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hi everyone my name's Glynn I work for well development movement and so I was just going to do a little bit of a presentation I guess about a couple of things that I've worked on a WDM and also taken over from my predecessor Pontus Westerberg who I think probably lots of you might have met at previous ECF events first of all on reactivating supporters and also segmenting our email list to kind of try and tailor our email communications as best as possible to individuals based on their previous behavior and what they've done with with WDM really so it's kind of a bit of a it's very much a work in progress and an early kind of early bit of a pilot stage project really so I'm really keen to get people's thoughts and ideas and and on what I can do to improve we can do to improve this because this is as I say it's this really kind of a trial project as much anything to see how it works but so I guess kick off by talking a little bit about email reactivation so the first question that that was was was looked I was who should be sent those those emails you know which which which of our supporters who are not opening emails for example should we should we contact and try and them try and you know engaged first of all so so what was done was we emailed the people who hadn't opened or in our system we using MailChimp to send out emails which were the people who hadn't been registered having opened an email for at least six months and so in that period they would have probably had an email maybe every ten days over that six-month period so it's quite a reasonable number of emails that they that when our system were registered as not having opened opened at all basically I don't know maybe five six years probably maybe more than that I do now the list had never previously been cleaned never previously being cleaned and at one thing I mentioned at the end of this is this is one of the the on-going debates obviously that people have around the email reactivation is do you delete delete people who don't become reactivated to the program from your email list at the end of it we did but that's controversial and others others don't agree with that but some but that's what we did so am so what happened with the process was that an email initially was sent out to this selection of supporters who hadn't opened a single email for six months I don't remember the exact number of people it was but it was probably in the region of four to five thousand email emails in this in this case that were sent out and the subject line of the email was have we offended you now I know that that got some debate on the ECF email email list about a year or so ago you know hello Glenn hello sporter it looks like you're not opening our emails we'd love to hear why we want to send you emails that are relevant to you and we certainly don't want to spam anyone please click on the link below that most represents how you feel about our email list so it's kind of a bit of a survey about what people thought about our email communications and so the first option was I what do you mean think the general least what is where you for what's worth for campaigning and fundraising for WDM yeah yeah yeah so so yes so the first the first option they had in this kind of survey if you like was I do read your emails actually and the second was I don't know who you are and why you are emailing me and third one was I don't have time to read your emails at the moment before thorne was I don't receive emails from you that interest me and the next one was I can't read your emails properly I think that was could have been worded slightly differently actually because that might mean I can't read your emails properly as in you know I'm partially sighted or something what it might mean they're they're the correct format or something so could have been doing broken down into two separate options the next time as I don't normally read emails from organisations which begs the question my own any organizational email this but and the the last one was you send me too many miles not know there's one more you don't send me enough emails which and I've got this that I've got the stats in a second for what what people responded to so I've been laid up in a second oh yeah and something else which we got and this is linked through to a page of our blog where people could put comments as well now unfortunately I I don't have that though it disappeared when the Pontus left unfortunately so I wasn't able to see all of the comments but I know they were there were a large number of comments it did engage a lot of people to kind of respond to this in terms of the exact numbers so other story this is the rest of emo if you want to stay on the list you don't need to do anything but if you want to unsubscribe we totally understand all you have to do is click this link thanks for your support so that was the email that went to about five or six thousand people now we had a we had an open rate of about seventeen percent which is at the time was higher than the list as a whole we've actually increased that sort of typical open rate that we're getting at the moment to a little bit more than that now but that was hiding and the click-through rate was was eleven percent yeah we didn't know there's no a/b test of this at all actually it was just 11 subjects that went out this was kind of I think I was suggested by someone on the ECF list actually that that was a my team Rachael actually that was a good subject line to try for this but the click the click through rate mr. was pretty high it was eleven percent and two-point-eight percent people unsubscribe straight away which is maybe not that surprising and there were some complaints the complaints are about first of all how did you know so so how people were a bit concerned we had a few comments either by email or left on the blog it's like are you are you tracking us what do you think you're doing so there's a lack of understanding about how kind of email you know tracking of links and things works and a lot of people didn't realize it was actually an email list at all that we were sending out as well they thought we were sending individual personal emails to people over over 50 years old they all think that you are sending them emails written by yeah and then yet the other thing which which I think you mentioned about sort of false negatives we actually had a lot of people stopped coming back saying oh actually we are i am i opening your emails i am reading your emails so there's a few reasons for that so black berries I think it doesn't always record the fact in certainly in MailChimp whether whether any mail has been opened because it's done to do with whether with the images are downloaded is whether it records the email as having having been opened or not so if someone hasn't hasn't set their their emails to not download download the images then that won't be recorded and also I don't think some of your some mobile phones as well some other mobile phones as well as BlackBerry's I think don't don't record that either so now they all go out as HTML and plain text in plain text exact yeah it's not going to record as well yeah so there was quite a lot of people in the end who were actually you know getting reading emails but were not you know I I'll show you the percentage in a second when certainly of the people who responded to to the to the search to the answers forty-seven percent they were said they weren't reading our emails because they don't have time thirty percent said they actually do meet our emails which is interesting six percent said who are you four percent said we sent to many males and two percent said they don't read emails from organizations one percent said oh he was boring and nobody said we were sending nobody said they wanted more emails from us nobody said they wanted more emails from us at all and people did seem to like the subject line it did kind of capture people's attention and grab people's it was encouraged people to open email in the first place so that was that was a positive thing the point about the many false negatives and and people fed that the email was a bit bit abrupt you know you you're we've noticed you're not opening our emails is a little bit so yeah maybe a little bit yeah a little bit confrontational so that's again something we've changed in trying this again in the last couple of months and and there was also the question of the ECF list is if people are saying they don't have time to read them as does that really mean actually your emails aren't aren't that interesting which may might well be it's a really interesting question as to whether it's a problem having people who aren't engaging at a particular time on your email list and I don't know what the right answer that is because what what I'll just run through what we did next actually with all of the people who didn't respond to that survey email so the people who responded to that survey were then considered to have been react re-engaged or reactivated by the organization and so just stayed on our email list and that's fine but then the people who didn't open or weren't recorded as having opened that email were then sent a follow up email yeah for those who didn't respond they were sent an email asking if they wanted to renew their subscription to WD ms emails and they had a yes no option this is a simple kind of really short email do you want to renew your subscription yes no and the people who did who clicked no or again didn't open that that email were then sent another email basically saying you know your subscription to WDM emails email emails will expire soon please click yes to continue receiving emails and then a third email was sent us basically this is your last chance to keep receiving emails from WDM and they also just had a had a yes link on there and if people had not responded to any of those emails and clicked yes on any of those emails they were then wiped from a list so yes so the changing the tone of that introduction to the email in particular so rather than starting from you know you haven't been you haven't been reading our emails is outrageous you have been taking action and sort of saying how can we improve our email communications actually what can we do better 22 to appeal to you was one of the things so to changing the tone of the email the data to you so rather than saying people who've not not opened an email in the past six months actually we're going to we're going to sort of look at the people who haven't clicked on an email in the past six months and people who haven't taken a campaign action in that period either and the reason for doing that is rather using this as primarily as a means of re-engagement of people who aren't taking action rather than as a means of deleting deadwood from the list on this occasion partly because i'm still thinking what's through frankly what the best thing to do on that is but i'm really keen to re-engage the people who aren't taking action at the moment and aren't clicking on links in our emails so what we'll do with them what I'm planning to do is do a survey basically about partly about the email communications at some point probably not this one because that's the last thing that we did but also a survey about our our campaign action so it so for people who haven't taken action on either of our campaigns will ask them so we noticed you know through for example you're not noticed you haven't taken action on our food speculation campaign in the last six months and we'd really like some feedback about the campaign to find out what why it hasn't appealed to you or why what could make it more appealing so so really thinking about you know getting some feedback from people on the actual campaign specifically that we're working on and and and get some ideas and thoughts from people that way to use that as a way of way of potentially reactivating reacting vente vaiting people and the other thing that we're looking at doing is changing the unsubscribe process our emails as well because at the moment people want to unsubscribe from emails they're literally they click on subscribe they're taken to a page that says do you want to unsubscribe and they're taken off the list whereas actually I think I want to give people the series of options actually I only want to hear about campaigns anyone to hear about food campaigns and you want to hear about climate campaigns so actually people are having a much more you know tailored community mail communications future towards what they're interested in rather than a all or none approach which is basically what we're getting at the moment so those that's kind of what we're looking at doing next week basically is it is that kind of follow-on to see if we can kind of re-engage people who haven't been active at all in the last in the last six months so this is something I tried as a bit of a test project to segment our email communications around fundraising appeals so we send about four or five fundraising appeals out every year and they with the first sort of process is that an email gets sent out to the whole whole of our email list initially and then what we had been doing up until October time last year was then sending an email to all the people who hadn't been recorded in MailChimp is having opened those emails we sent them a reminder email basically so though there were there were people who were getting those reminder emails who'd actually already donated for example that the data was not kind of sort of matching up in a sort of fundraising database with our email list all all a bit of a mess so what we what yeah that's just run to the CEO email sent to the whole list and then a reminder sent to the people who didn't open the first email so what we did this time was send actually a total of six emails i think it was in the end yes so an email was sent to the whole of the email list as usual to tell people about the fundraising appeal and then there were five different reminder emails were sent depending on people's previous activity donation history or activity with this with this sort of reminder email and for the for the reminder emails if somebody had been a previous donor to WDM so this all had to be done manually because we're using separate database systems separate email system so this is a ridiculously time-consuming process and this is why it was a test project to see if it worked it did work which is why we're now using engaging networks to do this in future but that's a different story but so basically the first and so for people who have previously donated money to WDM but did and weren't recorded as having opened the first email about the appeal the fundraising appeal they had an email with it with a completely different subject line and they had a longer email we put a couple of extra paragraphs about about the appeal and the campaign that we were fundraising for in that email and then for people who had opened or recorded in MailChimp should i say as having opened the first email but didn't click the link to the donate page they had a much longer email with with a lot more detail so five or six additional paragraphs about what the campaign that we were fundraising for was about and then for people who clicked on the link in the first email but didn't donate we put there weren't a huge number of those actually there was a relatively small number of those so manually then went through our database and went through and took out the the amount that they'd donated as sort of a mail merge into those emails and so the first the first line of those emails that those people got was thanks so and so for your previous donation to whatever the appeal was is really appreciated and and then went on to talk a little bit more about about this specific appeal so as I say was it was a much more complicated process than it should have been to actually get those emails set up and sent out due to the fact that didn't have databases that were properly integrated and then for people who weren't previous donors to WDM the ones who are recorded is not having opened the first email we sent am a really really short email really shortly in a couple of paragraphs just focusing on what difference those people could make by by donating to my campaign oh happy and then the people who recorded as having opened the first email but not clicked and had never donated before they didn't get a reminder email mainly because we couldn't think of what we could write in it that was different actually to make it make it sufficiently different and engaging and time constraints as much as anything as well so anyone that has any thoughts and what we could have put in that one I'm interested today and then last of all if people had not donated before and clicked on the first email about the action sorry about the appeal we then match that against whether people had taken an action on that on a similar issue before and then if people had taken an action on that campaign or a similar issue we then put a paragraph in the beginning of that email thanking them for having taken part in the campaign and explaining how how this fundraising appeal was linked to that to the same issue and to try and kind of get that overlap across and so the outcome of all of that which was an awful lot of work was the fact that it doubled the income for that appeal based on the average further previous appeals over the course of the past year so and that was that was a full-figure difference so that extra work was was clearly well worth doing it made a significant difference to the income from that appeal basically so am and that's that's why we're kind of looking at looking at doing that a lot more in future so in terms of future plans for what we're thinking of doing so in future yet if people are getting a fundraising email and will always start those emails if they've previously given us a donation with reference for throwing back to the previous donation that they that they gave us because that that definitely had a significant impact and we're also going to try doing some special update emails particularly about about campaigns every few months and try and include a paragraph in each of those emails based on the different kind of which actions for example those people have taken over the course of the past six months and try and try and really tailor those those communications and emails that people are getting based on what exactly they've done in the past I know that's kind of probably fairly obvious for something some people some organizations but it's been a real new thing for us just by not not having that data recorded in the right way and then campaign emails and so people who've been who've taken every action taken every action on the campaign well they'll get a couple of extra paragraphs for example and this is something in emails when we're sending campaign action emails to people there's always this big debate with campaigners who want to put loads of policy detail in there and me and the communications team who want to keep them really short and clear and to the point and not have lots of policy detail in there too possible and as always that little bit of tension so what we thought would be good thing to try it would be for the people who are clearly most engaged in the campaign and have taken lots of actions put a bit of extra detail in the emails that go to those people and then for the people who haven't yet taken action on the campaign keep those emails really clear and she want to the point and see if that has a difference but that that way hopefully it satisfies the different competing needs in the organization for and words information we we we put across to our supporters and you've all been re-engaged at the end of the session brilliantly