3 Ways to Measure List Growth Success for Your Nonprofit

Today email is one of the best ways to communicate with your audience because you can reach them wherever they are.

The more people you get on your email marketing subscriber list, the better chance you have of enticing them to do business with you. That’s why it’s important to continuously grow your list.

While many sign-up tools automate this process, you want to take a few minutes to measure your success and progress towards your list growth goals.

Understanding what works and what doesn’t will allow you to improve your results and it doesn’t need to take a lot of time.

How successful is your email marketing? Check out our upcoming webinar: Measure Your Nonprofit’s Email Marketing Success with Reports.

Take a look at these simple ways you can measure your list growth efforts and ensure you are on track:

1. List growth rate

Start by calculating your list growth rate so you can see how quickly you are growing your list. Your list growth rate is measured by subtracting unsubscribes from new subscribers and dividing by your total contacts.

Calculate your list metrics on a regular basis so you can see the rate of list growth over time. Consider measuring this rate once a month or quarter depending on your business.

Growth rate

Over time, you’ll be able to test different offers and sign-up methods and then use this growth rate to compare your results.

2. Growth by source

Once you know your overall growth rate, it’s time to track where contacts are signing up from.

This will give insight into why some methods or channels may get better results and you can adjust your overall strategy accordingly. Compare the results from different tools and sources you’re using. See where you’re reaching your audience and getting them to sign-up.

With Constant Contact, it’s easy to track from the “Contact Growth” page. This page can be used to calculate your list growth rate and see the sources where contacts are signing up from.

If you find a lower amount of contacts are signing up from a specific source, you may consider focusing efforts on more effective channels, changing the sign-up details, or even adjusting the offer you use to entice people to subscribe.

Contact growth

3. Contact quality

Both of the aforementioned methods are great, however, you also want to ensure that your email contacts are valuable to your business.

Focus on quality vs. quantity of new contacts. Make sure they are engaging with your business and your emails.

Take a look at the following email reports to gauge the quality of your new subscribers:

Email engagement

From your email reporting dashboard you can take a look at your open and click rates. Ideally, you want these rates to remain steady or improve as you grow your list.

Keep in mind, these rates can be affected by other factors, so be sure you’re utilizing the following metrics as well.

Bounces

Bounces can happen for a variety of reasons, and when you’re growing your list, you want to ensure the contacts who are signing up are valid and able to receive your emails.

The bounce report will show you which addresses bounced and why they weren’t delivered.

Email addresses often bounce due to a typo. If possible, you can reach out to the contact through another method to update the address. When you are unable to correct the email address, remove the bounce to keep your list clean.

If you find that you receive a high amount of bounces, you may consider adding a confirmed opt-in step for new contacts.

Unsubscribes

Due to anti-spam policies, all commercial emails are required to have an unsubscribe option.

In the Unsubscribe report, you’ll be able to see who has unsubscribed and the reasons why. Take a look at the reasons so you can adjust your list growth and email marketing efforts.

Spam complaint

While you hate to see contacts unsubscribe, you definitely don’t want them to hit that Spam or junk button.

Contacts typically hit the Spam button when they feel mislead or even if they simply want to unsubscribe.

If you find that you’re losing more contacts than gaining, take a look at your sign-up methods. While you might offer something enticing at sign-up, it’s important that contacts know what they’ll be getting after the initial interaction. Be sure to set their expectations from the get-go and that they understand the value of your communications.