Flickr Photo: relentlesstoilYup, we're talking about the best way to communicate again. We figure the only way we'll master it is, well, by keeping the lines open.

Ryan Richards, Asturais Academy of Guatemala, and Karen Matheson, M+R Strategic Services, will be doing just that on July 31 at a Seattle Net Tuesday Event: Communicating at a Distance: Best practices communicating with members and supporters. They will offer real-world advice and research-based best practices for communicating with your membership effectively, maintaining and developing supporters, building relationships, and sharing your story.

Flickr Photo: MuffetAh, Spring: tulips, sun, clean, crisp air, and email metrics.

Today, we hosted and co-released the eNonprofit Benchmarks Study with M+R Strategic Services. During the live event and webinar, we learned a lot about how nonprofits are using email, and how stakeholders are responding. NTEN Members can get the recording of the webinar for free.

Convio also recently released a benchmarks report of its own clients. The reports don't cover exactly the same statistics, but it's interesting that the numbers they do have in common are very similar.

For all organizations in both reports, we found:

There's nothing revolutionary about the idea that your most important eNewsletter article should be at the top of your newsletter. Still, there's some good, practical advice in the the 2-page article just released by M+R, "Digging Into eNewsletters." As usual, my favorite part is that there are some actual numbers in the report, giving us a chance to compare our own.

Too Much EmailJust in case you thought my strategy of consistent (constant?) email to the NTEN community was without merit, here comes the latest M+R report. See people, I email you because I don't want you to forget about us!

Besides which, you know you love my emails!