Donor Power Blog

How to create a failing e-newsletter

Here's a great way to create an e-newsletter that nobody will read or respond to: Think of it as the July e-newsletter.

The moment you designate an e-newsletter by the time when it's to be sent out, you are off on the wrong foot. Instead, you should designate it by an event or action: Hurricane newsletter, opening night newsletter, food shortage newsletter.

Then, with that set, give your recipients a handful of actions related to the topic. Like find out more. Give to that fund. Buy something. Sign a petition, play a game.

That's a newsletter that will sing -- as in motivate action.

I'm not saying a time-based subject line is what causes failure. It might be -- I've seen them crash, and I've seen them work. This is something you really should test.

But before you get to the test, you need to have compelling content. Which you will have trouble bringing together if your starting place is Well, another month has rolled around. What shall we put in the newsletter?

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

What's wrong with your e-newsletter?

It might be an overgeneralization, but the large majority of nonprofit e-newsletters are a waste of electrons.

Limp, incoherent, uninspired, ill-targeted to their audience.

The Nonprofit Marketing Guide has some notions what the problem might be if your e-newsletter isn't doing its job: Does Your E-Newsletter Need a Makeover? Look for these signs:

• You hate writing it.
• You know it's too long, but ... you just can't figure out how to make it shorter.
• You transitioned from a print version to an email version in a hurry.
• You use the same subject line over and over.
• The newsletter rarely links back to your website.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, e-newsletters, nptech

They joy of boring fundraising

Here's a challenging thought from the New Thinking blog: Great websites are boring to manage.

Meaning websites that really do their job aren't about breathtakingly beautiful design or jaw-dropping concept. They're all about ...

... the boring stuff like removing old content and making sure that every page has a unique title tag. Day-to-day web management is about rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty with the nitty gritty stuff. But remember: You get paid to be bored.

I agree. Until that last sentence. If you're bored, you aren't going to do a good job for very long.

It's true that the "nitty gritty stuff" is what makes a website worthwhile. And that stuff isn't likely to make your heart soar, like poetry or fine art.

But if you're in the fundraising, get used to it. And find a way to experience joy in getting it right.

Same with direct mail. You aren't likely to do well with lofty, philosophical sentiments or stunning avant-garde design. But if you zero in on clarity, focus, being appropriately cheap, and slavishly loyal to postal regulations -- you'll do well.

And you can really enjoy yourself too.

I've met a lot of fundraisers on a life-long quest to create fundraising materials that they personally like. They are among the most misguided and miserable people I've encountered.

We aren't in fundraising to entertain ourselves. We're here to help great things happen. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Thanks to Nonprofit Online News for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

How social media is changing nonprofits

Posted by guest blogger Andrew Rogers

Jeff has written a few posts displaying a justifiable skepticism about the merits of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter for nonprofit fundraising and donor-communication. Over on the social-media news site Mashable, however, Beth Kanter suggests "4 Ways Social Media is Changing the Non-Profit World," namely:

1. Deepening relationships and engagement.
2. Individuals and small groups are self-organizing around non-profit causes.
3. Facilitating collaboration and crowd-sourcing.
4. Social change behind the firewall.

I think the first is the most broadly relevant to donor-powered fundraisers. Charities and businesses (and for that matter, individuals) who seem to find the most value in social-media tools like Twitter are those who approach them as ways to meet and engage with their friends, peers, constituents, and supporters. Seeing them primarily as advertising billboards or if-we-could-just-figure-it-out fundraising channels, on the other hand, can lead to frustration, boredom, or "I just don't see the point."

I just did a quick Twitter search for some current and former clients of mine -- not as Twitterers themselves, but in other people's conversations. My unsurprising results? Every single one of them, even the smallest, was being talked about by someone. Each one of those "tweets" is a chance to "deepen relationships and engagements" with someone who cares enough about you to mention you to others. I think that's worth a look.

Andrew Rogers is an associate creative director at Merkle. He tweets.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, social media

More users give up on Twitter than stay with it

If you blog about Twitter, your post starts popping up all over Twitter. It's one big self-referential echo-chamber.

The other funny thing about Twitter is the retention rate, as reported in Adweek: Twitter's Audience Has a 'No Return' Policy. Here's the point:

Over 60 percent of people who sign up to use the popular ... micro-blogging platform do not return to using it the following month.... In other words, Twitter currently has just a 40 percent retention rate, up from 30 percent in previous months -- indicating an "I don't get it factor" among new users....

(In fact, Joseph Jaffe called Twitter "a giant Ponzi Scheme.)"

I bring it up because the phenomenal growth rate of Twitter has fueled a kind of hysteria that everyone must get on board or be left behind. Maybe. But don't count on it.

Twitter has its uses. And maybe it -- or something like it -- will continue to matter to a lot of people for a long time. But we don't know that yet.

If I were a nonprofit, I'd dabble in Twitter. Learn what's going on. See if my constituents are there.

But if you want to motivate action and raise funds, go back a generation or more: email, search-engine marketing, postal mail, broadcast and print media ... it's easy to call those things dead, but each one of them is still much bigger and more advanced than Twitter. If I had to place a bet on which will go away first -- Twitter or postal mail -- I'd bet that the post will outlast. And continue to outperform for the foreseeable future.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, Twitter, nptech

Survey: Folks not too satisfied with nonprofit websites

How good are nonprofit websites? Not so great, it would seem. Survey research from ForeSee Results, Trends in Constituent Satisfaction with Nonprofit Websites (PDF, registration required), puts the average nonprofit website satisfaction score of 73 (out of 100).

This is survey research, so it tells what people say, not necessarily what they really do, but it's interesting nonetheless. And hardly surprising.

According to the study, website satisfaction has a strong correlation to the behaviors we want. Satisfied users are:

• 49% more likely to donate.
• 38% more likely to volunteer.
• 57% more likely to have a favorable overall impression of the organization.
• 65% more likely to recommend the site to others.
• 55% more likely to return to the site.

Did that get your attention? The study says what needs the most improvement are website functionality and expression of the organizations' image. Get cracking.

Thanks to Katya's Nonprofit Marketing Blog for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

Not feeling so good about the Facebook gold rush

Facebook and Twitter are both abuzz with this scandalous article in the Washington Post: To Nonprofits Seeking Cash, Facebook App Isn't So Green. Honestly, you'd think the Post had claimed everyone's mother was a lousy cook.

Here's the bad news, according to the Post:

• The majority of nonprofits using the Facebook Causes app have received no donations through the site.
• Only a small fraction of them have brought in even $1,000.
• Fewer than 50 of the 179,000 fundraisers on Causes have raised $10,000.
• Only two nonprofits -- the Nature Conservancy and Students for a Free Tibet -- have raised more than $100,000.

And that's not all. The mean-spirited Post further twisted the dagger by pointing out that while more than 25 million of Facebook's 200 million members have signed on as supporters of at least one cause, only 185,000 have ever given through Causes. That's 0.74%, which might sound okay if you're thinking in a direct mail context, but this is cumulative: all giving to all causes across all time. Woops. Not so hot, as in approaching absolute zero.

Are you catching the pattern here? The report also noted that the Nature Conservancy -- the top fundraiser on Causes -- has brought in $198,000. Impressive? Maybe. But for a large and effective direct mailer like the Conservancy, it might not be so much. They probably get that much every couple of days in the mail.

I don't think all this means you should totally ignore Facebook, though I'd hardly blame you if you did take away that lesson.

The real lesson is be realistic.

There's a gold rush mentality in some nonprofit quarters about social media. Get moving! Get involved! We are obligated to invest! The real cry should be something more like, There's a trace amount of gold in them thar hills!

Facebook is not your get-rich-quick scheme. It's an interesting place to learn how to navigate this strange new world. Maybe it's a good place to get out the word. But for fundraising? Don't hold your breath.

Dissent here, here, and here.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, Facebook

Need more web donations? Start here

In the Network for Good Learning Center: How to Ask for Donations on Your Website. They are:

1. Make it painfully easy to find the "donate" option.
2. Show where the moolah goes.
3. Explain the how of your mission (not just the what).
4. Appeal to donors' ideals and values.
5. Show your connection to or presence in the local community.
6. Don't forget to ask.

Take a look for the details.

What's the common thread here? Maybe it's: If you want to raise funds on your website, raise funds on your website.

The reason so many nonprofit websites have a hidden, tiny, or otherwise obfuscated "donate" option, why they don't really address the issues of giving -- they want to raise funds without seeming to raise funds.

Sorry. If you want a website that doesn't raise funds, go ahead. There are plenty of other things you can do online. But if you need online revenue to accomplish your mission, then make sure you do what it takes to raise online revenue.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

Twitter better for birds than for nonprofits?

My condolences if you've spent any of your life in a meeting that was about whether your organization should have a Twitter account.

I have yet to see a nonprofit use Twitter in a way that's even close to justifying the small amount of time they're putting into it. Part of the problem may be the way they're approaching it. There's some insight into that from the What's Next Blog, Top 10 Reasons Your Company Should Not Tweet.

Here are some of the reasons not to Tweet:

• Every Tweet has to be approved by legal.
• You are not going to respond when people direct tweets at you.
• You think paying for followers might be a good idea.
• You think all that matters on Twitter is getting a lot of people to follow you. Quality trumps quantity.
• You want to protect your updates. conversation.
• You think you can market to people with whom you have no relationship

If any of these are true for you, don't tweet!

That's also true of blogging or any other social media. If your organization isn't able to culturally adjust to the fast moving, conversation-driven, authentic ethos of social media, you are going to be boring and foolish, an utter waste of everyone's time.

(If you know of a nonprofit that's making effective use of Twitter, I'd love to hear about it.)

Technorati Tags: fundraising, Twitter, nptech

Do premiums work online?

Here's something worth knowing: according to recent testing by M+R, offering premiums can boost online donor acquisition: The Power of the Premium: Convincing Prospective Donors to Give (PDF).

Believe it or not:

When we looked at the net dollars raised per email recipient after taking into account the cost of producing the premium and getting it to donors, three of the four nonprofits netted more with the premium.... On average, the net dollars raised per recipient was 51% greater when a premium was offered.

It may seem counterintuitive that such an old direct mail warhorse would have life online, but this just points out that people are people, regardless of the medium you use to reach them.

Note that not just any old premium works, and it's quite likely that premiums won't work for every organization. Test it for yourself. But it's worth a test.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, premiums

The immeasurable is measurable online

Your fundraising touches donors in ways other than motivating them to give. It can create a host of other conditions, some good, some bad. It might inspire them or annoy them. It might raise their awareness of your cause to a new level. It might harden their resolve to ignore you.

In direct mail, we can't measure or even directly see these non-response impacts. But in email, we can capture and measure a lot more -- and get a clearer picture of what's happening in donors' minds. You don't have to throw up your hands and call it all unmeasurable.

The ExactTarget blog, at Email as Branding, notes things we should be measuring online so we can gauge the impact of our emails on our donors:

1. Readership & engagement (time on pages, interactions on website)
2. Churn (not just unsubscribes but also decline of engagement)
3. Delayed conversions (with long-term expiration and no conversion variable overwriting)
4. Short-term cross-channel measurement
5. User behavioral changes (increased engagement, cross-channel interactions, etc.)

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

Online fundraising continues to rise

The online revolution is coming to fundraising. But it's not here. That's what you can learn from a new study from Target Analytics: donorCentrics Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis (PDF).

Some of the findings:

• Online giving continues to grow ... even in the absence of major disasters.
• Even with this growth, online giving is still dwarfed by direct mail giving.
• Online donors have slightly lower retention rates overall than traditional donors.
• Higher acquisition giving levels and higher revenue per donor in subsequent years may mask issues with cultivation and retention of online donors.
• Online giving is not a strong renewal channel ... large numbers of online donors migrate away from online giving and to other channels, primarily direct mail.
• Donors to direct mail ... rarely give online.
• When mail donors do give online, they tend to give higher average gifts.... Online donors downgrade when they switch to offline, primarily direct mail giving.
• Having an email address on file makes a positive difference in the giving behavior of offline donors.

There's also a similar study from Convio that's well worth reading.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

E-newletters don't work, says expert

If you have an e-newsletter, pay attention to this article in Third Sector Online, a UK publication for charities: Charity email newsletters 'a waste of time', says Obama strategist.

It quotes Thomas Gensemer of Blue State Digital, the company behind the Obama campaign's jaw-dropping online fundraising last year. Gensemer says:

Newsletters don't get read, yet they take more effort to prepare than a 250-word email. Email is still a killer application, but only when used properly.

He prefers instead "short, personalised emails to supporters giving clear instructions for participation."

He's right. In my experience, enewsletters don't really work. They get far lower response rates than most other email impacts to donors and supporters. They also get lower open and click-through rates. They aren't good at motivating response. They also aren't good and sharing information.

E-newsletters simply don't function the way print newsletters do. (Print newsletters, by the way, still work very, very well for most organizations.) As far as I'm concerned, repeatedly sending out messages that get no response (or even opened) makes you a junkmailer. You deserve whatever scorn or badmouthing your donors and prospects dish out.

So trash that e-newsletter. Instead, have every email you send out have just one clear call to action. Nothing more.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, newsletters

Kiva lets any old weirdo shape their message

npgeek alert: We're going to talk today about an API, which stands for Application Programmers Interface, which means someone is giving power to other people.

In this case, it's Kiva, which has launched Build.Kiva, as reported at Bryan Miller's Giving in a Digital World: Kiva launches open-source API. Fortunately, Bryan is just geeky enough to translate this for us. Here's the point:

By enabling any developer in the world to build tools that directly integrate with Kiva they stand to achieve a breadth and speed of functional evolution and audience reach far beyond anything they could hope for alone.

Kiva is giving people a window on their data, which will let them create fun, quirky, individualistic ways to raise funds for Kiva.

Now think about that: It's entirely possible that folks might set up applications called Stupid Blow-Hards for Kiva or Terrorists for Kiva or Wall Street Bankers for Kiva (okay, that last one is just ridiculous). But whoever and however they use Kiva's API, they're going to give it their own spin.

Kiva fundraising can appear in contexts that Kiva may not like. Or people might express the Kiva fundraising offer in ways that make the people at Kiva very uncomfortable.

Don't think they didn't think of this.

But they went ahead and did it anyway, which means they get it.

You see, Kiva never had control over they way people talk about them in first place. Neither do you.

People are going to talk about you -- if they talk about you at all -- in their own ways. You can try to clamp down with exclusive, restrictive brand standards. But that doesn't give you any actual control. The only impact it can have is to make sure you're so uninteresting, nobody talks about you.

Which may keep your brand intact, but really doesn't do you any good in any other way.

So take a cue from Kiva. Open the doors. Let everyone in. You have nothing to lose but your obscurity.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, marketing revolution, nptech

Social networks: hold your horses

In the middle of the social media gold rush, a reality check over at The Agitator: Social Nets - A Fundraising Distraction?

Looking at some research from Pew Internet on the rise of social network sites (you know: Facebook, MySpace, and other services where people hang out and chatter), we find some interesting facts about who's actually taking part. These are how many by age group who have accounts on social media sites:

• 65% of online teens
• 75% of people online 18-24
• 57% of people online 25-34
• 30% of people online 35-44
• 19% of people online 45-54
• 10% of people online 55-64
• 7% of people online 65 and older

I'll bet I can guess where most of your donors fall.

And note that the percentages are of those who are online to begin with, not of the whole population. Further, just having a profile on a site doesn't mean you actually participate.

As The Agitator puts it:

... in terms of straight out fundraising, the usage numbers just aren't there today, especially when looked at in the context of how most folks actually use the sites. In 2009, I can think of many things I'd do to shore up my fundraising results before turning to experimenting with social net sites.

It's going to be a while before Facebook (or whatever the 2.0 version of it is) becomes a meaningful part of the fundraising world. Keep your eyes open, because it could happen suddenly. But it's not where the money is. Not yet.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

Best blogs for fundraisers

By my most recent count, there are 106 fundraising blogs out there. My definition of "fundraising blogs" is deliberately broad -- these are blogs that are touch on fundraising in some way, at some time.

That's a lot of talk about fundraising. More than a normal person can (or probably should) read. But I do. And here, in my opinion, are the best for fundraisers who want to improve, grow, and innovate.

Fundraising blogs most likely to help you be a better fundraiser

• The Agitator
• Endless Plain
• The Fundraising Coach
• forimpact
• Getting Attention
• Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog
• Nonprofit Marketing Guide

Not-particularly-about-fundraising blogs most likely to help you be a better fundraiser

• BeRelevant
• Brands Create Customers
• Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That!
• Freaking Marketing
• Make Marketing History
• Neuromarketing
• Seth's Blog
• Ted Grigg's Reflections about Direct Marketing

Blogs most likely make you laugh, which may not help you be a better fundraiser, but it's worth something

Well, they make me laugh, anyway.

• The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks
• The Comics Curmudgeon
• Garfield Minus Garfield
• PhotoshopDisasters

Finally, if you really want fundraising blog overload, here's my entire list at Bloglines: www.bloglines.com/public/JeffBrooks. I intend to follow all fundraising blogs, so if you know of any I haven't found yet -- or any other blogs you recommend to me or other fundraisers -- tell us about them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, blogs, nptech

More blasted email fundraising resolutions

Happy Chinese New Year. You can add some more resolutions, right?

Try these from ClickZ: Ten Resolutions to Make 2009 a Better E-mail Year:

1. I Will Listen to Feedback
2. I Will Give My Subscribers More Control Over What They Receive
3. I Will Monitor More Than Open/Click-Through Rates/Revenue
4. I Will Practice More Segmentation for Increased Relevance
5. I Will Practice Good List Hygiene and Trim Inactives
6. I Will Pay Attention to the ISPs
7. I Will Work to Send Great Content
8. I Will Make it Easy for Recipients to Know Who I Am
9. I Will Be More Careful About Whose E-mail Efforts I Emulate
10. I Will Banish the Word "Blast" From my Vocabulary

I especially like that last one: Why do we use the word "blast" to describe something we hope will be a meaningful part of a relationship?

How does this sound: I'm going to blast a thank-you note to Grandma.

Email marketing is pretty technical. You're screwed if you don't have the technical part down. But it's also about relationships. Resolve to remember that.

Thanks to BeRelevant for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, email, nptech

Try the Air Force approach to social media

I can guarantee you this: A lot more people hate the US Air Force than hate your nonprofit organization. For that matter, a lot more people love the Air Force. And that means people say all kinds of things about the Air Force in blogs and other social media places.

And the Air Force is doing something about it. With no air strikes involved, as far as I know. They could teach the rest of us a little about how to equip your people to engage with social media in constructive ways.

Read about it at the Web Ink Now blog: The US Air Force: Armed with social media.

The Air Force doesn't just have its own blog, it intends to equip all 330,000 of its people to be part of the Air Force conversation wherever that conversation is happening.

And here's the cool part. Rather than just throw their people into the fray, they have a methodical (downright military) flowchart that guides responses to anything from a scurrilous rant to a reasonable question.

If there's any conversation about you or your work out there -- or if you want there to be -- you could use this flowchart:

You can download this flow chart here at a readable size (PDF).

Thanks to The WOMMA Word blog for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, Air Force

Don't miss out on the power of a unique landing page

Here's a common but easy-to-avoid mistake a lot of nonprofits make: Sending donors to your homepage when you want them to make a gift (or take any other specific action.

An article at Performance Insider, Unique URLs Vs. Homepage URLs: The Best Method For Lead-Gen?

You spent a lot of time and money to make that homepage really, really cool. Of course you want everyone to see it, experience it as a brand-friendly "front door" into your organization. But doing that will cost you, in two ways:

By sending responses to your homepage URL, you will be virtually blind to the actual response of the dollars spent. Even worse, your homepage will need to perform multiple tasks -- provide the general information for the casual visitor AND instantly allow traffic driven by lead marketing dollars to complete the task without distractions.

Double whammy! You lose a bunch of transactions, and you can't measure the effectiveness of your marketing.

Resist the temptation to over-control the user experience. If someone clicks through from an email (or anywhere else), they were probably motivated by a specific call to action. That should be the one thing going on at the page they reach.

Thanks to Miriam at Generation Y Give for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

Hints for powerful subject lines

If you're communicating with donors by email, you should be putting a lot of energy into crafting great subject lines. More than any other single factor, subject lines determine the success or failure of e-fundraising. So here's some help from iMedia Connection: How to craft irresistible subject lines. Good advice includes:

• Give a sense of urgency.
• Consider current spam trends -- the filters can knock you out of contention if you aren't careful, and the words they're looking for are ever-changing.
• Limit subject lines to 30 or 40 characters
• Hackneyed old cliches like "tips," "tricks" or "secrets" can really work magic for you.

Thanks to BeRelevant for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, email, nptech

Paint pictures with words to get emails opened

There's a good article at MarketingSherpa on doing email right: 12 Top Email Copywriting Tips to Raise Funds.

Among the 12 excellent tips, one especially caught my eye: Create a Word Picture. Rather than label your email with facts about its contents, say something that people can imagine. It gives these examples for word-picture subject lines.

• Use "Turtle Toxins" instead of "We need your help to protect turtles from pollution."
• Say "Manatee Mayday" instead of "Manatees in Trouble: Help Needed Now."
• Write "Click to Save Cows" instead of "Please help save cows from the abuses of factory farming."

Good advice for online marketing. In fact, good advice for any medium. Spend some extra time moving your discussion from the theoretical and abstract to concrete and visual.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, copywriting, subject lines

Subject lines that work

One tough thing about raising funds is getting people to open your message. You're in the inbox next to dozens, even hundreds, of other messages, many of them brazen spam. And all you have to get opened is a few words. No color, no images, no typography -- just pure text. And very little of that. (If you've played your cards right, your name in the "from" line also helps.)

Here are some good principles for subject lines from Constant Contact: How to Get More Opens and Clicks.

1. Opposites Attract!
Put your advertising dollars to work for you!
Becomes:
Advertising NEVER Works. (If you disagree, click here)

2. The Cliffhanger
Put your advertising dollars to work for you!
Becomes:
Advertising NEVER works, unless...

3. Interest by Association
Jane Smith book signing, Wednesday at noon
Becomes:
From Oprah to our store: Jane Smith book signing, Wed. at 12

Technorati Tags: fundraising, email, nptech

"Donation Dashboard" helps donors find charities

This is pretty cool: the Donation Dashboard, a site created by the Berkeley Center for New Media. It's meant to help you decide where you should direct your charitable giving.

It works like this: You are offered a series of descriptions of nonprofit organizations. You rate them on a sliding scale of your interest. Then it returns a pie chart of how you should divide up your charitable giving.

The logic is, "If you like organization X, you might also like organization Y." In my case, I got a few "what the heck?" recommendations, but as I understand it, the relationships between X and Y should improve as more people make ratings.

You can check out my portfolio here. I rated a lot more than the 15 that they start you with. The organizations that rose through the clutter are mainly ones I already give to. Not surprising, I guess.

I have two criticisms of this dashboard:

• Why organizations? Most people give to causes, finding organizations that match up with the causes they care about, not the other way around. In fact, in many cases, the small amount of information you get about an organization hardly tells you what the cause really is.
  
• Focus on efficiency rating. Each organization's "efficiency rating" is prominently displayed. That's unfortunate, because it has the appearance of being a meaningful quantifiable indicator of some kind of quality. Which it isn't. They should either remove it, de-emphasize it, or give a richer menu of information that gives a better picture of an organization.
  

When it actually links to an online giving mechanism, it'll really be slick.

But really, this is pretty spiffy, and is well on the way to give donors more power than ever. It will be up to us to work with tools like these in the coming years.

Other posts about the Donation Dashboard are at Prospecting and Tactical Philanthropy.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

How much email is too much? It depends

We often live in mortal fear of overmailing our donors, especially email, which we can send without the cost limitations of postal mail. Surely, there's a point where you're sending so much email you become an annoying spammer. The DMA (UK) Email Marketing Blog looks at this questions at Maximising ROI without overmailing.

The post points out that there's not one "right" frequency of mailing for the entire file. Every email file has different groups that behave very differently from each other:

• 1 - 5% of the list open, click and buy almost every time they receive a message.
  
• 40 - 60% of the list will interact with the offer mailing once or twice a year.
  
• 35 - 55% of the people on the list will not have opened or clicked, let alone bought off an email you sent in over a year.
  

This insight -- that your file is not one monolithic group, all experiencing your messages in the same way -- frees you to be more relevant to more people: For the first group, you can probably send even more. For the second group, you're likely about right. For the third group, you're almost surely sending too much already.

And you'll know if you're getting it right because you're testing.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, email, nptech

Don't bother blogging

Yesterday, we asked if your CEO should blog for your organization. Today, let's take it a step further: Should you have a blog at all?

B.L. Ochman's What's Next Blog gives us 10 Reasons Your Company Shouldn't Blog:

• Most blogs ... are boring.
  
• A blog has to have a personal voice.
  
• You need original content.
  
• Blogging takes time -- lots of it.
  
• You need to read constantly to be a good blogger.
  
• A blog is not a substitute for a marketing campaign.
  
• A blog is not a substitute for advertising.
  
• A blog is not a quick fix -- the results come in the long term, the same way they do with PR.
  
• Blogs are not cheap.
  
• You need to drive traffic to a blog.
  

The point isn't that having a blog is a dumb thing. It's that doing it right takes real commitment. Before you dive in, make sure you're committed, willing to do (and spend) what it takes. Or you'll be talking in an empty room.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, blogging, nptech

Don't make your CEO write your blog

Who's going to write your organization's blog? Your CEO?

Not such a good idea, says Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog, at Should you make your CEO blog? The point:

It takes a huge amount of energy and time to blog. You have to be really enthusiastic about the medium, or it's really not going to work.

Any CEO's time and energy are at a premium. A blog would have to be awfully good and reach a whole lot of the right people to justify the amount of time it would consume.

(For example, this blog takes about eight hours a week to maintain. That's a meaningful time commitment, but it's worthwhile to my organization, Merkle. But I doubt it would be worth that much of our CEO's time. He has a lot of other fish to fry.)

Beyond the question of time, you have to ask if your CEO actually wants to do it. And keep doing it. Blogging is a long slog. If you don't enjoy the journey itself, the destination probably isn't worth the trouble.

I'm sure there are nonprofit CEOs out there who do (or should) write great blogs that really engage people and forward their organization's mission. But I'm with Katya: It's not likely to work.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, blogging, nptech

Mobile giving: What's it worth?

To hear some people talk, you might think "mobile giving" -- where donors use their mobile phone to text a certain word to a certain number, which triggers a small donation to a cause to be charged to the cell-phone bill -- is the future of fundraising.

There's a good how-to on mobile giving at About.com's Nonprofit Charitable Orgs blog: Mobile Giving - How to Make it Work for Your Nonprofit. It gives this example:

Recently, Alicia Keys ... asked concert goers to pull out their cell phones and text the word "ALIVE" .... More than 8,000 people did so right at the concerts, raising more than $40,000 to fight AIDS.

Raising $40,000 from 8,000 people sounds pretty cool. But it's unambitious. You should be able to net more than $1 million from that many donors -- if you're smart and patient (willing to wait a few years).

Real fundraising is about building relationships with donors. The real pay-off comes when the relationships are most developed.

Mobile fundraising specifically avoids relationships; you walk away with some impressive cash from a very attractive investment -- but you have no idea who gave it to you. There's no next step.

I wouldn't completely ignore it. Mobile fundraising may be a good and cost-effective way to raise funds from young people, who are unlikely to stick with you anyway. It's just revenue you wouldn't get otherwise, even though it has no future. The cost of getting the money is low -- usually just 5¢ on the dollar, plus whatever it costs to get out the word in the first place.

And better yet, I've read that they're talking about a monthly giving option for mobile donors. And who knows what next generation devices and services might offer that allow connection and relationship-building.

Keep your eyes on it.

More about Mobile giving at GenerationYGive: Mobileization: Is it keeping you up at night? and Mobileization: Part II.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

How to avoid creating a boring blog

What is it about nonprofit blogs? So many of them are so incredibly boring. It' not like they're about boring things -- the problem is something else.

The Reuters AlertNet Blog noted this among the blogs of international relief organization in DEBATE: Are aid agencies ready for the blogosphere? Some of the problems:

Open and frank discussion is rare. Many blogs read more like press releases, crammed with acronyms and technical aid-speak. Others are just plain boring, or so thoroughly vetted by head office that all the juice has been squeezed dry.

I can hardly think of a more exciting venue than international relief. But they're right. Most of the blogs don't live up to their potential.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that the main problem is too much head-office involvement in making the blogs "brand compliant." Just a hunch.

The AlertNet post also includes material about an event that was held for relief bloggers, including this helpful report (PDF).

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, blogs

Don't go out without your briefs

The number-one reason for lame, ill-conceived websites, I'm pretty sure, is lack of planning and poor alignment of goals. Lyris HQ would probably agree with me, and recommends Creative Briefs: Your Map to Message Success. A written brief helps you:

1. Align the goals.
   
2. Define the audience.
   
3. Decide which features and benefits to promote.
   
4. Choose a clear call to action.
   

The benefit of planning ahead and putting it in writing is huge. You will do better work if you approach it this way. And you'll save time, money, and frustration. I promise you it's true.

And that's just for online projects. It's always true.

The article above is a long and detailed, but if you aren't starting every job you do with a brief, it's worth learning how.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, marketing

Somebody else owns your homepage

All that work getting your nonprofit's homepage just right? It may be beside the point, according to Web Strategy by Jeremiah: Your Corporate Homepage is Really Google.com.

Why? Because nearly everyone who visits your site gets their via a search engine (mostly likely Google) -- and there's a very good chance they never see your beautiful homepage. So, says Jeremiah:

... be cognizant that your homepage isn't the website you own and manage, but actually Google Results. While you can shape that first few entries with search marketing techniques, but note that a influential blog can cause havoc or be a positive endorsement.

That doesn't mean ignore your homepage. It means pay attention to how you show up in Google searches. Do people seeking you or your cause find a sensible, non-confusing entrance?

Technorati Tags: fundraising, Google, nptech

Maybe this is what's wrong with your enewsletter

If you're unhappy with the performance of your email newsletter, you might want to read this post at Denise Cox's Email Matters Blog: Why do people like (and don’t like) email newsletters? Here are the reasons people don't like them. See if these things are familiar:

• No useful content - nothing useful. No special offers. No new information.
  
• Hard to read - maybe it's one big image that's blocked and appears to be an empty email. Maybe the design and layout of the text makes it hard to read and decipher.
  
• Ignores permission - comes too frequently (or feels like it does) - or more frequently than promised.
  
• Each newsletter gives the same feeling you would get if you walked into a shop and five sales people descended on you immediately to ask you if you are going to make a purchase. The newsletter is all sales, no information. All pressure, no enjoyment.
  

Technorati Tags: fundraising, enewsletter, nptech

Avoid these email mistakes

From the Getting Email Delivered blog, The Top 5 Mistakes Email Senders Make in Scheduling Their Mailings:

1. Sending email too frequently
   
2. Not sending email frequently enough
   
3. Not sending email consistently
   
4. Sending an email just for the sake of sending an email
   
5. Not paying attention to the day and time that you send your email
   

Check out the post. You might be surprised at some of the details.

Thanks to BeRelevant for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, email, nptech

Help online readers read

Good article in Slate on the way people read online: Lazy Eyes: How we read online. It's different. People don't really read; they skim. And if we want them to pay attention to what we write, the author says, "... it's not [the reader] who has to change. It's me, the writer."

Here are some of the things you can do to make online copy more readable:

• Bulleted lists
  
• Occasional use of bold to prevent skimming
  
• Short sentence fragments
  
• Explanatory subheads
  
• Fonts designed for screen reading; e.g., Verdana, Trebuchet, Georgia.
  
• One idea per paragraph
  
• Half the word count of "conventional writing"
  

And avoid:

• Puns
  
• Long lines of text
  

Technorati Tags: fundraising, readability, nptech

Nonprofit blogging how-to

Most blogs run by nonprofits are so boring that even a critique of them would be too boring to read.

Clearly, we need some help with blogging.

Here's some, from Britt Bravo at NetSquared: Nonprofit Blogging Burning Questions and Answers.

It's a long list of what it takes to blog right. If you're thinking about launching a blog (and you probably should be), read this post.

For example, Britt says the person who should write the blog is the person most excited to do it ...

... but please, no interns. The interns can be contributing bloggers, but they shouldn't be the lead blogger. I've seen way to many nonprofit blogs with tons of posts between June-August, and then the intern leaves and it's a ghost town.

This could save you some trouble.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, blogs, nptech

Keep those emails simple

You can put an awful lot of stuff in an email. And it won't cost you. No paper, no ink, no postage. So why not just keep adding stuff to those emails?

Well, maybe it keeps people from responding.

And article at MarketingProfs thinks you should consider that: Simplicity Is the Nature of Great Emails.

... a huge body of marketing research demonstrates that the human mind is a sucker for simplicity and focus. The eye embraces that which can be easily digested. Less is more.

One thing at a time. That always works better. And not just in email.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, email

Subject lines that get opened

When you create direct mail, the carrier envelope is your key to success. Get it opened, and you're a long way toward getting a gift.

Same with email. But now, your "carrier envelope" has shrunk to a few words. No pictures, no color, no fonts or formatting -- just words. And not too many words, because your recipient can't see more than a few. And your attempt is sitting in an inbox with dozens of others that look exactly the same.

Now that's a direct-marketing challenge.

EmailTrainer.com has some thoughts: How to Write Awe-Inspiring Email Subject Lines. Here's the gist, but do go read the whole thing:

1. Short phrases. How short? Two words.
   
2. Immediate benefits.
   
3. Value words. (personally relevant to the recipient)
   
4. Emotional appeal.
   
5. Specific value propositions.
   

This is the hour for copywriters!

Thanks to BeRelevant for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, email

Guidelines for successful email ... for the time being

One of the toughest things about email marketing is dealing with the pace of change. Almost as soon as you know a principle, it changes. New technology upsets the rules. A quirky new release of a Microsoft product undermines what made sense yesterday.

The Campaign Monitor blog helps us deal with change by releasing new guidelines: 2008 Email Design Guidelines. Here are some of the new guidelines:

• Don't waste your readers' time — An email inbox is a busy place, you won't get much attention.
  
• Permission matters — Not only do you need to have permission to email people, but it helps to remind them of how they gave you permission, as specifically as you can.
  
• Relevance trumps permission — Just having permission is not enough, the content you are sending must also be relevant.
  
• Make unsubscribing easy — There's no point emailing people who are not interested.
  
• Image blocking is common — You can't rely on people actually seeing your images.
  
• Meet your legal obligations — For example, CAN-SPAM for US senders.
  
• Test, test, test — It's the only way to be confident about your design working.
  

Thanks to BeRelevant! for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

When the going gets tough, the tough get online

Everyone's looking for advice on what fundraisers should do in a down economy. Here are some thoughts from Vinay Bhagat of Convio, in FundRaising Success magazine: 10 Tips for Fundraising in Tough Times.

Vinay's ten tips all pretty much boil down to one: Get serious about online fundraising.

I agree, for two reasons:

1. In a tough fundraising time, going online will bypass the rising costs of paper, printing, and postage.
   
2. And you'll reach a new kind of donor who just isn't responsive to direct mail
   

That said, don't abandon your traditional fundraising channels. That's where most of your donors still are! Add online to your portfolio. Learn how to use the medium effectively, as it will continue to be the preferred giving and communication channel for more donors all the time.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, recession, nptech

How to motivate donors by email

If it's obvious, why doesn't everybody do it this way?

The Constant Contact Blog shows how to Get your readers to take action in email marketing. Briefly:

• Know exactly what you want them to do.
  
• Be clear
  
• Be compelling
  
• Be urgent
  
• Repeat
  

By the way, this applies also to offline fundraising.

Thanks to BeRelevant for the tip.

Technorati Tag: fundraising

Online fundraising: growing fast, getting harder to do

A new study, the 2008 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, (done by NTEN and M+R Strategic Services has some useful facts, culled from the experiences of a number of nonprofits online:

• The total amount raised online increased by 19% from 2006 to 2007.
  
• Open rates have fallen from 21.3% to 17.6%.
  
• Click-through rates have dropped from 4.9% to 3.8%.
  

My experience is similar. Revenue coming to nonprofits through the web is growing by double digits every year. We no doubt have a few more years of that to look forward to before it slows down.

On the other hand, raising funds by means of e-appeals is getting tougher -- no doubt because our donors' inboxes are getting fuller. Growth of online files tends to more than make up for lower response numbers.

Lesson: If you aren't actively at work online, you are losing money. And if you aren't experimenting with tactics and strategies for online fundraising, you are painting yourself into a corner.

Press release here, full study available for download here (registration required).

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

Your website isn't enough

A well-built website is wonderful thing. But it's only a start, according to the Connection Café in Think Outside the Site. Your online strategy should also include:

• Micro (or program oriented) sites
  
• Editorial calendars for email and web content
  
• Presence on social networking sites like Facebook
  
• Social media sites like Flickr
  
• Marketing through search engines
  
• Blogs, Twitter
  

Your website is really just a brochure. It just sits there; one piece of a larger communication nexus. If you build the coolest website on the planet, but that's your entire online strategy, it's not going to do you a lot of good.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, websites

Just where are donors with social media, anyway?

Before you get too wound up about your lack of a social media strategy, check out what a recent survey, reported in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, said: Few Charity Supporters Read Nonprofit Blogs (subscription required) ...

Only a small percentage of charity supporters -- 6 percent -- read blogs, social-networking sites, or RSS feeds to keep up with the organizations they care about, according to a new survey.

But 43 percent of the people surveyed said that they were interested in receiving such information through social-media tools.

You know me and surveys (always take them with a grain of salt). But this does point out that these spiffy new Web 2.0 tools are still pretty exotic and unusual among donors.

Unless you have an unusually young or tech-savvy donorbase, your investments in these things are still pretty speculative. Spending in those areas is not likely to bring a lot of ROI. Yet.

Gold rushes are exciting, I'm told. Everybody putting all their effort into the same dream at the same time and same place. In the end, though, most of the panicky speculators go home disappointed. Other than a few lucky prospectors, the people who make the money are the ones who took it slow, didn't lose their heads, paid attention.

So keep your eyes open. The charitable giving landscape is changing. But don't bet the farm on sudden change, or change in one particular direction.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, web 2.0

What are wealthy donors doing online?

A much-remarked study called "The Wired Wealthy," (from Sea Change Strategies and Convio; reported in the Chronicle of Philanthropy at Wealthy People Increasingly Give Online, Study Finds) shows a high level of internet usage by high-end donors:

• About 80% said they had made a charitable gift online
  
• 51% said they prefer to use the Internet for their donations.
  
• 46% said that they expect to make a greater percentage of their charitable gifts online within the next five years.
  
• 56% said that charities send too many e-mail messages
  
• 81% of donors dislike messages that take an urgent tone in seeking a repeat donation.
  

Before you rush out and change everything, remember: It's just a survey. When you ask people what they think, you find out what they think, not necessarily what they do. Actually, you really only find out what they say they think. If you really want to know something you can act on, watch actual donor behavior. When you see changes in behavior, that's the time to change everything.

Most organizations that pay attention to what their donors do will probably find these survey results to be a bit hysterical and slightly out of step with reality.

That said, this survey should get your attention. It signals a change in response medium that's likely to become significant quickly. Not only wealthy donors, but donors across the spectrum are turning more an more online to give and otherwise interact with charities. Donation revenue is migrating from the mail to the web, and that means we need to become effective at communicating online.

The study is available for download from Convio here (registration required).

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech

Newsletter to e-newsletter: how to get there from here

Your donors are going online. Are you?

It would be easy if all it took was to digitize everything you do in the mail and dump it online. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. You have to make your material fit the medium.

The Nonprofit Communications blog has some help when it comes to newsletter at Moving your print newsletter to email - 7 tips. The tips:

1. Sending a PDF of your print newsletter out as an attachment to an email list is NOT an email newsletter.
   
2. Not everything you included in your print newsletter will be right for your email newsletter.
   
3. Consider a more personal tone.
   
4. Decide on full text, teasers, or a combo.
   
5. Prepare to spend lots of time on ... subject lines, headlines, and subheads
   
6. Use an email newsletter service.
   
7. Include a sign-up box to your website.
   

More at the original post.

Things that work offline usually work online. But only when they fit the online context.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, enewsletters,

Email as if you had a relationship

Ever notice how the emails you get from marketers and fundraisers seldom seem to have any connection to each other? It's as if each impact were an isolated incident.

The Excess Voice newsletter has noticed the same thing, and proposes a solution, at Do you create a sense of continuity within your email campaigns?. It's this:

... next time you plan an email marketing campaign, write them as a series of emails, each building on the last. Just the same as if you were writing to your family and friends. You'll still be delivering "impressions", but you'll also be developing a relationship and hopefully, building reader loyalty and attention.

Not a bad idea. Of course, you never want to assume everyone reads and remembers everything you send them, but a sense of human continuity would nice.

Thanks to BeRelevant for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, emarketing

YouTube changes the rules of video production

A lot of "net savvy" nonprofits are posting videos at YouTube. Not a bad idea, but you really want to get the video right in the first place.

There's a great post at Endless Plain that looks at two nonprofit YouTube videos: Nonprofit Video Comparison. You really need to see this.

One is polished, pretty, and professional. It clearly plays close to the brand guidelines. It has a smooth-sounding professional narrator, and stunning photography.

The other is rough, goofy, and frankly home-made looking.

Care to guess which one is so dull you almost can't force yourself to sit through it? And which one is engaging, human, and charming? (Want to guess also which one cost more to produce?)

The view counts at YouTube tell the story.

The old days are over. If you want to engage people on the web, it's much more important to be real than to be polished.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, YouTube, nptech

Online ethics: maybe it's not an oxymoron

The Web is a different place. It's possible to be seriously unethical online in ways that don't even exist in the real world. Remember what happened to GiveWell? (See What happens when you get caught with your ethics down) You'd have trouble explaining what went wrong there to most donors -- because it's literally impossible out here in meatspace. But it was grossly wrong nevertheless.

That's why it's good to see a nonprofit online Code of Ethics posted at ePhilanthropy. I hope you'll read it and make it part of your online operations.

There's even a handy Ethics Self Test to see how you're doing.

Ignorance is a lousy excuse for bad behavior, even when it's true. Your donors deserve no less than the best ethics.

Thanks to Getting Attention for the tip.

Technorati Tags: npethics, fundraising, nptech

How people see web pages

Eye-tracking studies are just cool. (Read about them here on Wikipedia if you want to know how they work.) They take some of the subjectivity out of design and tell us what people actually pay attention to.

So here's a great post from the Virtual Hosting Blog: Scientific Web Design: 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies.

Here's a sample of what you'll learn there. In some ways, web design is very much like print design:

• Text attracts attention before graphics.
  
• Initial eye movement focuses on the upper left corner of the page.
  
• Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones.
  
• Bigger images get more attention.
  
• Clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixation.
  
• Headings draw the eye.
  
• Large blocks of text are avoided.
  
• White space is good.
  

And sometimes it's not much like print:

• Readers ignore banners.
  
• Fancy formatting and fonts are ignored.
  
• People generally scan lower portions of the page.
  
• Text ads were viewed mostly intently of all types tested.
  
• Users spend a lot of time looking at buttons and menus.
  

All around a very useful and interesting list. If you have anything to do with web design, check it out.

Thanks to Nonprofit Online News for the tip.

Technorati Tags: nptech, fundraising, web design

Help for successful email campaigns

Some helpful hints for successful emailing from the Silverpop newsletter: Email Resolutions for 2008. They are:

• Focus on the first few inches. (Many folks look at their messages in a preview pane before deciding what to do with them. Make sure you've got something in that small space that will keep them going.)
  
• Let customer actions guide your campaigns. (If you do direct mail, this isn't a strange concept. Oddly enough, though, many email campaigns are conducted with little or no attention to recipients' behavior.)
  
• Take a new approach to list growth. Ask! (Make it easy, fun, and worthwhile for people to join your list.)
  
• Grab 'em in 60-seconds. (That's about how much time you have. Less, actually.)
  

Thanks to BeRelevant for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, email, nptech

"404" pages that should be found more often

Those annoying "404" error pages -- who the heck thought giving them a number was in any way helpful?

They're inevitable. Somebody's going to mistype something, landing on a page that tells them there's been an error. So why not make these errors work for you rather than against you?

The Squareoak blog took a look at a whole bunch of them at 404 Pages - Funny, Geeky, Disturbing.

Take a look. The takeaway is this: You can do something with those pages that gives them meaning, that makes them helpful or interesting. Have a personality. Say something about your cause. Give them some likely links back to what they might have been looking for.

Thanks to the WOMMA Blog for the tip.

Technorati Tags: nptech, fundraising, 404