If you ever have been involved in a campaign or organization you know that effective use of email is paramount to your group's success. Abby's last blog post detailed how to write effective fundraising emails. The next step is learning how to track and analyze your email campaigns.

Reviewing and understanding email data helps you know how you are performing, where improvements could be made, and protecting your list from being diminished and possibly destroyed (blacklisted).

Every mass email you send through a professional service (i.e. not from your personal email account) will contain statistics about its results. Below are the four main numbers to keep an eye on and what they mean for you.

The 2010 election cycle is here, which means a glut of 2010 fundraising emails is sure to follow. As a political junkie, I am on the email lists of campaigns across the country. So please, benefit from my addiction, and enjoy these tips for writing effective fundraising emails.

Comments, questions, and disagreements are always welcome and, in fact, encouraged.

1. Be clear. One email should convey one message. In a fundraising email, the message is “give me money because X.” Of course, the email does not—and should not—be as crude as that, but don’t let rhetorical decoration obscure your point. If, when the email is done, you cannot condense its point to one sentence, you are trying to say too much, no matter how prettily you are doing it.