How the American Kidney Fund grew email revenue by 52%

You’ve done the work to build a solid email file, and you’re doing all of the right things to keep it humming.

There’s just one problem: your click rate is dropping, and email revenue with it. 

Leadership thinks the decline confirms their “email is dead” priors.

The American Kidney Fund (AKF) couldn’t figure out why supporters were tuning out and going cold. 

Then they made a scary discovery during a CRM migration: thousands of inactive emails that weren’t being flagged as bounces in their previous CRM.

They’d been emailing into the void, quietly damaging their deliverability. So they found a path forward:

The fix 
The American Kidney Fund and its agency partner, Interactive Strategies, started with the foundation: the email list itself.

As part of the migration process, they exported everything from the old CRM and ran the list through a third-party scrubbing service, which confirmed the bounces. 

Only clean, valid emails were added to the new CRM. 

They also built standards to catch spam submissions on acquisition forms, and scheduled monthly internal checks with a full list scrub every six months.

Smarter segmentation 
AKF’s audience is unique. Their list includes patients, healthcare professionals, caregivers, and advocates. 

Unsurprisingly, many supporters fall into more than one category.

They started segmenting by geography, past engagement, and actions taken. 

They also used one-click surveys in emails to let supporters self-identify their interests, then used that data to inform educational content.

The results
Average click-through rates improved from 0.86% to 1.34%. 

Some segmented emails drove engagement rates above 30%, especially when the right message reached the right audience at the right time.

But of course, the revenue numbers were the real story.

Donations attributed to email increased 25% year over year. Email revenue went up 52%.

How to apply these learnings to your program
Audit your CRM’s bounce handling. AKF’s old CRM was silently failing to flag dead addresses. 

If you haven’t checked how your platform handles bounces recently, it’s really worth confirming.

Scrub emails beyond your CRM’s built-in tools. A third-party list scrub caught problems AKF’s old CRM missed entirely. It’s a no-brainer to budget for this at least once or twice a year.

Wondering what tool to use? There are dozens to choose from, but NeverBounce is my go-to.

Let supporters tell you who they are. One-click surveys gave AKF data they could actually use for segmentation or versioned content. You can start with a one-question survey in your next email. 

But a big caveat: Don’t overpromise and lead your supporters to expect content or preference streams that you don’t have the capacity to deliver. 

The bottom line 
AKF’s email list appeared to be slowly withering away. It took an email migration to diagnose the issue.

If your click rates and email revenue are falling, and the deliverability signals are flashing red, the answer might be some good ol’ fashioned list hygiene. 

Don’t skip a quarterly or biannual deep clean.

Check our events list for more or reply to this email to submit one for consideration.

‘Til next time!
Sara