How Many Emails Should My Nonprofit Be Sending?

You already know what the answer is, right? Yep. Your worst fears are confirmed. The answer for how many emails your nonprofit should send is, “It depends.” Gaaa!

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get real about email frequency.

First – the bad news. About 90% of what’s written about email frequency is almost worthless. You can read about why in the second half of this series here. But the short answer is, most studies trying to figure out how many emails we should be sending ask the wrong questions. And, they’re asking the wrong people, meaning their data has little value.

So maybe that’s not bad news, because now you don’t have to waste time reading all that data.

Second – the good news. You don’t have to worry like this cat about how many emails you send. But to get to this place of email frequency inner peace, you must accept one unavoidable truth and become comfortable with it: People are going to unsubscribe.

Once you get over that, you’ll come to love email and use it as you please, free from anxiety, as it builds up your nonprofit’s support and donor base.

The Answer
In general, you want to send more emails, not fewer. Sending too few leads to lost donations, disengaged supporters, and higher complaint rates (amazing but true). How many is too few? 1 per month is a bare minimum. Less than that is too few, because people just forget about you – especially newer subscribers.

That’s the basic answer to the question of how many emails to send. Send more.

The rest of this article is about why sending more emails is better than sending fewer, and I’ll arrive at a maximum number of emails per month near the end.

The Case for More Email Begins: What’s Your Goal?

Not every email should be about the same thing. If you’re asking for money in every email, and you’re sending emails multiple times per week, then you will lose subscribers and increase apathy from your list.

But the reason isn’t because you’re sending too many emails. It’s because your emails are all the same. Your emails become like the voices of the parents in the old Peanuts cartoons. A formless, easy-to-ignore sound that has no effect on the listener.

Your nonprofit’s overarching goal for email is simple: Increase donations and increase engagement.

But the specific goals for each email will vary a lot. Your goals will change with each email and each email campaign (campaign means ‘more than one email in a series’).

Here are some possible goals for your emails:

1. Engage them with the organization – read it, share it, like it, reply to it
2. Keep them informed
3. Raise money
4. Get involved (volunteer, attend an event, sign a petition, contact congress)
5. Start a fundraiser among your friends (peer-to-peer)

When you have new stuff for them to do, updates to share, and stories to tell, your list of active supporters will appreciate what you’re sending them and stay involved.

With this approach, you can send up to several emails per week, and they (your active supporters) won’t mind at all. In fact, they’ll thank you.

Who Reads Your Emails?

Marketing is about knowing your customers. Fundraising is about knowing your donors.

So who are your donors and supporters who read your emails?

This is very important.

In fact, this might be the most important point in this entire article. You MUST get this. The failure to understand what you’re about to read is why so many nonprofits don’t send more emails, because they’re afraid people will unsubscribe.

The people who read your emails are the people who CARE about your mission.

Read that again. Let it sink in.

This is who you’re writing to.

I was a teacher for a while. Educators often feel compelled to spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to connect with and persuade the small number of students who don’t want to be in school and who cause the most trouble. Please just do your work. Please stay in your seat. Please listen. We’re basically begging them to care about their own future. That’s how it feels sometimes. But it’s usually less than 5% of the class.

Think about that: Why are we devoting the most time and resources to the students who least want what we’re “selling”? Shouldn’t we give more time to the ones who want to learn, so we can help them learn more?

In the same way, you aren’t writing emails so you can beg and plead with your on-the-fence, uncommitted readers to get off their couches and, darn it, stop being so selfish and give some money to us. Come on! Please? We really need it! We need it. People are dying. Animals are suffering. Don’t you want to give?

“No.”

That’s not your audience. Write to the people who believe in what you’re doing. You don’t need to convince them. You just need to keep them actively engaged. And nothing does this more efficiently than email (for most people – keep reading to learn about the 9% exception).

Who Doesn’t Read Your Emails?

The answer: Everyone else.

How do people end up on your list who don’t seem to care? Well, there are lots of ways. Maybe they went to an event once and gave their email as part of a sign-in procedure. Maybe they gave once because a friend asked them to. Maybe they knew someone who once worked for you and donated because really they were supporting their friend. Maybe they found you online and were just curious.

The reasons are endless. But the reasons don’t matter. What matters is, there are three reasons why people stop reading your emails:

1. They don’t care about your mission enough. They simply have other priorities, and you have to respect that.
2. They’re too busy, or just don’t read emails that much. I’ve got over 1000 unread emails in one of my inboxes. It’s hard to keep up.
3. They prefer other means of communication (like direct mail, phone, or in-person – which is why you should be doing all those things for donors who want them).

I know personally of a recurring donor who unsubscribed from the email list of the nonprofit they give to. For real. Unsubscribing doesn’t always mean they’re gone.

Fix Your Eyes on the Goal of Email – Active Supporters & Donors

Here’s the foolproof guaranteed way to prevent people from unsubscribing: Send zero emails. Your list will never complain. Nice happy list, safely cocooned from all disturbances. But they’ll never give or do anything either. So don’t be a ‘list hoarder.’ It gets you nowhere.

The guaranteed way to get more donations and more active supporters? Send more emails.

Yes, it’s more complicated than that, but do you see why the question of “how many emails should we send” is really the wrong question? What are we sending, and why? That’s what matters. If hitting your goal takes two emails per week, then send two. If it takes five emails one month but only two the next month, then do that.

For my clients, I never even think about if I’m sending too many emails, because it’s not important. I think about what we’re sending, and why.

Here it is again – this is a ProActive Insight:

ProActive Insight: Emails are for people who care about your mission

Stop Worrying about Unsubscribes

Unsubscribes don’t matter because most of the people who unsubscribe aren’t invested in your mission anyway. They were hanging on your list because of a decision made at some point in the past, and finally got tired of hearing from you enough to go through the hassle of unsubscribing.

Unsubscribers are not going to give, or show up, or share your content, or sign your petitions. They are email list deadwood.

And this isn’t a criticism. They aren’t bad people because they don’t actively support your mission. They just have other priorities in their lives.

Some real world data: When my clients send out one email per month, they get a handful of unsubscribes every time, with almost no exceptions. When we send four or more in a month, the same thing happens.

People will unsubscribe no matter what you do. If you go eight months and send nothing, and then send out one little email, people will unsubscribe. It will happen, and you can’t stop it.

Maximum Number of Emails to Send Each Month?

If you’re going to pin me down, I would limit your emails to five per week at the absolute most. Three per week is a healthy number. Once a month is the absolute minimum.

Some data for that:

A study by Omnisend found that companies (not nonprofits) who sent out one email per month got an average of 7.47 orders. For companies who sent 10-19 emails per month, they got 18.59 orders. So that’s almost three times the purchases. Send more emails, make more money. Pretty simple.

The amazing thing is, the same senders found that open and click-throughs went down as they sent out more emails. So, even though fewer people are opening and clicking, they’re making more sales.

Wacky? It makes sense if you think about how people engage with email. If I see one email per month, it’s easy to ignore. If I see five emails per month, I might ignore three of them.

But like the driver in the picture, I can’t ignore them all. And when one of them catches me at a good moment when I have time and realize I want what they’re offering, I’ll take action.

You don’t need people to open every single email.

The study did find, however, that with more than twenty emails per month, purchases nosedived down to 6.35 per month. So there is an upper limit, which is why I say five per week (20 per month) is a maximum. But, this is also just one study. Your nonprofit might have data showing once a day works well for you.

My Email Frequency Preference

I prefer an approach of variation. Some months, maybe you only send one. Other months, during a specific campaign or to reach a goal by a deadline, send a lot more. If you have a fundraising event coming up, you should be sending at least four emails in the two weeks beforehand. At least. But six or eight is better. I prefer twelve, spread out over two months.

That’s why I offer monthly email packages for ongoing communication like newsletters, as well as campaign email packages of four, eight, and twelve emails.

If you’re running a campaign with a deadline or specific goal, and want it to succeed (why else are you running it?), you need to send multiple emails, and in a relatively short burst of time.

You don’t need people to open all of them. You just need them to act on one of them. Sending more emails increases this likelihood.

The 9% Exception

Another study was trying to find out how many emails consumers want to receive.

For one question, they asked people how often they wanted to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with. That’s bold for an important reason. We’re not talking about spam here. If you shop at Target regularly, how many emails do you want to receive from Target? That’s what this question is about. How many emails from businesses you like and buy from do you want to receive?

When asked this question, 9% of respondents said “Never.”

I bring this up as the final point for this reason: Some people who give to your nonprofit want no emails from you. Some people just hate email advertising of any form. 9% is a lot of people. If you have 10,000 supporters, then up to 900 of them want no emails from you.

What do they want then? How can you be a customer or donor but want no emails?

It just means they want to do business with you on their own terms, or hear from you in other ways.

But you can’t be afraid of these people. They’re going to unsubscribe, and nothing you can do will stop them. And it doesn’t matter.

So stop worrying, and go write your next email.

Read Part 2 – Why 90% of Email Survey Data is Meaningless