Among the possible explanations for why your email list members are "just not that into you," one has some actual data to support it: inconsistency of communications.
Could it be true that failing to communicate with your listmembers consistently might cause them to not respond to your organization's emails as consistently as they might if you stayed in better touch? In order to find out, we looked closely at the effect that gaps in email communications have on listmembers' responsiveness.
Do Email "Silences" Matter?
To conduct this study, we gathered data from four national nonprofit groups - The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, International Planned Parenthood Federation/ Western Hemisphere Region, American Rights at Work, and The Wilderness Society.
We looked solely at email advocacy messaging in order to identify one consistent response mechanism (such as filling out an online petition) that we could then compare across months and organizations.
Three of the four organizations experienced declines of at least 1% in click-through and response rates after gaps of one or more months in their email advocacy messaging. The other organization had only a one-month gap in its messaging and its click-through and response rates fell only slightly (less than 1%) the next month.
An email silence of two to three months resulted in lower click-through and response rates to the next advocacy message. The gap in communications caused click-through rates to drop an average of 3.80% while response rates dropped an average of 3.03%. A one-month gap in advocacy messaging resulted in an average drop of 1.41% in click-through rates and a 1.06% drop in response rates to the first advocacy message after the gap.
Please keep in mind that this is a small data set with only seven gaps between the four organizations over a 12-month period. However, it does appear that the response rate to subsequent advocacy messages dropped proportionately to the length of the gap in email advocacy messaging.
Stay in Touch!
Your organization's relationship with its email list members is not all that different from a normal offline relationship in many respects. One key requirement of maintaining a good relationship with someone in the real world is staying in touch. We all know that absence makes the heart grow fonder only in romance novels! Real people need to hear from you consistently in order to stay connected and remain interested in what you have to say.
That's why it is crucial to commit to sending at least one list-wide email advocacy message (or its equivalent) per month. Many organizations develop a comprehensive shared messaging calendar to ensure that they are communicating regularly with their email list members. Without such a calendar (and the cross-departmental team to manage it), it is all too easy to let a month or two pass without sending an email alert to the list.
Source: http://www.mrss.com/news/Do_Email_Silences_Matter_M-R_Strategic_Services.pdf
