alerts versus newsletter

Submitted by Graham on Sat Feb 28, 2009

At a recent speech in London, Thomas Gensemer, the man behind Barak Obama's online election campaign said that e-newsletters are a 'waste of time and effort' when compared with the effectiveness of shorter email 'alerts'. 

We have dozens of clients that publish e-newsletters.  Writing, formatting and distributing e-newsletters is a lot of work, so the idea that you can replace an e-newsletter with simpler alerts may be welcome news to many!  

But, is there any evidence that alerts are more effective?  I did a little research and found that there some evidence to back up the claim.  The NTEN 2008 benchmark study showed that advocacy emails generated a response rate of 7.5% versus 3.6% for e-newsletters.  My gut tells me that if I keep looking for more data, the results would be fairly consistent.

Nonetheless, before you start plotting the demise of your e-newsletter, you do need to consider the needs of your community.  If response rates are 3.6% for an e-newsletter, it is serving some purpose.  It may be that a segment of your supporters prefer a 'digest' of news on a less frequent basis than a regular stream of alerts.  This format will also give you the opportunity to present a broader picture of your organisation's activity in a single email.

If you want to find the right formula for your organisation, you need to ask your community what they prefer, test response rates to see what happens, and conside rthe time and resource required to prduce alerts versus an e-newsletter.

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