On a popular email list I am on there was talk about how effective fundraising emails still are. This came up in a recent conversation with a large nonprofit we were talking to here at See3.

Sarah DiJulio, Executive VP at M+R Strategic Services — a terrific online fundraising/marketing/PR firm and increasingly frequent partner with See3 on client projects — had this to say about email. She based her comments on real data from nonprofits:

Open rates, have fallen much faster than other rates. Response rates have also declined a bit over the past few years, but not nearly as fast as open rates. I simply wouldn’t read too much into open rates, because of all of the oddities around how they are calculated.

On response rates, these have been gradually declining, but part of what we’re seeing is that the non-urgent emails are performing extremely poorly, but emails that are near the deadline – ie DEADLINE TONIGHT kind of emails – are performing better than previous averages, and actually making up for shortfalls in other email messages. My experience so far is that email is still working, but some email is working better, and other email is going more poorly.

So the regular stuff is working less well, with the authentically important and urgent stuff doing better. Pay attention – you just can’t keep doing the same old same old here, especially in this environment.