I'll go right ahead and say it: a lot of benchmarks are useless, especially when it comes to email. The over-attention to open rates keeps vanity metrics front and centre, and revenue numbers are always vague. It can all be very cloak and dagger.

EXCEPT for the 2023 UK Digital Benchmarks, which is my charity data love language.

The first part of this post shares the key email findings from the study and why I think they matter. I finish with what we need to do as a sector to have better email programmes — feel free to skip ahead.

I've referred to their 20/21 study all the time because it makes a great case for investing more in email marketing (which helps in my line of work, right), so I've been eagerly waiting for the latest results.

Released on 18 July, the latest UK Digital Benchmarks are a feast of information — and the illustrations are also to die for. The benchmark covers everything from fundraising, advocacy and online advertising to email and social.

Here are the key takeaways for email:

Average email list size increased by 17% in 2022, building on substantial increases in the previous two years.
Overall email message volume grew by 49% for UK nonprofits, to an average of 23 messages per subscriber. For US-based nonprofits, the average volume was more than double this figure, at 55 email messages per subscriber per year.
For every 1,000 fundraising emails sent, UK nonprofits received £66 — a 19% drop from 2021.

The good news. ⚡️

Our email communities are growing. Growing your email list matters. Churn is a normal part of email marketing, and so if you're not focusing on growth, your email community is essentially dying. SAD FACE. It's great to see the sector focus on bringing more folks into their email lists.

Action: Write down a list of how people can join your email community.

How easy is it?
How many people join through each point of entry?
How often are you promoting the points of entry?
Is there a more creative way of growing your email community you could try, like a quiz or free course?

Increased email volume is music to my ears — but only if you're doing it right.

The stats

"Overall, UK nonprofits sent 27 messages per subscriber over the course of 2022. The volume of messages was more than twice as high for Non-UK nonprofits, which sent 61 messages per subscriber." - UK Digital Benchmarks

I firmly believe that if the sector sent more high-quality segmented emails to their community throughout the year, the email ROI would increase.

Many organisations, especially smaller charities, are still stuck in the monthly multi-story newlsetter trap, which just isn't enough to build meaningful relationships with supporters.

Benchmarks cancelled open rates.

If you've worked with me, heard me speak or read a rant on Twitter, you'll know that I always say that engagement needs to be the metric we track in emails.

Since Apple's privacy updates, open rates have been unreliable at best. They're often inflated, and so from a numbers point of view, they aren't worth much if they're wrong.

We also email our supporters because we want them TO DO something, right? Donate, vote, share or click to explore more — our emails are about action.

I absolutely love that Benchmarks have drawn a hard line in the sand.

OPEN RATES
SHUT DOWN

For years, we have dutifully reported on open rates as one of the building blocks of email metrics. And for years, we have just as dutifully encouraged readers to take those numbers with a grain of salt, as tracking opens was relatively unreliable.

As Apple’s 2021 privacy changes created zillions of false opens, that grain of salt became a boulder, a mountain, a continent. This time around, our average reported open rate was a whopping 34%.

That number is a lie, and lies do not belong in Benchmarks.

You may still find benefit in tracking opens for your own email programme, and if you can separate real human opens from illusory machine opens, this can be a useful metric. But as far as Benchmarks is concerned, open rates are cancelled.

:M+R Benchmarks

If you are curious about open rates, if your email marketing platform lets you track inbox providers, tag contacts accordingly and send your campaigns to each inbox type. This will give a much more accurate idea of whose actually opening what.

The bad news 🥲

Email response rate is down

The data wizards and M+R start this section by saying, "Most metrics for most types of messages were lower in 2022 than in 2021 — which is not unusual when both audience sizes and message frequency increase."

Here's the lowdown:

One in every 500 subscribers who received a fundraising email responded by making a donation.

Email revenue is down.

For every 1,000 fundraising emails sent, UK nonprofits received £66 — a 19% drop from 2021. So whilst UK organisations sent more fundraising emails to more people, each message sent generated less revenue on average.

The study points out that not every organisation suffered lower revenue.

Disaster/International Aid nonprofits reported an increase in donor support, with 13% higher email revenue

For Large nonprofits, average email revenue was 160% higher in 2022 than in 2021!

Email as a total percentage of online revenue is down

In 2021 total online income via email was 4%, dropping to 2% in 2022. Ultimately, email revenue declined by 9% for UK nonprofits.

Here's what I think you need to do to change that.

How to improve your charity email marketing

Invest in your welcome journey

Welcome emails are one of two email types in the study that showed improved click rates and decreased unsubscribes.

I can almost guarantee you that your first welcome email will be one of your top-performing emails EVER, and done well, your subsequent welcome emails are the perfect opportunity to get people used to seeing you in their inbox and taking action in your emails.

When someone opts into your list, they're at a peak interest level, don't waste it.

Segment

I know earlier I said increased email volume is a good a thing — but only if you segment your email subscribers.

Increasing your email volume and sending quality emails people engage with is one of the best ways to improve your email deliverability, but not everyone needs to hear about everything all the time.

You can segment based on donation history, behaviour in previous emails, location (most tools can do this for you automatically using IP) and my favourite: subscriber interests. Take some time to figure out what people are interested in, and send micro-campaigns throughout the year. Your overall email performance will increase significantly if your segmented content is good, and I can bet readers will be far more engaged overall.

GIVE VALUE

This is in all caps because it's shouty.

We all have limited time and attention span, and our inboxes are busy places, so if all an organisation or brand does is ask, ask, ask, donate, donate, donate, we switch off. Even worse, we mark as spam.

We need to constantly ask ourselves, what are our subscribers getting from us? I can't generalise, but I'm going to guess that email revenue has gone down partly because our subscribers are tired of only being asked.

I think the sector needs to flip the script on email, and we need to move away from seeing it as a channel to broadcast news and appeals from.

It needs to become a channel where we focus on connection and sharing stories and advice that serve our readers as much as the communities we support.

If you make a pledge to focus on sustainable email list growth, give all subscribers a proper welcome and create an email content plan that balances give and take, next year, I think all the email stats in M+R Benchmarks will be more positive.

To quote an excellent human and sector friend Adam Haworth, Digital Marketing Manager at Sense,

Your email list is not a resource to be plundered. It's a community to built. 💥

Is charity email dead, then?

Charity emails that aren’t creative or personalised and just ask, ask, ask are dead.

Email hasn’t changed much in the last 10 years, which often means it’s at the bottom of your to-do list, and let’s be honest if you’re following the ‘boring newsletter model’, I bet email marketing is pretty tedious in your organisation too.

But even so, no, I don’t think email is dead at all.

When we all had to stay at home during the pandemic, we finally gave our email programmes the attention they deserved — and we started to see results. Like anything, what you put in, you’ll get out, so maybe we just need to show the humble email some love.