In defense of email newsletters

I use TweetDeck to subscribe to a search for the word “fundraising” on twitter, on Tuesday this update flashed up: RT: @kanter RT @marionconway @marcapitman Fundraising Secret #34: Ditch your email newsletter? The “RT” stand for Re-tweet, in other words this isn’t you’re idea you’re just passing it along. The post pointed to this article that comes around to a good conclusion, but gets there in a way that bothers me. I’ve heard this email-newsletters-don’t-work talk for a while now and it’s just wrong. What people should be saying is emails that have five stories and no clear call to action aren’t going to raise money. That’s an important difference. It has nothing to do with what you call your emails. If you send out monthly appeals or alerts with five stories and one donate link buried in a sidebar its not going to raise money. So regardless of what you call it, focusing your emails around a clear, urgent and singular call to action will get you better results. Not only because more people will respond, but also because they will be less expensive (in both time and money) to produce.