates.
Says Silverpop’s Loren McDonald:
“If everyone sends two to three times more email, it reduces the conversion rate for everyone in the channel because the inbox becomes overwhelmed … It’s hard to tell candidates to send less email when, every time they send one, it works. You can sit across from the campaign manager and tell them if they continue to send more email, they’ll send people away and hurt their campaigns. They’re not going to believe it because they haven’t seen enough of an impact yet. They will, though.”
How does your open rate compare to 20% these days?
Tom
P.S. And just as the campaign season ends, commercial e-marketers will hit full stride!
3 responses to “Wearing Out The Email Welcome Mat”
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Political campaigns have a sharp focus on THIS election, THESE few weeks – if they lose, the whole thing’s over.
As nonprofits, we (hopefully) know we must take a longer view.
The problem with this type of political fundraising is that they are seeking transactions with no concern for the cultivation and development of the donor as a long-term advocate. So those of us trying to build strong, personal bonds with our constituents through email are hurt with the overall dilution of email effectiveness. I guess the only sort of good news is that the election will be over soon giving us a four year reprieve.
How are the number of emails the campaigns are sending related to the channel open rates on one provider?
Since when was open rate equivilant to effectiveness or engagement? A user might be opening more emails from a campaign but because they are also receiving more – if you measure open rate in a vacuum it looks like they’re engagement has gone down when infact it has gone up.
More incoherent nonsense from the Agitator. Every time a colleague forwards me one of your emails I hang my head in my hands. How much money has your shoddy writing cost the sector?