Audiences are still willing to support news, BlueLena’s Christine Holbert says, following a 50 per cent improvement on 2022 appeal conversion rates.

She quotes the Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s Q3 2023 report of “a continued steep decline in donor counts, with a Q3 YOY drop of 7.6% after late data adjustment”, a decline which began in 2021 after donations peaked during the first year of the pandemic.

The company has published results from the 29 of its clients that used its end-of-year reader revenue campaign last November and December. The ‘Our News Is’ campaign – as a standalone or in conjunction with NewsMatch messaging –included 11 distinct email campaigns over the course of five weeks, beginning with a pre-Thanksgiving “thank you” message and ending with a New Year's Day wrap up.

Based on data from all 29 clients who participated in end-of-year campaigning, the average open rate was 35.73 per cent.

“More importantly, and more helpfully, the average click rate was 3.89 per cent, well above reported standards for end-of-year giving and fundraising in general,” she says. “This means that readers were not only opening emails, they were reading and acting. And because our end-of-year messages encouraged minimal or no links to pages other than contribution landing pages, this click rate proves that readers had a strong response to the support CTAs.”

A new metric tracked closely this year was MRR, monthly recurring revenue, which calculates the amount you can anticipate bringing in each month, based on memberships or subscriptions. Holbert says end-of-year reader revenue campaigns increased MRR by an average of $1,180.

“Each client who participated in the end-of-year campaign included an end-of-year opt out in the footer of their emails,” she says. “These opt outs offered readers the opportunity to stop receiving emails about the end-of-year campaign without unsubscribing from the full list. 

“Across clients, we saw a 0.22 per cent unsubscribe rate and a 0.06 per cent opt out rate. While this saved many users from unsubscribing from the full list, next year we’ll recommend a bolder opt out with more specific copy.”