E-Mail Open Rate

Annie Blaine · December 2015

Hi, has anyone else had a problem with a very low open rate for their e-communications? We sent out a blast this morning to everyone if our database, and only 9% of them were opened. This percentage has been pretty consistent for us for a while now. Any thoughts, tips, etc. would be much appreciated!

Rachel Slager 2 · December 2015

Well, the first thing is to consider that maybe this is a normal open rate...But it never hurts to check some other things.

Here's my 2 cents of where to start checking:

You can attach multiple Raiser's Edge queries to a SPARK email, but each query must have fewer than 10,000 constituents in it. If you exceed that 10k mark, then the excess email addresses get marked in NetCommunity as Invalid Addresses. (This information about Invalids does not make it over to RE.) Generally, invalids are a result of bounced email addresses but if they really shouldn't be on the list, then you will have to manually remove each one. 'Tis a pain. Hopefully you don't have this problem.
Either for the reason above, or for a number of other reasons, you might have people on the Invalid List but they still show as part of your count for people you are emailing to, when in reality the email is not even being sent to them. One thing to check is whether the Hard bounces from the NetCommunity report for each message are then being updated as Former emails in Raiser's Edge. Again, they will appear in your count even though the message is never getting anywhere.

Julie Gibson · December 2015

Open rate is a skewed statistic due to "preview" pane on many email clients, especially Outlook. If the recipient does not click to view/download images, it is not considered opened. I recommend instead looking at the links clicked and/or conversions, as those are more realistic statistics for email messages.

Julie

Jeff Novak · December 2015

I just emailed 966 email addresses and only have an 11% open rate after 2 hours. The industry (nonprofit) standard is around 24%. The last nonprofit I worked at always had a 48-66% open rate using another email system. I'm wondering why this open rate is so low (we have VERY loyal members so it doesn't make much sense) and why I haven't received my email (I always include myself in the emails I send) after 2 hours. Net Comm says all emails were sent. Since this is my first experience with NetComm perhaps someone can clue me in on any inherit problems they've run into. Many thanks.

Craig Parker · December 2015

An email is marked open in Blackbaud Netcommunity when one of two conditions are met.

1. The recipient enables the images in the email or

2. The recipient interacts with the email by clicking on a link

As Julie stated with email clients like outlook people can view an email with the "preview" pane. If they do not click on any links or download the images of this email then it would not be counted as a view.

If Blackbaud Netcommunity reports the email was sent to you then it has left our email servers. It is possible this email was placed in your spam folder or it could have been intercepted by your organizations spam filter as well. I am adding an article below that discusses the steps you can take to help lower the probabilities an email will be marked as SPAM. If you suspect your organizations email SPAM filter is intercepting messages you can check with your IT staff to see if they have any blocked messages for your email address.

How to prevent email messages or newsletters from being marked as SPAM: http://bbmarketplace.force.com/bbknowledge/articles/article/61927

E-Mail Open Rate

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