Email Appeal Performance During Year-End Fundraising

We sent a total of 7,679,300 email appeals during Mozilla’s year-end fundraising campaign. This post outlines top-line results and compares metrics from 2013 with this past year’s campaign.

Like many large organizations, Mozilla uses email to communicate to a variety of supporters; from people who take action on advocacy campaigns to users of products like Firefox desktop browser. The Mozilla Foundation email list has 1.4 million people. The English edition of the Firefox + You newsletter is sent to an audience of about 1.2 million. Below is an accounting of email performance of both lists during year-end fundraising 2013 – 2014:
Email metrics

Why are click through rates so low?

Fundraising appeals are unique compared to other kinds of appeals. Fundraising appeals always have a much lower click through rate (CTR) and response rate than other types of emails. (Response rate is the number of people who actually complete a request, in this case, made a donation.) Below are aggregate metrics from an industry benchmarking report using data from 55 organizations:
2013_Benchmarks_ReportOn average fundraising CTR is just 8 – 10% of the average non-fundraising email CTR. That’s because clicking on a “read more” article link or signing a petition requires less effort and commitment than completing an online donation. It stands to reason far fewer people bother to dig out a credit card, fill in a form, and donate funds vs. other, simpler actions.
This year the Firefox + You fundraising appeal had a 2.2% CTR. Note this is the only fundraising appeal sent to that list during the entire year. Normal CTR for Firefox + You emails is 6 – 10%.  That’s a very favorable outcome compared to the relative average benchmark (~20% of average CTR for FF+Y vs. ~10% of average CTR for most nonprofits). One reason the FF+Y fundraising appeal performed better than benchmarks could be that most nonprofits send multiple fundraising appeals throughout the year — and they’re often bunched during end of  year fundraising season. That can deflate overall average CTR. The Firefox + You audience gets one fundraising appeal, so there’s a “one chance” novelty users may experience when they see that email in their inbox.
One very important thing to always keep in mind is that every email list is unique. People join a particular list for different reasons. The list might be built over two years or ten years. One list might be made up of people who have very different interests, another might have a more homogenous recipient group. All those factors make each organization’s list unique. That’s why aggregate benchmark reports should be a reference, and each list should have it’s own set of metrics for benchmarks (open, CTR, response, unsubscribe; etc).