Tag Archives: email marketing

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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This week’s torrent of news centered around Susan B. Komen’s decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood, the torrent of outrage which eventually caused them to reverse their decision.  What’s even more amazing is that Planned Parenthood supporters stepped in to make up the loss by special contributions, similar to in the past when funding was taken away.  Congratulations to Planned Parenthood for quickly activating their dedicated constituents;  shame to Komen for ruining its branding with such a poorly thought out decision.

So Facebook is going public.  How will this affect its relationship with its many devotees, which is expected to increase to 1 BILLION later this year?  It’s a bit sad that Convio, not long after going public, agreed to be acquired by its long term competitor, Blackbaud, apparently to take advantage of a financial windfall.  (Also see my recent blog post.)  It will be interesting to watch the path Facebook follows once its loyalties move mostly to its shareholders.

Pinterest seems to be very popular lately.  Have you used it yet?  With all the social media tools available, Small Act (via my friend Shana Masterson) suggests you choose carefully how many you can manage.  (I’m posting regularly on Twitter and Facebook, but less so on LinkedIn and Google Plus so far, trying to find content which is appropriate to each platform.)

After they donate or take the actions you request, do you make sure to thank your donors? Here are some tips from Guidestar and a quiz from Network for Good.

Are you getting good response from your email marketing efforts?  Use these 7 tips for appeals and also 5 Best Practices for Increasing Email Subscribers Engagement.  (And go here if you need help in getting them to sign up to receive your emails.)

Thinking about getting a tablet, such as the iPad or Kindle Fire?  Here’s a good article to read first.

Are You Working Between the Holidays?

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I’ll be in the office next week, as I suspect many of you will be (especially if you are wrapping up your year-end fundraising campaign).  Here’s some ideas to contemplate for for 2012:

  1. Ask some friends (who aren’t familiar with your organization) to critique your nonprofit’s website.  Are they able to quickly understand what you do?  Is it easy to donate or sign up for your email list?
  2. Analyze your website analytics, Facebook insights data so you know what’s working best with your constituents.  And don’t forget to segment your audience.  Debra Askanase explains more
  3. Go back to the basics – find new ways to build your email list (via Idealware)
  4. Encourage your staff’s professional development by supporting their participation in organizations such as Nten, which will have its annual conference in April and sponsors informational webinars and live 501 Tech meetings throughout the US throughout the year.
  5. Saying thank you to donors is always an good idea, but it’s also crucial to make sure your staff and volunteers feel appreciated for their hard work.  As my friend Shana Masterson recently tweeted, “You might not be in a position to reward someone (financially), but u can always acknowledge the work they’ve done.”
  6. To make your meetings your effective, make sure an agenda goes out to participants in advance and a summary is sent shortly afterwards – it’s a simple project management technique that can insure that everyone’s on the same page
  7. Help someone who is in transition.  While unemployment figures seem to be dropping a bit, there are still many people who are struggling.  Reach out to colleagues who need encouragement and support.

Have a healthy and peaceful holiday and a wonderful new year.

7 Tips to Implement a Successful Fall ePhilanthropy Campaign

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Sadly, Labor Day is followed by fall with shorter days and cooler weather.  But it also provides an opportunity to reconnect with your constituents, climaxed by the important year-end fundraising campaign.  Here are some ways to hit the ground running when you return to the office tomorrow:

  1. Prepare an integrated communications / fundraising calendar describing how you will engage with your supporters across channels.  Balance appeals with messages showing how your organization has helped your target audience and be specific about you’ve utilized past donations.
  2. Start planning content for email campaigns well in advance, using these 7 tips for better fundraising emails and applying these best practices for enewsletters - they apply just as much for nonprofits as for small businesses (More ideas here)
  3. Take the time to analyze data on email subscribers, website traffic, Facebook ‘likers,’ Twitter followers etc. so you better understand what platforms your constituents are engaging with you
  4. Is your website consistently providing fresh content that is in synch with your other communication media?  If not, have you provided ongoing training to staff on how to utilize your content management software?  (What?  You don’t have a CMS.  Read Idealware’s Five Tips for A Successful Open Source CMS Project on a Budget)
  5. Find a few simple ways to start thinking multi-channel, even if it means changing the way your nonprofit usually works.  Get ideas from Frogloop’s  Multichannel Magic, then read about others’ successes in this month’s upcoming nonprofit blog carnival hosted by Big Duck featuring this topic
  6. Get out of your office.  If you’re in NYC, for example, you can learn how to innovate and thrive in the digital age at this month’s 501 Tech NYC event and discuss what makes successful websites at the Not-for-Profit Webmaster Round Table.  (You can also learn from your desk by taking a webinar during you lunch hour.)
  7. Optimize your online giving forms, paying particular attention to whether they work as well on mobile and tablet platforms, where more of your constituents are seeing them.
Congratulations once again to Charity:Water, which has kicked off its September campaign as another example of how to do ephilanthropy right with stirring video and constantly providing feedback on how it uses donations towards its mission of providing clean water worldwide .

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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If you missed this week’s Social Media for Nonprofits NYC event, you can get a great summary from Big Duck’s Farra Trompeter, who presented a great step by step tutorial on implementing Multi-Channel Campaigns.  (More session slides from this and past events are available here.)  See also Kivi Leroux Miller’s post highlighting Convio’s recently released Multi-Channel Marketing Report.

Coming up with strong content is the key behind any online strategy.  As I and many of my nonprofit colleagues around the country do, I try to find the most worthwhile posts to share with my followers.  Beth Kanter explains that Content Creation is Listening and Engaging, then followed up with this look at Scoop.It as a way to organize your content.

How can you make your website more ‘social’?  Debra Askanase explains how and gives several examples of nonprofits that are doing this well, and will follow up with a Nten webinar next month.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen says you must focus on essential content when writing for mobile platforms.  If you’re new to email marketing, learn about Email Marketing 2.0, then learn how segmentation can help you to get better results.

Finally, if you’re trying to find a format to send to your management to summarize social media and results of other online activity, Beth offers this guest post highlighting the Smithsonian Institution’s in-house dashboard, then suggests using a small pilot project to demonstrate the effectiveness of social media.

 

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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If you’re convinced that integrated fundraising / marketing would help your organization but are finding it a challenge to implement, read these tips from Convio on how to break down your silos.  Also listen to this week’s free webinar from Fundraising Success on Strategies for Seamless Integration Across Fundraising Channels.  If multiple departments maintain their own calendars of constituent outreach activities, this is a good place to start by using an integrated calendar (and keeping it current).

Email isn’t dead yet, and many of us are still asking questions about what’s too much and how can we increase open / action rates.  For help, see 14 tips for making your nonprofit email more effective,   Make sure you think carefully about the subject line (which will affect whether or not readers decide to open your message) and test for stronger email performance.    Here’s more ideas on how much communication is too much.   Struggling with content ideas for your next enewsletter or direct mail piece?  Try these three stories every nonprofit should know how to write.

After this week’s announcement of the upgraded iPad, is it time to retire the PC in favor of laptops and tablets?  Seems to me that having a real keyboard is still helpful, especially on mobile phones which continue to boom.

If you’re planning to re-do your website, consider first what platform will serve you best, such as WordPress or Drupal.  The newly updated Idealware Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits is also a great reference.

Coming next week – a preview of Nten‘s Nonprofit Technology Conference, which I’ll be attending later this month.

 

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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Thanks to Charles Lenchner for today’s Organizing 2.0 Conference, where I presented a session on how to evaluate and implement a donor or membership database.  Thanks also to fellow speakers (among many others) Steve Dondley, Jason Lefkowitz & Colin Delaney who spoke about content management systems (particularly Drupal) and managing online consultants.

Last week’s Nten webinar on email list management strategy offered tips such as segment on constituent behavior not on interests so you can better target your communications.   According to the Agitator, email is still an important channel, but many readers may be reading them on their phones, making it even more important that your message is concise.  Big Duck also offers 7 tips for an effective e-newlsletter.

Facebook has (again) changed how pages are presented – The Social Path and Tech Cafeteria offer a look at the latest changes, and Beth’s Blog discusses a Facebook content strategy.

Using a slide show on your home page?  Future Fundraising Now suggests it may not be effective, even though many other sites are doing this.  Also see EchoDitto’s take.

I’ve noticed on the NYC subway lately that almost everyone is on their smart phones,  not a surprise since smart phone sales now exceed PC sales.  All the more reason to make your website mobile friendly.

Nten’s 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference next month will be the biggest and best ever.  Even if you can’t attend in person, you can now participate online.

Email Marketing & Websites Still Most Important in Nonprofit Communications

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According to Kivi Leroux Miller‘s new 2011 Nonprofit Communications Trend Report, email marketing and websites are still the most important tools in a nonprofit’s communications strategy, followed by print (newsletters or direct mail), in-person events, Facebook and media relations/PR.   So until you have the basics in place, social media probably shouldn’t be a top priority.  Kivi recommends three strategies for nonprofit communicators in 2011:

  1. Be responsible for generating great content about your cause – don’t rely on others to do it for you.
  2. Help your supporters to clearly understand what your organization is about and what you are accomplishing.  Sometimes the abundance of information makes it more difficult for constituents to ‘connect the dots.’
  3. Show passion for how your organization helps others and always be aware of what ‘brand’ you want to represent.

Yesterday I spoke about Selecting and Implementing a Donor or Membership Database at  Congregations 2.0, a technology training workshop for churches, synagogues and mosques.  For a small organization that is just getting started, in addition to collecting email addresses and having a website, I would add having the ability to collect donations online and having a good donor database, preferably using an online platform.  Social media and blogging can come later.

For some additional ideas on how to create great content, look at this Report on Content Management Systems Powering Foundation Websites, Using a Content Strategy to Promote Your Organization, and this book Content Strategy for the Web, discussed at yesterday’s event.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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Attended an interesting session on email marketing and social media at the All About Email Virtual Conference and Expo yesterday, reviewing how these channels can be used to complement each other.  An important point – since you don’t ‘own’ information on Facebook and Twitter, it’s still important to build your own email list.  (Sessions were recorded and will be available for listening starting Mon, Nov. 15.)

While we’ve seen reports on social media and email marketing, there’s been little to guide nonprofits on website statistics until the new 2010 Website Benchmarks Report available from Groundwire.  Although the report focuses on small environmental organizations, its findings are useful for all nonprofits.

When deciding how to do fundraising, do you rely on data or on your own instinct.  Jeff Brooks in Future Fundraising Now suggests that you use facts and past experience as your guide.   And if you think that a multichannel approach to fundraising / marketing is something new, take a look at Hank Rosso’s classic Achieving Excellence in Fundraising, last revised in 2003 (see chapter on using the Internet as a fundraising vehicle).

If you still need help with your year end fundraising drive yet, get some help from Network from Good’s upcoming webinar as well as this tool from Blue State Digital which analyzes your Google Analytics data.  (Tip – don’t wait until the last week of 2010 to frantically prepare an appeal.)

Like to be on the cutting edge?  Try RockMelt, a soon to be released browser which integrates social media.

If you’re in NYC next week, attend the Foundation Center’s Open House on Tue, Nov. 16 and Nten‘s 501 Tech NYC meeting Wed evening, Nov. 17, which will feature Allyson Kapin, from Rad Campaign, Women Who Tech and lead blogger at Frogloop offering tips on nonprofit technology and social media.

Are eNewsletters Still an Effective Communications Tool?

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This week I received an especially interesting enewsletter from Nten, the nonprofit technology organization that I’ve been involved with for many years.  There was a lot of great content, such as:

  1. project management on web redesigns
  2. optimizing web sites for social media
  3. asking the right questions to appeal to the right audience
  4. getting help with web analytics with the Analysis Exchange
  5. tips on creating website content
  6. taking advantage of the mobile web
  7. a roundup of other useful links, also featured in Nten’s blog

Many nonprofits have started to phase out paper newsletters in favor of enewsletters, but I wonder whether even this medium is still an effective way to reach constituents.  The average open rate for email newsletters is usually around 20% (see e2010 Nonprofit Benchmarks Study), and even those who do open them probably only scan them quickly.  When I realized the value of Nten’s content, my first inclination was to share the articles individually through my Twitter stream.  While many sites now have an easy way to do this, I often use Add This, which I’ve installed on my computer for easy sharing to multiple social networking sites.

No, I’m not advocating that you ditch the enewsletter.  But I am suggesting that wherever possible, you make information available to your constituents in small bites, and make sure there is an easy way to share content through social media and by emailing to friends.  And if you want to make sure your great content is noticed, make it available in multiple channels, but make sure to tweak to take advantage of strengths of each medium.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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Attended this week’s NYC chapter meeting of the Internet Strategy Forum, where we discussed the latest changes on Facebook.  View the presentation;  plan to attend our future meetings (remote access is available even if you’re not in NY).

Kivi Leroux Miller, in addition to having released her new book Nonprofit Marketing Guide, also wrote an excellent post on Beth Kanter’s blog about the importance of knitting together your website, email and social media content.  Since each constituent may choose to connect with your organization in different channels, why not offer a consistent message throughout?  Also consider taking Idealware‘s webinar next week on Choosing the Right Communications Mix.

Beth also offered a simple process to use actionable listening to learn from other nonprofits when planning your social media outreach strategy.

Gail Fredricks spoke to ABC News about How to Ask for Money – great summary for those of us who are still learning about fundraising.

Many of us are now managing or working with colleagues across the country or even in other countries.  Nten has just kicked off a webinar series, Virtual Team Leader: Training for Managers of Remote Teams (a recording is available of yesterday’s first of four sessions).  Tip: Don’t rely only on email as your main communications device.

For some email marketing tips, read about the importance of personalized messages and 3 things that will actually improve your email campaigns.