3 Rewarding Benefits of Email Marketing

Discovering email marketing is like finding out your kid won first place in the school science fair — and got a scholarship because of it! Not only would it have any parent or teacher beaming with pride, it’s news they’d want to share with family, neighbors, and even the grocery clerk. Email marketing simplifies PTA communication in a way that’s engaging, effective, and budget friendly. If you’re not all in with email, you’re missing out big time.

Email spurs your members to act

​Email is a powerful tool deliver a message that incites action. You can include a lot of great information (member spotlights, past event photos, and the like), but don’t forget to include clickable calls to action so your members can actually do something with the info you’re providing. Here are some topics you might include in your PTA newsletter coupled with an appropriate call to action and link.

Say goodbye to printing costs

​Go green by cutting out printing costs. Instead of printing out a couple hundred flyers, why not send an email newsletter that can cover a range of topics? (And who has time to hand out flyers these days?) No funds are needed for postage, paper, ink or other print materials. Some organizations pay an extra fee each month for a service that allows them to send mass emails, but – here’s a kicker – mass emailing is already included for free in your memberplanet account! Spend your budget on more important things.

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Track and target your messages

Another huge benefit of email marketing is the tracking capabilities. Lucky for you, this feature, which can be quite pricey with other email providers, is free with your memberplanet account. We recommend tracking these key metrics:

• Open rate
  

An open rate lets you know how many people are, well, opening your email. Test out different subject lines to see how they affect your open rates.

An average open rate for nonprofits and charities: 30.88%

• Click rate
  

Tracking this number is a great indicator of whether the content you send your members resonates with them. To calculate click rate, take the number of clicks (one per email, even if you have multiple calls to action), divide that by the number of email opens, and multiply that by 100. Example: If 10 people opened your email, and 1 out of 10 clicked a link within it, you’d divide 1 by 10, then multiply the answer by 100. Your click rate is 10%.

An average click rate for nonprofits and charities: 4.31%

• Bounces
  

Bounced emails could be the result of invalid email addresses. If you know which emails aren’t working, you can remove them from your email list (so they don’t keep inflating your bounce rate), use alternate email addresses if your members have provided them, or ask your members to update their profile information by sending a group text using their number on file.
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A decent bounce rate across all sectors: 2.5%
 
Once you have an idea of these three metrics for the emails you’re sending, you can further target your message to your specific audience. memberplanet provides open rate, clicks, and bounces – great email marketing tools at your disposal so you can measure how effective your messages are. To further target your emails to recipients based on the data collected on the platform (member levels, event RSVP, donation level, etc.), check out our Smart List feature.
 
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​About Lizerne Ventura

With a journalism background and more than 10 years of experience in all things content, Liz fully appreciates the art of storytelling. When she's not working on content marketing, strategy, creation, or operations, she enjoys community volunteering and playing organ in her church choir.