By Janus Boye
Ashley Budd is Director of Marketing Ops at Cornell University
Can you actually make mass emails popular? According to Ashley Budd from Cornell University’s alumni engagement and fundraising division, she’s done just that by fundamentally changing the university’s approach to newsletters and call to action emails.
Her strategies have boosted open and click through rates far above industry standards. In a recent member call, she shared samples of what makes her emails so popular.
Below I have shared my notes from the call, a bit on newsletters, a few of her key tactics, examples and finally some downloads. Let’s go.
Good emails are all about trust
The core drivers of trust as described in “Begin with Trust,” by Frances Frei and Ann Morriss published in the May-June 2020 edition of Harvard Business Review
Trust me, email can be quite fun, and we laughed in this call. Ashley actually opened her deck on the topic of trust and by using the triangle as shown on the illustration.
For each of the three drivers of trust, she made the connection to what it means in terms of email:
Logic: Be consistent, be easy to follow and share information
Empathy: Anticipate the needs of the subscriber/recipient. Invest in their success
Authenticity: Have a voice, keep it real and show emotion. Or in my words: Don’t be too corporate.
Click to enlarge this sample email from the 2022 Giving Day campaign
She then moved onto an example of all of this put in practice for Cornell Giving Day. On Cornell Giving Day, alumni, parents, friends, and Big Red fans all over the world come together to make a difference for Cornell and for the world.
The emails tracked by the Cornell Giving Day campaign in 2022 for both central and college and unit partners contributed to 38.53% of gift transactions. Central emails acquired ~7% more users than college and unit emails.
In the example email shown, you can see the prominent red ‘LET’S GO’ button
Refer to the slides (PDF) for more numbers comparing email to the other channels (direct, social, search) and specific email performance.
Everyone thinks newsletters suck
Having illustrated the power of newsletters, Ashley made a memorable quote:
Think of it more as a letter than news
In a similar talk to a group of higher education folks, Ashley included a simple icebreaker before her talk by asking:
"When you hear the words email newsletter what words come to mind?"
The word clouds are too good not to share. Here’s the first one:
Are newsletters really an overwhelming time suck as shown on this word cloud from an icebreaker exercise?
The 2nd one is also……informative:
Are newsletters boring spam? This is from another word cloud generated by participant input as an icebreaker exercise.
Five solid tactics to improve your emails
In an attempt to distill her winning recipe for making emails better, Ashley shared these 5 key tactics:
High frequency: This can seem counterintuitive, but deliverability rates improves and it works. Keep it fun and light and people will tolerate more
Irresistible links: This is really to improve the habit of someone both opening and clicking. Have a look at some of her downloads!
Self-awareness: This is to combine authenticity and empathy. The next level is also do get that in the opt-out messages, which tends to be dull and quite uninspiring. Or perhaps a missed opportunity?
Relevant topics: Do content brainstorms far in advance, so that you have good content ready
Solid visuals: Ashley is a fan of including beautiful images and quality photography is worth it
Let’s look closer at those emails
Click email for larger version
Ashley shared quite a few examples to illustrate her points, including the sample email shown here. Notice how the newsletter opens with what you could call email click bait - a simple trivia question.
The trivia is followed by a good quality photo of pancakes and probably the only thing more impactful than food is animal photos, which she also frequently uses.
Another key details that’s often overlooked or at least underestimated is the subject lines: Ashley shared these two high performing examples:
You are perfect, [your name]
In case you missed it
The key point being that the subject line needs to be brief and also follow the trust triangle.
Learn more about taking email to the next level
First and foremost: Get Ashley in Your Inbox. It’s her personal newsletter that goes out on a semi-regular basis with things she is excited about – digital strategy, design, work, and life.
Ashley joined us in person in Manchester, UK in September 2022 for our Higher Education Connect conference, where she gave a talk titled: Ashley In Your Inbox. You can view her slides (PDF).
Finally, you can also download the slides (PDF) from the call or lean back and enjoy the recording from the call below