2008 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study
Nten and M&R Strategic Services have released a fascinating study which provides metrics for online messaging, fundraising and advocacy. Some highlights and observations:
- open rates (compared to a study in 2006) declined from 21.3% to 17.6%; click-through rates dropped from 4.9% to 3.6%. I've found that many NPO staff don't take the time to analyze reports which clearly demonstrate that most constituents who get email are not bothering to open them, fewer are clicking on any included links.
- on the average, constituents are emailed 4 times / month. Seems like once a week is still too often, making more of a case to use segmentation to target content to selected constituents.
- About 20% of an email list 'goes bad' each year due to unsubscribes and other changes in email addresses. So a nonprofit that wants to grow its list needs to first make up for this loss in numbers first.
- Advocacy mailings consistently show higher response rates than other types of mailings. How many of these constituents can be effectively converted to other types of engagement?
- $1000+ gifts were only 1% of the total number of donations, yet represented over 20% of online giving revenues. Major gifts still deserves consistent attention.
