Tim Kachuriak’s article “It’s About Time to Fix Your Broken Emails” was featured in the August/September 2011 issue of Church CO+OP Magazine. The article discusses some tips on how you can improve your email marketing in order to be good stewards through your marketing resources. From the article:

What is the Goal of an Email?

When I speak at conferences, I love to ask this question. I usually get a lot of different answers depending on the group. The right answer is, “a click.” The goal of any mass email should be to provide just enough information to the recipient to engage them enough to click through to your website. The reason is simply because that is the only action a recipient can take. They can’t register for an event directly through an email. They can’t donate through an email. The only thing the reader can do is click or delete.

Here’s an example of how powerful this can be. We conducted a simple A/B split test for one of our clients where we changed one sentence–the last sentence–of an email and sent it to two equal segments. The goal of this particular email campaign was to acquire new donors for the organization. The version of the email that we changed did not use “donate now” language, but instead focused on encouraging the reader to click through to the landing page.

To find out the results of the A/B test, and to read the rest of the article, click here to download the latest issue of Church CO+OP Magazine.

Follow Tim on Twitter at @DigitalDonor, or read his blog at http://digitaldonor.blogspot.com.