Almost a quarter of fund-raising emails landed in spam folders last year, lowering the average take by $29,613.59, according to the 2018 Nonprofit Email Deliverability Study, a report by
EveryAction.
Each spam percentage point resulted in a loss of $1,225.73 per 100,000 email addresses, the study says.
EveryAction studied deliverability data for 55 national nonprofit
organizations and matched them against industry benchmarks.
It found that the 24.16% spam rate was nearly 6% higher than that of 2016, and 17% more than the 2015 percentage.
However,
spam placement fell on major fund-raising days, hitting a below-average rate of 20.34% on Giving Tuesday and 21.36% on EOY. The highest spam rate (32.64%) occurred in April, and the lowest (16.35%)
occurred in October.
Nonprofits sent an average of 21 fund-raising emails per month, one more than in 2016 but three less than 2015.
The major causes of being flagged as spam were:
- Making unsubscribes difficult
- Sending irrelevant email
- Using an out-of-date email list.
To illustrate the point, EveryAction offered these metrics for a
perfect deliverability spam rate:
- 2.4 million emails arrive in inboxes
- 360,000 are opened
- 10,080 pages are clicked
- 1612.8 pages are completed
- $122,572.80 is raised
In contrast, a 1% spam rate would reduce all the metrics as follows:
- 2.37 million emails arrive in inboxes
- 356,400 emails are
opened
- 9,979 pages are clicked
- 1596.672 pages are complete
- $121,347. Is raised
An average deliverability rate would produce the following results:
- 1.82 million emails arrive in inboxes
- 273,024 emails are opened
- 7,654 pages are clicked
- 1223.14752 pages are completed
- $92,959.12 is raised
EveryAction concludes that, “despite expanding email programs and list sizes, diminished engagement and soaring spam rate are significantly weighing down nonprofit fundraising
potential.”