A high unsubscribe rate is bad, right? Not necessarily, according to the 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, released by M+R and NTEN.
As it turns out, a high unsubscribe rate correlates directly with high fundraising results. People unsubscribe because they read your message and decide your cause isn’t interesting to them; people donate because they read your message and decide that it is.
The key here: people are reading your message.
That’s just one of the fascinating drops of knowledge in the “2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study“. We recommend you:
> Download the Report. It’s free!
Other highlights:
- Across the sector, e-mail open rates experienced a 12% decline year-over-year.
- The average nonprofit in the study sent 3.6 messages per subscriber per month — but that went up to 6 messages in December.
- For every 1000 e-mail subscribers, orgs had 110 Facebook fans, 19 followers on Twitter, and 19 mobile users.
- The average study participant saw their number of fans on Facebook grow 14% — every month.
We at NTEN spend a lot of time comparing our numbers to the benchmarks as we try to figure out what works best. You should, too.