Use Digital Donation to Turbocharge Fundraising Direct Mail
AccuList USA would like to pass along some key facts to marketers planning fundraising direct mail: 1) 35% of all donors say they like to respond to direct mail by giving online (with 50% of Millennials and Gen Xers saying they prefer online response); 2) 51% of website visits are made via mobile device, and 3) mobile devices are now used by the majority to read e-mail (54% of opens) and access social networks (80% of social time spent). Bottom line, if you want to get the most from your nonprofit direct mail (still the best channel for capturing donor dollars), a multi-channel, mobile-optimized approach is essential.
How Nonprofits Miss Mail-to-Online Giving Opportunities
MobileCause has developed a powerful infographic laying out the case for a nonprofit direct mail-digital marriage. Unfortunately, many fundraisers fail to make an easy connection between direct mail and online response, and are discouraging donations as a result. As the infographic points out, 84% of donation pages are not mobile-friendly, 73% of nonprofits do not offer social sharing, and 65% of nonprofits require three or more digital clicks to donate.
Smart Practices Give Mail Multi-Channel Power
At the same time, the infographic data highlight ways to correct that digital lacuna in fundraising direct mail. First, commit to making direct mail part of a multi-channel campaign–because donors are 50% more likely to give when they receive multiple reinforcing messages via multiple channels. Fundraisers can even optimize response by catering to generational preferences: Millennials like text reminders, Gen Xers like e-mail reminders and Boomers like call reminders, per MobileCause. But for goodness sake, mobile-optimize e-mails, landing pages and donation pages! Then maximize donations by promoting QR codes, shortlinks and texting keywords across channels (and let the U.S. Postal Service reward that mailer QR code with a discount). Plus, data shows that by branding landing/donation pages to promote a specific mailer campaign or gift rather than a generic message, there’s a 38% increase in donation amount and a 66% likelihood that the donor will return and give again. Of course, don’t forget the basics: Make the call-to-action clear and giving easy to execute, whether by check or online.
Download the infographic for more tips.
E-mail Earns Top Digital ROI Via Personalization, Mobile Strategies
To support our e-mail list brokerage clients, AccuList USA keeps up with e-mail strategy benchmarks, such as those cited in the “2017 Email Marketing Industry Census” from Adestra, in association with Econsultancy.
E-mail Tops Digital ROI Rankings
E-mail marketers will be happy to know that, per the census, e-mail outpaces other digital channels in terms of reported return on investment, ahead of SEO, content marketing, paid search, and social media. E-mail ROI was rated as good to excellent by 73% of marketers surveyed, just edging out SEO, with 72% giving SEO a good to excellent ROI rating. Content marketing slipped to third place, with 63% calling its ROI good to excellent. Paid search followed with 60% ranking its ROI as good to excellent, and social media trailed (44%). But the report also raised questions about how accurately marketers assess e-mail impact. The majority of marketers are using click-through rate (91%), open rate (80%) and conversion rate (62%) to track e-mail performance, while other important metrics, such as bounce rate, delivery rate and list growth rate, are used by a minority. List segmentation is another challenge that may be impeding even higher ROI, falling midway in the ranking of best practices even though those who carry out advanced segmentation are more than twice as likely to report “excellent” ROI from e-mail marketing as those who don’t segment.
Personalization Leads Marketers’ Best Practices
What practices do marketers use to push e-mail opens and clicks? The census found that sending personalized and relevant messaging led the list of e-mail best practices reported; 80% of marketers are already doing this and 14% are planning for it. Personalization was followed by mobile-optimizing of e-mail (73% doing and 19% planning to start), regular list cleaning (57% doing and 24% planning), and promoting social content sharing (49% doing and 22% planning on it). Looking ahead, personalization also is the area of e-mail marketing where most respondents (30%) say they need to focus in 2017, even ahead of automated campaigns (cited by 28%).
Mobile Optimizing Faces Cross-Device Challenges
With data from other studies showing that 56% of e-mail users prefer opening e-mails on mobile devices (and that 42% delete an email if it doesn’t display correctly), e-mail marketers have embraced the mobile-first imperative, and mobile optimization won second place in the ranking of best practices. But challenges remain for optimizing across devices. Although 90% of respondents report some strategy for optimizing e-mail for different devices, just 22% of marketers describe their approach as “quite” or “very” advanced.
To download the full report, see http://www.adestra.com/resources/downloadable-reports/2017-email-marketing-industry-census/
Study: How Consumer E-mail Behavior Varies by Market Vertical
AccuList USA works with e-mail list and marketing clients on optimizing consumer response for variables that range from list targeting to subject lines to consumer behavior that differs by market vertical. So Movable Ink’s “US Consumer Device Preference Report: Q1 2017” offers valuable guidance on how opens, conversions, engagement and even order values are affected by market vertical and device preferences.
Smartphones Rule E-mail Opens
For all industries studied—retail, travel and hospitality, financial services, and media/publishing and entertainment—the report found most e-mails are opened on a smartphone as opposed to a tablet or desktop. Smartphone e-mail opens have especially jumped for financial services, up 7% from the fourth quarter of 2016 to reach 70% of opens in the first quarter of this year. Financial e-mail opens on smartphones actually peak at 74% on Saturdays, so financial services marketers should plan to reach consumers on the go. However, retail is not far behind, with 61% smartphone opens for apparel and 57% for non-apparel e-mails. While smartphones still led opens, the more content-heavy media, publishing and entertainment vertical also has a good portion of desktop e-mail opens at 32%, followed by travel and hospitality with 29% desktop opens. Tablet opens are also stronger for media and publishing at 18%, higher than any other industry.
Desktops Lead Retail Conversions, Order Values
Mobile optimization is clearly key for open rates, but retailers should not neglect desktop design because that’s where the orders are racked up. Non-apparel retailer e-mails attribute 73% of conversions to desktop use, for example, with 51% of conversions on desktop for apparel retailing. Smartphones are catching up, however, with 40% of conversions snagged by smartphones for apparel retailers, the highest of any vertical. Desktops also deliver the highest average order value for retailers: $171.04 for apparel and $138.57 for non-apparel sales. However, tablet users also score good orders in apparel retailing, with an average order value of $169.69 in the first quarter, up from $126.13 in the fourth quarter.
Read-Time Engagement Prize Goes to iPhones
When it comes to e-mail reading time, the study generally found that iPhones are able to capture more attention than Android mobile phones, Android tablets, desktop computers, or iPads. The finance industry had the longest read lengths on iPhones, with 68% of subscribers spending 15 or more seconds reading their e-mail thanks to the Apple devices. This was followed by desktop computers, where 58% of subscribers read financial e-mail messages for 15 seconds or more. Media, publishing and entertainment e-mails also garnered high iPhone read time, with 61% reading e-mail for 15 seconds or more.
For more data, see the report summary and handy infographics at https://movableink.com/blog/consumer-device-preference-report-q1-2017/
