Welcome to my personal blog on Robin Hood Marketing—the concept of stealing corporate savvy to sell just causes—and my life as a marketer, from Washington DC to Madagascar to points in between.
Do you believe in the power of the web to help nonprofits create social change? Do you know a talented Web strategist or developer interested in coming up with new ways to use the Web for social good? The Case Foundation is sponsoring two $10,000 prizes for Web enthusiasts who do just that.
Network for Good, NetSquared, and the Case Foundation have come together to challenge developers to mash-up the Network for Good online donation processing API with another Web service to either (a) enhance the online donor experience or (b) revolutionize a nonprofit’s ability to fundraise online. As if changing the world was not enough, the two winners will each receive a $10,000 prize.
This is product placement, but it’s a well-intentioned plug: If you’re not already signed up for Network for Good’s weekly fundraising and marketing tips, I encourage you to do so here. Here’s a sample of the types of tips we feature from editor Rebecca Ruby:
Why isn’t your website performing better? Where are all those online donors? Is this creating the urge to completely revamp your site? You may not have to start from scratch! Here is a way to give your website a five-minute facelift:
Make your Donate button easier to find. Grab a friend or relative, sit them down in front of your website home page, and count how many seconds it takes them to find and click on your Donate button. If it takes them more than two seconds, you need to place your button in a far more prominent position. Make it central to the page. Make sure it is above the fold. Make it big. Make it colorful. Make it impossible to miss. Here’s an example of an easy-to-find Donate button.
Frame the Donate button in a more compelling way. Now think about why someone should click on your Donate button. Your financial needs are not enough. Create an appeal around the button that is focused on donors, their interests, and what they get in return for their donation. What tangible change will result if they give? How is that tangible change relevant to them personally? Will it feel good to make the donation? Is clicking on the button fun, touching or compelling? Here’s an outstanding example of framing.
Add a sense of immediacy. You want to inspire someone to give right now, but that can be hard to do if it’s not December or if there’s not an urgent crisis to address. Create a sense of urgency for donating by creating a campaign with a goal and deadline, matching grant, or appeal for specific items or programs that are highly tangible. Here’s an example of bringing a sense of urgency to an appeal by making it clear what the donation does (it buys a bed net) and tying it to a popular show.
Recognize that getting clicks requires cultivation. While you want someone to donate right away, it’s important to remember that it takes time to cultivate donors. Be sure your website includes a way to capture the email addresses of visitors so that you can build a relationship with them and turn them into donors in the future. Think beyond a newsletter sign-up. Here’s a nice example of an innovative approach to capturing emails.
Tweak your DonateNow page. (This is step is particularly easy if you have Network for Good’s service. Yes, NFG is my employer, so I’m biased!) Take a hard look at your donation form/page. If you are asking too many questions, potential donors may abandon the form. This page may also need some increased messaging and reinforcement of why and how donations are important. Remember: This page has the last copy a donor is going to read prior to actually giving you money--you don’t want to lose them in the home-stretch!
Put down your iPhone, close your Facebook profile and stop Twittering for just a second. I have something to say to you, head to head and heart to heart.
Technology is cool. It can be incredibly effective way to promote your cause. But hard wires don’t necessarily create human bonds. Your social media strategy can’t simply be a toolset – it needs to be a conduit to living beings. “Java” doesn’t inspire people unless you’re talking about the kind you get from Starbucks. Technology doesn’t compel people. People do.
I’m taking this precious space to make this point because I think it goes in the forgotten fundamentals category that is the focus of this column. It is all too easy to fall in love with all the sexy social media tools out there and forget WHY people are attracted to social media in the first place. If you don’t stay grounded in the basic human needs that fuel the success of those shiny tools, you will be – in the words of Nicole Engelbert from Datamonitor – a fool with a tool.
There are a lot of lengthy and overwhelming definitions of social media, social networking and Web 2.0 out there – pick your jargon. I will not quote them here. Let me give you my definition.
All that social media stuff is simply people using the Internet to:
1. Be seen and heard
2. Connect with each other
That’s it. And that’s as basic and human as you can get. Social media is about the social, not the media.
Here are some examples.
Bloggers and vloggers want a platform for personal expression, and they like connecting with people who care about their content. (In case you’ve been living off the grid for the last few years, blogs are personal online journals/columns. Vlogs are video blogs.) Everyone can be a pundit in the world of social media. Even I have one.
Social networkers want a platform for personal expression (think a MySpace page), and they want to connect with others (think online “friends”). So do people (including your kids) who love instant messaging.
Being seen and heard and connecting are the emotions that drive social media, and they should drive your online outreach strategy.
This should be a relief to all of us who think we lack the technological chops to successfully participate in the online world. You don’t need to be under age 20 or an IT director, you just need to grasp what makes it work.
Here’s a six-step way to make that happen. And you need to make it happen. Why? Because online outreach is a cost-effective and efficient way to reach people at a time when we’re all low on resources. Because it’s a way to find new constituencies and reach a new, younger generation of donors. Because giving up control of the message and having a conversation can strengthen your relationship with the people with support you. And if none of that moves you, remember that people tend to donate more money online.
The Six Steps to Winning Hearts and Minds on Web 2.0:
1. STOP! If your Executive Director is commanding you to start a blog or get a Facebook presence today, stop right there. Spend a bit of time thinking more strategically. You want to figure out WHO you’re trying to reach online, WHERE they are, and HOW to best communicate with them. If starting a new blog (and there are already tens of millions of them), you want to be sure there’s a case for it.
2. LOOK AND LISTEN! The beauty of the Internet is you can quickly find the people online that are predisposed to your cause. In a world where there are active online communities of people fascinated by medieval pottery or support groups for people struck by lightning (really), there is surely is a constituency that loves your cause, somewhere out there. Find those people, watch where they are congregating and listen to what they are saying. This is very easy to do by setting up simple alerts so that each time someone mentions your organization or anything related to your cause online, you will be notified. Check out http://www.google.com/alerts and watch lists on http://www.technorati.com
3. SEE AND HEAR! Start acknowledging what potential supporters are saying. Post friendly comments on their blogs with constructive thoughts and useful information, openly identifying who you are and your organization. Bloggers love those kinds of comments. They like having an audience! Do the same on online communities, MySpace pages, etc. Give online communities useful tools and interesting content from your organization. Be generous.
4. CHOOSE! At this stage, you’ll have a growing sense of whether there’s a need for you to blog or participate more formally in a social network. Be strategic about concentrating your efforts in a few high-yield areas.
5. BE EASY TO FIND! Part of social networking is going out and connecting to people. Also make sure you’re easy to find so people can connect to you. Be sure your website can be easily located via search engines. If you decide to have a social networking page, give it an obvious name. Don’t be so clever you don’t show up in search.
6. ASK! Once you have relationships with supporters on social media, give them different ways to help you – not just by giving money, but telling their story, spreading the word and expressing their opinion about your issue – in their own words. Turn the conversation into collaboration for social change. Give up control. You never had it anyway.
Pursuant to my post yesterday, I want to show two wonderful examples of establishing the trust triangle with unlikely yet completely authentic messengers for an important cause.
Read these stories and ask yourself, “Who should be my messenger?” No matter your marketing talents, there is probably someone better than you to speak to your cause - especially someone helped by it!
STORY ONE - MEN BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
David Stoker of Ashoka wrote me today to say:
Read your post today about trust and the power of trust between friends in combination with a cause. That is really the underlying mechanism that drives the idea of, what we call, a Citizen Base. When citizens own, operate, and market to other citizens, the cause becomes rooted in the community at a level of connectivity that makes it more likely to succeed and grow. A great example we’ve seen in this regard is Men on the Side of the Road in South Africa. The personal connection they forged between individuals was the key to their success. I find it quite compelling in terms of building trust between segments of the population that would perhaps look at each other with suspicion.
MSR was created when Ashoka Fellow Charles Maisel devised a way to employ the 18,000 males who gather at roughly 180 sites throughout South Africa waiting for a day’s labor. Through a national marketing campaign, MSR initiated a massive tool drive for old, unused, and even broken tools, which can then be repaired and used by the day laborers. Instead of having to go to anonymous drop-off points to donate, citizens are asked to call MSR, who then sends out these day laborers to pick-up these tools directly from the community, thereby building a human connection.
Imagine if the next time you donated something, a person who was benefitting collected it from you! Wow.
STORY TWO: THE DOG WITH A BLOG
Pets for the Environment has a brilliant new spokesperson—a dog. Here is Eddie’s story (he has a blog, too, natch):
I’m a dog on a mission.
When nonstick chemicals from a frying pan killed my buddy Feathers, and my feline friend Cleo and I found out that we’re full of chemicals too, I was barking mad. Did you know that the humans’ government doesn’t make companies test chemicals for safety before they start using them in our toys, furniture, or even our food? And where do you think all those flame retardants, mercury, and perfluorochemicals end up? In us! And I know because I was tested. The chemicals in me are the same kinds of chemicals in people, and scientists think that other cats and dogs—and horses and birds and bunnies and snakes—around the country are full of them, too.
That’s why I started Pets for the Environment. The humans have made a mess, and they aren’t doing anything about it. I need your help educating our humans and getting their government to pass toxic chemical reform legislation. They’ll never listen to just one pet, but all of us barking and meowing and cawing and squeaking together can make a lot of noise. Join Pets for the Environment and help me make a difference!
Check out the site, where you can find the blog, a wall of cute (dog photos sent in by fans) and other great examples of messaging with the right messengers.
My dad visited this weekend. He’s a psychoanalyst and quite brilliant, so I spent time asking him about some of the issues I’m exploring with Mark Rovner under the topic, ”the seven things everyone wants.” My dad had some particularly fascinating comments about trust.
I want to share those today because there is a huge demand for trust in our sector, yet a serious supply problem. Holly at NTEN blogged on it just yesterday. She cited a some important data:
Want to guess what the number one source of trusted information is for most Americans? People like them—their friends, colleagues and peers.
So we trust people like us. That is definitely true. But how does that work? What is trust, really, and how does it come about? That’s what I asked my dad, since he’s spent a lifetime understanding people’s minds.
He says trust is a triangle. Person A trusts Person B when Person B authentically represents or speaks to something that matters to us. Think of that thing as “C” - the third point that makes a triangle. For example, a person might trust a politician that stands for their vision of America. A customer of Amazon will trust another customer at Amazon who credibly reviews a book they are considering buying. A person might trust a brand if it consistently stands for quality. A person will trust their spouse if they stand for a faithful marriage. It’s not so much the person on the other side of the relationship as the stakes we share, the point that forms a triangle.
Given the power of word-of-mouth marketing, if we’re trying to promote a cause (the “C” of our triangle), we need to ensure that our target audience ("A") sees a triangle—that they actually care what we stand for—and that the other person in their triangle is not necessarily us but someone very close to them. That creates a strong triangle of trust. We don’t get a triangle if they don’t care what we do or don’t know the person speaking.
What does this mean to us? That our triangle requires new points. It’s time to change our message - so we are creating a point of trust that matters to people - and the messenger speaking to that point. We won’t have trust without that kind of shape.
See3 recently sent around this nifty list of video tips. I really like it, so I’m sharing it in its entirety, followed by a video I think exhibits many of these principles. More on See3 at the bottom of this list. Thanks See3!
10 Things to Remember When Shooting Video for the Web
We are consistently meeting organizations that are thirsting for more effective and creative ways to use video in their online strategies. We think that integrating video is critical, but doing it the right way can make all the difference to your campaign. Here are some useful tips for making a better video.
1. Tell a story. If you want your audience to identify with your mission, you need a compelling story that connects your work to real people. If a story moves you, it will likely move others as well - and become the foundation for deeper involvement.
2. Keep the audience in mind. Are you trying to reach urban street youth or retired veterans? Tailor your messaging for a targeted audience and consider how you want it to feel before the camera starts rolling.
3. Make a clear call to action. You have their attention, now tell your viewers how you want them to engage, whether it’s donating money, visiting a website or volunteering.
4. Shoot video with repurposing in mind. Video footage can be reused for different projects and messages. Building a media library is a valuable long-term asset for your organization. Have a camera ready for every important event. Ask volunteers to document their work and make it available for future events, trainings, and online use.
5. Think outside of the box. Consider new ways to make your video edgy or gripping. Use music, stills, or archival footage to reel a viewer in and then maintain energy throughout the piece.
6. Prepare a script and get some feedback. Yes, even a one- or two-minute video needs the arc of a well-considered story. Scripts help lay the foundation for every piece of good production out there. Use feedback from trustworthy sources to make improvements.
7. B-roll (footage where people aren’t talking) is important. Too many talking heads can make it difficult to hold a viewer’s attention. Collect all the footage you can and choose your best content when it’s time to edit.
8. Sound is critical. One of the most underappreciated aspects of production is sound quality. Web viewers are more likely to watch a poor-quality video with good sound than a good-quality video with poor sound.
9. Give the viewer the right web tools. Can the viewer forward the video to a friend, subscribe to your RSS feed, get involved, and sign up for your newsletter right there on the spot? If not, they should.
10. Host a screening. Working with award-winning documentarians makes screenings here at See3 one of the most exciting parts of our work. Professional films rely on screenings, so why shouldn’t nonprofits? Screenings foster discussion and feedback from others who care about your message. It’s also an opportunity to meet up with others in your nonprofit community. For See3, it helps us maintain the award-winning video quality that we strive for with every project.
Interested in learning more about our production services? Give us a call at (773) 784-7333 or email us at .
And here’s a video from a highly successful fundraiser from our Six Degrees program, Samantha Millman. Thanks, Samantha!
Mark Rovner and I have been working on a little project - maybe it will turn into a book. We test-drove some of the content at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, and the NTC conference attendees were brilliant and contributed much to our thought process! The session was received warmly enough that we were asked to type up a little summary for the NTEN newsletter. I wanted to share that (it’s below), as well as the official blog for this topic. We welcome thoughts, comments, additions—any input at all!
Here’s what we said:
The NTC in New Orleans was full of fantastic, sparkly, shiny new technology tools. And then there was our session. No winsome widgets, no witty Twittering, no Dopplr-found Doppelgangers.
And that was the point.
Which is this: What makes technology tools great is not the technology. It’s the people behind them. Successful technology is about bonds, not wires. It’s human connections that matter. “Social media” is about “social” more than it’s about “media”.
If you missed our session, we summed it up in the title: The Seven Things Everyone Wants: What Freud and Buddha Understood (and We’re Forgetting) about Online Outreach.
Some very human principles make or break the success of absolutely everything you do online. These are the kind of truths Buddha or Freud – explorers of the deepest recesses of the human mind—talked about. To achieve true marketing “enlightenment,” you need to tap into fundamental human needs with your technology – rather than hoping technology can inspire alone. You may think this sounds a bit like Maslow – and it is – but with a twist: Maslow was uncovering human needs; We are showing how his and other deep needs can be employed to foster a more humane world.
There are at least seven of these fundamental needs, and that’s what we covered in our session. We threw out a need, and the folks in the session talked about how they’d met it through online communications. (Hat tip to Britt Bravo for capturing the examples so well in her blog.) There are other human needs – we’d like to add simplicity and humor to the list of seven – but this was a start.
Here is a taste of our discussion. But the conversation is far from over. Please help us continue it – we’re headed toward a book of some kind, we hope. Talk to us at our official blog for the topic.
PLEASE: Don’t just read this article, tell us your story.
Need 1: To be SEEN and HEARD
Making someone feel seen and heard is the most powerful thing any of us can do with online communications. On the other hand, not listening is the root of most problems, personal (just ask your partner!) and professional (just ask your co-workers!).
Examples of great listening:
•Teen Health Talk engages youth to talk about health issues rather than lectures at them.
•Oxfam has used Flickr petitions successfully in several campaigns. Two of their staff members recently returned from Darfur and are putting together a video to raise awareness about it. They are collecting questions from supporters to include.
The bottom line: See to be seen, hear to be heard.
Need 2: To be CONNECTED to someone or something
People are sociable creatures, and they want to find other people that share their interests. That’s what fuels Facebook or Twitter or any number of examples. In fact, one could argue that connecting people to each other is the highest and best use of technology.
Examples of great connecting:
•BeliefNet has prayer circles where people can share prayers for specific people.
•March of Dimes’ Share Your Stories allows families of babies in the NICU to share stories.
The bottom line: Engage by connecting to what your audience (NOT YOU) wants to hear.
Need 3: To be part of something GREATER THAN THEMSELVES
We need to lay out the grand, inspirational vision of our cause. We should show how together we can leave the world a better place.
Examples of vision:
•18Seconds.org shows the cumulative effect of everyone changing their light bulbs to CFLs.
•The MoveOn “endorse a thon” for Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line of creative, uplifting and inspiring efforts.
Need 4: To have HOPE for the future
Forget doom and gloom, finger-wagging campaigns. People hate them.
The bottom line: Ix-nay on the apocalypse. Persuade through inspiration
Need 5: To have the security of TRUST
People are starved for a sense of trust. That’s why we glom on to authentic messengers.
Examples of authenticity:
•76% of givers according to Cone say they are influenced by friends and family. SixDegrees allows people to create widgets that feature a photo of themselves and 250 characters of text about why they support a particular cause.
•The Packard Kid Connection site helps kids get ready to go to the hospital. It builds trust because it looks like Club Penguin (Club Penguin is a social network for children), and it has videos of children explaining how things work at the hospital.
The bottom line: Cut the crap. Your authenticity is everything.
Need 6: To be of SERVICE
The #1 reason people stop giving to a nonprofit is that they feel like they are being treated like an ATM machine. They want to help, but they also want to be of service and to have different ways of serving. That need is not being fulfilled if all they hear is the unimaginative drumbeat of dollars.
If you are reading this, you already understand – and embody – the deep need to be useful and of service.
Need 7: To want HAPPINESS for self and others
The core of Buddhism is that everyone wants happiness and to be free from suffering. The more you want happiness for others, the better it is for you, and them.
We wrapped up the session with the following happy dance. Remember, it’s about people. People who want to be happy in this world.
Someone is angry at you. Somewhere, out there, a donor is miffed at their volume of direct mail. Or a co-worker feels slighted. Or a volunteer feels unappreciated. Or your significant other is simmering.
What do you do when someone is upset with you? Deal with it!
1. Create ways to listen: The key to good donor relations, stellar customer service and strong human relations is to set up a dynamic where people can easily complain or raise concern BEFORE they are raving mad. Be sure you have a phone number (answered by a nice person) displayed on all your outreach, email contacts and blogs and other outreach that enable conversation.
2. Listen: If someone is venting, let them vent. Let them rant and rave until they stop for air.
3. Acknowledge: Say exactly what they said back to them - it’s called reflective listening. “It sounds like you’re really frustrated with us because of x, y and z.” This makes a person feel heard.
4. Thank: Thank them for telling you how they feel. Even crappy feedback is feedback. “We want to know when our donors are not happy with us, and I’m so glad you told me about this. Thank you.”
5. Say sorry: Now comes the hard part. Say you’re sorry. Not “I’m sorry if this was bad/if you feel that way.” Say “I’m sorry this was a bad experience. We never want anyone to feel that way about us, and so we’re sincerely sorry.”
6. Act: Say and do something to fix the problem the person is angry about. If you can’t do what they want, do the best you can. Do something.
7. Follow up to show you acted: Get back to them a day later and say again that you’re sorry and how you addressed the problem.
8. Follow up again to make sure things are okay now: Check back in a week or two later. You might just win someone back (or over).
In honor of Earth Day, here is exceptionally good messaging. Thanks to Mark Rovner for sending this to me.
What’s refreshingly good about this spot?
1. It makes me believe I can make a difference. Because EDF has made a difference before.
2. It makes me feel good. It’s a thank you, not an appeal, which is a refreshing Earth Day message.
3. It makes me want to support EDF because it’s about hope, optimism and action.
What can you learn from it?
1. Make people believe they can change something THROUGH YOU. Show what you can and have done.
2. Make people feel appreciated. Thank them for changing something. Thank them for even thinking about changing something.
3. Make people feel inspired. Show them there is hope.
And here’s what NOT to do. Today, in Network for Good’s Nonprofit 911 call, Kirt Manecke shared this horror story. He supported an organization, and in the mail he received:
1. A letter FIVE WEEKS LATER.
2. The letter didn’t even have his name or donation amount on it.
3. The letter was a photocopy of a photocopy. It was even crooked on the page.
That doesn’t make a donor feel that they are making a difference. It doesn’t make a donor feel appreciated. And it sure isn’t inspirational.
Inside Influence Report, one of my favorite newsletters from the great gang at ASU, reminds us once again why it pays to be personal.
Here’s the story, from Noah Goldstein:
I have a friend who is a medical doctor. Nicest guy in the world. Will do, and has done, anything for anybody. So I was totally perplexed — and as a social psychologist, very interested — when I learned he was having difficulty finding someone to cover his shift on the weekend of my wedding. I asked him if he had ever volunteered to take his colleagues’ shifts, and he replied that indeed he had. Considering all he had done in the past to help them, and all that we know about the power of the norm of reciprocation, it was puzzling that he could not get a single person to volunteer to help him out during his time of need. By the time he had answered my next question, however, the solution to the mystery was clear.
When I inquired how he went about asking for help, he said that he had sent out an e-mail. And it wasn’t just any of type of e-mail — it was a mass e-mail, in which all of the recipients could see all the other recipients.
The problem with this strategy is that it creates what is called diffusion of responsibility. By sending out the mass e-mail in a way that made visible the large number of coworkers being asked, no one single individual felt personally responsible for helping. Instead, each recipient likely assumed that someone else on that list would agree to help. In a classic demonstration of diffusion of responsibility, social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané staged a situation in which a student seemed to be having an epileptic seizure during a study. When a single bystander was present, that person helped approximately 85% of the time. But when five bystanders were present — all of whom were located in separate rooms, so no one could be certain if the victim was receiving help — only 31% of the bystanders helped.
Fortunately for this friend, Noah Goldstein knew what to do. He told the doctor to send personal emails asking individual people specifically. It worked. The doctor attended the wedding.
The more your “asks” appear to be made from you, personally and directly, to an individual, the more likely people will support you. So segment your audience. Show you know them. Speak to them like individuals. Try some one-on-one contact with your biggest supporters. Mass, impersonal, Dear Friend emails just won’t do the same job. Just ask the doctor.
My favorite pink paper, the Financial Times, had an editorial this weekend by v3’s Robert Egger. Check it out if you missed it.
The gist (and I quote):
In you were savvy enough to have invested $1,000 in Microsoft when it went public in 1986, the value of your stock today would be close to $½m.
But what if you had invested the same amount in a high-performing non-profit group; one that could show measurable, financial impact in your community? All you would have been eligible for is a one-off tax deduction.
Think boldly for a moment. Imagine if there was a way to measure and then reward strategic investments in non-profits in the form of an annual and potentially growing tax deduction based on the same rate of return principle as the dividend. Imagine how that would revolutionise the productivity of non-profits, as well as create an incentive for individuals to seek out and support some of the most dynamic social and economic stimulators in their communities.
More importantly, since Americans donated $295bn to non-profits in 2006, while businesses spent $1.2bn on cause-related marketing to trumpet their philanthropy, a shift like this might also lead to coverage of the sector with the same level of critical analysis that is afforded traditional businesses.
Imagine how this might challenge the entire notion of “charity” in the US and usher in a bold new era of social and economic innovation.
What I like about this kind of idea is it fundamentally shifts the way we think about ourselves. Are we charities seeking handouts or are we the best damn investment anyone could make in their community? Try to put on this kind of mental strut (work it!) next time you compose an “ask” of any kind. Your results are worth bragging about, and they are worth a reward for your donors investors.
Don’t beg. Strut your ROI till the policymakers listen.
On my way to my daughter’s school, every morning, I pass a house that has a creche in its front yard. It’s been there since early December. Baby Jesus has been lingering there for the entire winter and Spring, and at this rate he may be slumbering into the summer.
He is covered with pollen these days.
Every morning, my daughter takes note of his long, post-seasonal stay in the manger.
“It’s STILL there!” she notes.
Then she asks why.
You could attribute all kinds of interesting reasons for this never-ending nativity scene. Maybe it’s a family that practices a particular kind of christianity. Maybe they like the way the creche looks amid the Spring flowers and overgrown grass. Maybe they have the Christmas spirit all year long.
Or maybe they are just lazy. Maybe they still have their tree up inside too, because they haven’t summoned the energy to pack it up either.
My fave marketer, Seth Godin, says you can be sure of two things about all people: they are lazy, and they are in a hurry.
We marketers like to spend a lot of time analyzing why people do some things or don’t do some things. We think of religion, attitudes, mindsets. But we should also be thinking of lazy. And in a hurry.
Maybe we’re just making it too darn hard for people to take action.
Maybe if taking action was really easy, more people would do it.
Never underestimate the importance of ease and convenience.
Try vastly simplifying your call to action and the level of effort it requires. See what happens. You might get Christmas in April.