How Long Should Your Nonprofit Emails Be?
Plus: 5-Step Quick Guide to Structuring Emails so the Length Doesn’t Matter
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
More often than not, if my business or nonprofit clients have a question about emails I’ve written for them, it’s about the length. They think the emails are too long.
My response is always the same. How do you know?
The fact is, email length is not something we as the senders can evaluate based on our own feelings. Just because you feel like an email is too long doesn’t mean it is. The only valid way to evaluate an email is by its purpose and by its results.
For that reason, my answer to the question about nonprofit email length is always the same:
An email needs to be as long as it takes to accomplish its goal.
What the Studies Say
Trying to get valid data on the ideal length of an email feels like a fool’s errand. I looked up a swath of pages that promised to settle the question once and for all. One popular study that I won’t link to because I don’t consider it valid declares the ideal length of an email to be between 50 and 125 words.
But the same study found the ideal number of lines of text to be 20, which is about 200 words.
Right there, you see one of the major problems with trying to measure email length by word count.
If I wrote an email that consisted of a single paragraph with 125 words, and then another email with the exact same words but broken up into smaller paragraphs, the second email would perform better.
Why?
Because large paragraphs are harder to read.
How you structure your email is far, far more important than how long it is.
That’s just one reason the question of email length for nonprofits – or businesses for that matter – isn’t so simple. The idea that there’s some perfect email length that applies to every possible situation is akin to the idealistic notion that all children should go to college. It just doesn’t mesh with reality. (That’s the former teacher in me talking, based on 15 years teaching high school math and science – my career before this one).
Yet, that’s how these studies put it. Go too far below 50, and your emails lose effectiveness. Stray too far above 200, and the same thing will happen. Or so they say.
The problem is, it’s just not true.
When you look deeper into some of these studies, you find some of them are talking about work emails, as in, from one colleague to another. Others are talking about sales consultants following up with individual prospects. Not mass emails to lists of donors or customers. Work emails and one-on-one emails have almost nothing in common with emails to your list.
Email Length Data that Means Something
Here’s email length data from Aweber, where they studied 1000 emails sent to lists using their platform. Here’s their description for how they chose these 1000 emails:
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
“The 100 experts we analyzed are the best of the best. Their email strategies engage thousands and drive millions in revenue. Many of them see unheard of results (like 80% open rates and 30% click-through rates).”
So, these aren’t just random emails selected to achieve a “valid statistical sample.” You don’t want a valid sample to study the length of your emails. You want to study what works. And what works can be found from open and click rates, yes, but also revenue. These 100 marketing experts drive millions in revenue through email. So whatever they’re doing – it’s working.
The average length of these 1000 emails?
434 words.
Don’t be afraid to send longer emails.
But does that mean you should make all your emails be around 430 words? No!
If you look further into Aweber’s data, you see that these top marketers have an array of email lengths, some much shorter, and others pushing 1000 words. 11.4% of these emails were over 900 words in length. About 50% of their emails were under 300 words.
What does that tell you?
Just what I said at the start: The length of your email depends on its purpose.
What about Nonprofit Email Length Data?
Interestingly, when DonorPerfect studied the click rates and email lengths for nonprofit emails, they found that nonprofit readers responded better to slightly longer emails, on average.
Again, while I give little credence to the idea there is an ideal average email length, this data does prove one key point: Email length has more to do with your audience than some abstract number of words.
Quick Guide to Writing Effective Nonprofit Emails, No Matter the Length
Don’t worry about email length. Worry about quality. Worry about effectiveness. Here are a few email copywriting tips to get you started:
1. Know the purpose of your email
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
I’ve hit on this several times already. Is your email asking for donations? Promoting your fundraising event? Sharing a story? Asking readers to fill out a survey? Asking them to post something on social media? Sharing the results from a campaign? Thanking them?
All these purposes are vastly different, and the number of words you will use for each will vary just as much.
For instance, in general, a thank you email will be relatively short. It’s a thank you note. You don’t need to go on and on when thanking donors for reaching a goal or giving to meet a need.
Sharing a story? That will be longer. It’s pretty hard to tell a great story in 50 words. Not if you want to produce any sort of emotion out of it. Which you do!
A newsletter will probably be longer, because you’ll touch on more than one topic.
Get the idea? Different purposes will require different lengths. They’ll be as long as they need to be.
2. Specify your call to action
Your call to action should emerge from your purpose. If you want them to share content on social media, then your CTA will say something like “Share this with your friends on Facebook” or something of that nature.
3. Place your CTA in more than one spot
This study from Constant Contact found that links near the tops of emails received more clicks than links farther down.
Not too surprising, but very important to remember. Whatever your email is about, and however long it is, put your call to action near the top and near the bottom. For longer emails, add a third one in the middle.
Why? Because the link at the top is for people who need little motivation to act. They see what the email is about and are instantly inclined to act. They don’t need to read the whole email.
Other people will need to read more before they decide to act.
This is another huge fallacy in the data about email length. It assumes people need to read your entire email. They don’t! All they need to do is take action on whatever you have identified as the purpose for the email.
The reason to put a CTA near the top is so your nonprofit’s supporters can act quickly and move on with their day. Back to the earlier example:
If I write a 200 word email with just one call to action at the end, and compare that to a 500 word email with three calls to action at the start, middle, and end – the longer one will almost certainly get more clicks. This leads to the fourth email writing tip:
4. Create an email structure that serves the reader
We’ve already hit on the main aspects of email structure. A few structural tips:
- ✓ Insert more than one call to action, including one near the top.
- ✓ Don’t use large paragraphs. Use smaller ones, with lots of white space to make for a faster read.
- ✓ Don’t overload your email with images and graphics. Too much design is harder to read, not easier, and it obscures your CTA buttons and links.
The last structural tip is so important I’ve made it step 5 in this guide.
5. Use text emphasis, and consider using subheadings
Subheadings aren’t always appropriate in email. They detract from the ‘personal letter’ quality of a plain text email, if that’s what you’re shooting for. But for longer emails, subheadings do help speed up the read because they allow the reader to get the main points more quickly. Is that what you want? Again…what’s your purpose?
Along the same lines, you should almost always use textual emphasis like bold and italics. These draw attention to main points and increase engagement.
More Important than Email Length
All five of these email writing tips have far more impact on your nonprofit’s supporters than the length of your email.
By making your emails easier to read, easier to understand, and easier to act on, you will increase your click rates and more effectively accomplish your nonprofit’s mission.
What does ProActive Content do?
I haven’t computed the averages, but I can tell you that nearly all the emails I write for nonprofits are over 200 words. Many are over 400. Some over 600. Do they work? You can go ask my clients. Here are some nonprofits we’ve worked with (though we haven’t done emails for all of them…)
Our emails have raised tens of thousands of dollars, and counting, for a growing group of nonprofits. And we almost never write 50-word emails. Neither should you.
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