Want to Cultivate New List Members?

If your goal is to cultivate good activists and/or donors, skip the carefully crafted "welcome" message designed to help introduce new list members to your organization.

New research from M+R Strategic Services shows that welcome messages are not the most effective first communication for new subscribers and won't necessarily generate funds or call people to action. Read TechSoup's article to find out more.

Have your experiences shown this to be the case? Do you have other methods for cultivating activists and donors through your email lists?

These results are very interesting. Can we get more information about the study?

First, I'd like to know more about the fundraising test (the time series). It looks like both groups A and B received the same series (Welcome message, survey, appeal). Was the appeal's content the only difference?

Next, the time series shows 3 messages having gone to groups A and B, but only one to Group C. I'd like to know the unsubscribe and donation rates of Group C after they've received 3 messages (whatever the content).

Third, I'd love to see an update on the donation and unsubscribe rates of these same groups in 6 months or a year.

Robert

Hi,
If M+R publishes an update to the study, we'll update the article as well.

The other information you asked about in your post was outside of the scope of the article, but the people at M+R may have what you're after.

Here is a contact list for the organization. I worked with the eCampaigns department, but feel free to email me off-list if you'd like a direct contact.

Let us know what you find out.