The Nonprofit Email Report: Data-Backed Insights for Better Engagement

Browse The Report
- Introduction
- Nonprofit Email Deliverability & Engagement Benchmarks
- Introduction
- Nonprofit List Sizes
- Ask The Expert: Is List Segmentation Really That Important?
- Nonprofit Email Bounce Rates
- Nonprofit Email Open Rates
- Nonprofit Email Unsubscribe Rates
- Nonprofit Email Click-Through Rates
- Nonprofit Email Fundraising Performance
- Nonprofit Email Performance by Date & Time
- Email Sender Superlatives
- A Data-Driven Approach to Subject Lines & Preview Text
- Introduction
- Convey Positive Emotions in Subject Lines
- Ask the Expert: How Did You Use AI for Subject Line Sentiment Analysis?
- Words to Include (or Avoid) in Your Subject Lines
- Experiment with Emojis in Subject Lines
- Write Compelling Preview Text
- Words to Include (or Avoid) in Your Preview Text
- Put It All Together — Performance Benchmarks & Word Usage
- Creating Effective Emails
- Introduction
- Ask the Expert: What Should I Keep In Mind When Creating Compelling Emails?
- Tip #1 — Include Imagery in Your Emails
- Tip #2 — Pay Attention to Salutations
- Ask The Expert: Do Salutations Really Make a Difference?
- Tip #3 — Use the Word "You"
- Tip #4 — Make Your Message Scannable
- Ask The Expert: How Do I Create a Great Call to Action?
- Tip #5 — Include Great Calls to Action
- Put It All Together - Build Clear, Compelling Emails
- Lessons from the Most Engaging Email of 2022
- Data-Backed Insights for GivingTuesday and Year-End
- Methodology & Appendix
- About Neon One
Convey Positive Emotions in Subject Lines
Your email’s subject line may only contain a handful of characters, but it can have a huge impact on your email’s performance. Think of your email’s subject line as the headline for your email. It’s typically the first element of your email people will notice, so it’s an important place to set expectations about the type of content your email contains and why readers should open it.
Why Is This Important?
A good email subject line will stand out from the hundreds of other messages in a reader’s inbox, catch their attention, and help them decide to open your email. It’s a critically important part of your email! According to research by Invesp, a top conversion rate optimization firm, 47% of people will open an email based solely on the subject line, and a whopping 69% of them will report an email as spam based on the subject line alone! Your subject line can be the difference between someone opening and interacting with your message and sending it to their spam folders.
Do the emotions you convey in a subject line impact your open rates? The data says it does. We worked with Cherian Koshy of Nonprofit Operating System to do a sentiment analysis of nonprofit email subject lines using an AI system. The system identified 27 different emotions in our base of 157,048,634 emails, then identified which emotions prompted the highest percentage of email open rates. Let’s take a look.
Top-Performing Subject Line Emotions
Here’s what emotions prompted the best open rates:
Relief40%
Gratitude39%
Pride39%
Excitement37%
Optimism37%
What This Means for You
Notice that each of the top five emotions are all generally positive. None of the negative emotions (Annoyance, Disapproval, Disappointment, Anger, Sadness, Confusion, Disgust, Fear, Remorse, Embarrassment, Nervousness, Pride, and Grief) inspired high open rates. If you want to improve your open rates, try to create subject lines that inspire positive emotions in your readers.
What does this look like, exactly? Cherian Koshy of Nonprofit Operating System provided these notes and examples of each of the top five most effective emotions in subject lines:
- Relief typically expresses completed work or safety such as “Community Recovery After Hurricane Ian” or “Coping with {cause issue}.”
- Gratitude is pretty straightforward: Thanking people for their support inspired high open rates.
- Pride is often used with self-referential organizational language. Examples of Pride include: “Your Support for [org]” or “End of Year Update for Members.”
- Excitement typically involved the use of an exclamation point such as “You’re Invited,” “You’re Great!” or even “Pizza Party!”
- Optimism included subject lines such as “What’s Old is New” and “Working Together for our Future.”
As you read over those examples, what emotions did they inspire in you? When you write your own subject lines, try to use language that evokes similar feelings in your readers. According to Koshy, “The results of this analysis suggest that nonprofit organizations should consider using more emotionally charged language in their subject lines, depending on their goals and the message they want to convey particularly at the end of the year.” People support your work because they’re passionate about your cause—tap into that passion by intentionally creating subject lines that elicit an emotional response.