When should you send emails?

Emails are slightly more likely to be opened when people are at work, particularly on their lunchbreak. This is changing though as people get more access to the internet on their mobiles, so are more prone to open their emails on the way to work or while at home (often while watching TV).

However a major study by Mailchimp shows that people are more likely to take an action resulting from an email if they receive the email over the weekend. This is probably because they have more time to consider the email and take action over it, particularly if it involves an action that requires typing (trickier on mobiles than on laptops/desktops) such as paying for something, booking tickets or signing a petition.

Takeaway for me:

• Weekdays - best for informational / brand building emails that don't require an action
• Weekends - best if you want people to buy something or do something

How to stop your email list from dying

It's common for organisations to build up an email database or a Facebook page, which they then forget for a while and abandon. At Blue Rubicon we've been doing some comparisons of how people react when you start using the database again, and there are some interesting common patterns:

• Response rates are significantly lower than they were previously. One email list we're reviving had a 35% average open rate in summer 2010 - which has fallen to 25% in the first few emails we've sent to it.
• Unsubscribe rates rise significantly compared to previously
• Bounce rates increase - because people have moved job or changed email address for another reason

When we've investigated these, they are unsurprising. People have forgotten who we were, so didn't bother opening our emails, or, worse, unsubscribed. And if they moved job they forgot to tell us that they'd moved, because they hadn't heard from us for a while.

The best advice to keep email lists and Facebook pages alive is to regularly (i.e. at least monthly) contact them. This helps by:

• Reminding people how wonderful you are so that even if they don't open the email, they remember that you are there. So they don't unsubscribe, and they'll occasionally engage.
• Reminding people to tell you when they move email address.

If you have let a list go some months without being emailed, then the best ways to revive it are:

• Start with content that reminds people of why they are subscribed. So if they subscribed for local news, start with an exciting bit of local news
• Make sure that the emails come from somebody they know
• Take it easy - if they haven't heard from you in months then only email them once every few weeks at first, otherwise it will feel like a shock

Best email I've seen in a while

Very simply formatted, but a brilliantly told story from the Obama campaign.

Joe Biden email on healthcare

It's time for a no-fly zone

In 1984 a young aeronautical engineer called Al-Sadek Hamed Al-Shuwehdy,an opponent of Muammar Gaddafi, was hanged in a basketball stadium in Benghazi. As he hung from the rope dying, he was grabbed round his legs and dragged down until he stopped moving by a brutal young woman called Huda Ben Amer. Ben Amer was appointed Mayor of Benghazi, and went on to terrorise the people Benghazi for the decades since. She escaped the Benghazi uprising, and is waiting to return if the Libyan army retake control in the next few days.

Al-Sadek’s story matters, not just because of the horror of his death.

In the next few days Britain will have to decide whether to lead efforts to create a no-fly zone in Libya. No liberal can deny that the rebels are preferable to Gaddafi’s tyranny. But a few people are still questioning whether we have a right in international law to intervene if the UN Security Council refuses to authorise a no-fly zone.

In fact international law, as used in Kosovo, allows unilateral intervention if it is going to prevent an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. In Libya this week we can reasonably judge that there is an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. Thousands of people have already died - and with Gaddafi’s murderers like Huda Ben Amer waiting, we can be sure that thousands more will die if they win.

We need a no-fly zone as soon as possible - and as liberals we should be proud to support one.

Fundraising metrics

I've just done a fundraising campaign for my run up Tower 42 next week, and I've used it to do some basic analytics of how reach turns into donations.

My rough estimates, gleaned from bit.ly links and Mailchimp, are that the click rates for this campaign are:

· Mailchimp emails – 7%

· Ordinary emails – 4.9%

· Facebook – 0.3%

· Twitter – 0.25%

Mailchimp is unsurprisingly high – people have opted in to these emails, know me and the emails are well formatted and likely to actually get delivered into people’s inboxes because of Mailchimp’s reputation. Plus I actually tested them.

Ordinary emails I assume to be a bit lower mainly because there are some people in there who won’t have heard from me for a while, and who may have abandoned their email addresses or only check their secondary email occasionally.

The timing of the clicks on Bit.ly indicates that some people who received both a Mailchimp email and a Bit.ly email were prompted into action by the ordinary email, which came a few days later.

Facebook feels like a bit of a missed opportunity, but the figures may be slightly underestimated since I’ve put in a few non-tracked links to the site.

Twitter also looks like a low engagement channel from my colleague Josh’s metrics on the same campaign too. My instinct is that it’s quite hard to get much emotional engagement from a Tweet.

A basic online campaigning guide - Part 5a - Local campaigns

Once you know what to say, what are easy ways to tell your audiences if you are running a local campaign?

1. Email newsletters

Local newspapers are slowly dying, and their quality has been falling for years, while council freesheets tend to be full of uniformly positive propaganda.

This leaves a large gap in the market for local news - both political and non-political. Here's an example of a basic newsletter for residents of the Crofton Park area of Lewisham.

A newsletter once or twice a month will strike the right balance of being fresh, but not too often.

2. Breaking news

Local news is rarely local enough for most people. So if you email people with breaking news, then they are usually very grateful.

Here's a good example that Tom Brake, MP for Carshalton & Wallington, did during the early 2010 snows.

3. Post it to your website

Email newsletters usually translate to good news items on websites, where they will continue to get a trickle of traffic for years afterwards.

4. Tweet the headlines

Tweet the headlines in your email out to your followers over a few days, linking to the email text on your website.

5. Publicise through your Facebook page

As with the Tweets simply split out each story from the email into a series of stories that you release over a few days (or weeks).

Hootsuite is a useful tool that allows you to schedule Tweets and Facebook updates simultaneously, so you can set up several weeks of tweeting and Facebook in one go.

6. Email supporters of a specific campaign

Quite a lot of people will only want updates on specific local campaigns you are running, but will happily receive an email newsletter than contains these updates. This can be a good way to encourage them to convert from being a supporter on a specific local issue to receiving your general email newsletters.

7. Publicise your news in offline materials

Reference and cross-promote your email newsletter in your leaflets, local visits and meetings. At worst you'll get credit for being hardworking, at best you'll get extra subscribers.

Tom Brake Snow email

Blue Rubicon's digital inspiration for January

And here it is - feel free to drop us a line if you want to find out more about any of it.

Slides - Jan 2011