SURVEY REVEALS NONPROFITS AND ASSOCIATIONS SUCCEEDING WITH EMAIL MARKETING

Higher open, click-through and overall response rates show email positively impacts member communications efforts

Waltham, MA. - May 25, 2005

Nonprofits and associations using an email service for member communications reported higher open, click-through, and overall response rates over the last twelve to twenty-four months, according to a recent survey conducted by Constant Contact® (www.constantcontact.com), an email marketing service for small and medium businesses (SMBs) and associations. These results - collected from more than 500 nonprofits, associations, and membership organizations across the U.S. - demonstrate that email outreach is having a positive impact on member communications efforts for these organizations, including fundraising, event promotions, and membership recruitment initiatives.

The survey also revealed nonprofit email marketing usage and frequency trends. From a list of multiple types of email communications, respondents reported membership newsletters (81 percent), event invitations (73 percent), and membership meeting announcements (43 percent) as the top three types of email communications used by their organizations. Regarding frequency of email communications, 40 percent send monthly email communications to members, while 44 percent reported that they communicate with members twice per month or more.

The organizations emphasized several important benefits they realized by using an email marketing service for their membership communications, including reporting and tracking capabilities (74 percent), reduced effort (44 percent) and reduced cost (34 percent). When asked which features were most important to their membership communications, from a list including templates, delivery, reporting, list management and education, 76 percent cited email delivery, 73 percent cited ease of email creation and 64 percent cited list management and hosting as "very important." The majority of respondents had used either Microsoft Outlook, or print for their membership communications before turning to Constant Contact.

"The higher open, click-through, and overall response rates our nonprofit and association users are reporting demonstrate that email is working for them as a strategic communications vehicle for development and member communications efforts," said Janet Muto, vice president of market development, Constant Contact, who oversaw the research efforts for this study. "Overall, this survey shows how invaluable it is for nonprofits and associations to maintain consistent contact with members."

Conducted by Constant Contact, the survey was sent to more than two thousand nonprofits and associations currently using Constant Contact's email marketing service for member communications efforts. Eighty-two percent of the organizations surveyed had memberships of 5,000 or less. The survey data was collected from the more than five hundred organizations that replied. For more information about Constant Contact for associations and nonprofits, please visit http://associations.constantcontact.com. For more information about the survey, please contact Tom Francoeur at 781-388-7900 ext. 205.

About Constant Contact
With over 25,000 customers and a recent winner of SmallBusinessComputing.com's "Excellence in Technology Award," Constant Contact® is the leading permission Do-It-Yourself Email Marketing® service for small and medium businesses (SMBs) and associations. Constant Contact is a Web-based email marketing solution that enables small organizations to easily create and send professional HTML email newsletters, promotions, announcements and more with no technical expertise required. Designed and priced for SMBs, Constant Contact is affordable, easy-to-use and includes a free 60-day trial at: www.constantcontact.com. The service is marketed through over 800 Resellers and more than 100 marquee channel partners including American Express OPEN, Website Pros, Register.com, FTD, AOL, Interland, IBM, Intuit, Network Solutions and Overture. Constant Contact is a founding member of the Email Service Provider Coalition (ESPC), a group formed to fight spam while protecting the delivery of legitimate email. Constant Contact is funded by Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Longworth Venture Partners and Hudson Ventures. For more information, please call 781-472-8100.

Please direct all press inquiries to:

Dhakir Warren Constant Contact 339-222-5722 dwarren@constantcontact.com