Nonprofit marketing friends: It’s not enough to say what you do or who you are is great. You have to say what makes you unique. And you have to make that concept simple - and ensure it is important to your audience.
Think about:
1. Your strength. What is your strong suit, or what strength can you create?
2. Your difference: What makes you unique?
3. Simplicity: Is your strength or difference a simply, easily defined concept? At best, you can stand for just one attribute in each audience’s mind, so you want that quality to be clear and memorable.
4. Value to audience: Is the quality you’ve chosen to highlight something your audience careas about? It doesn’t matter if it’s irrelevant or uninteresting to those you want to reach.
If you haven’t been following it, there is a great discussion over at Nancy Schwartz’s blog on KFC and Susan Komen. Should an organization promoting health and fighting cancer be embracing fried chicken? Is this a match made in heaven? Heavens, no, in my opinion. And Nancy’s. Read up on it here.
Attention nonprofit marketing friends: If you are looking for partners, remember:
1. In thinking aobut partners, ask yourself who wins when the partnership wins. You want to look for partners with a compatible agenda with respect to your audience.
2. Partner around MUTUAL BENEFITS (not hopes for a big check) or you won’t be partnering at all.
At today’s release of their 2010 eBenchmark study, M+R shared four ways your organization can achieve a “data-driven culture.” That sounds rather dull and wonky to someone like me, so I’d call this four ways to “stop guessing and start testing” in your online outreach. Because one theme of today’s event was that testing makes a HUGE difference. Don’t just gut-check your next email - send it along with a similar but different version and see which does better with your community. If you don’t have to get an email out immediately, you might want to try the 10-90 test. Send an email to 10% of your list and see how it does. Then tweak it and hit the other 90%. See if it does better - and do more of what works. This can help you avert a disaster if the 10% does horribly - and learn if you do better the second try.
If this sounds appealing - and I hope it does - here is the approach M+R recommends:
1. Have a template for tracking your online outreach results. This is good advice, because most organizations are drowning in data. A simple template might list, by campaign, the following data along with a year to date benchmark for all of your campaigns. Try to keep it to one-two pages so you’ll actually be able to use it.
-Number of recipients of the email
-Open rate
-Click-through rate
-Response rate
-Number of responses
-Revenue
-Unsubscribe rate
2. Set benchmarks: Have some standard for telling if an email was a winner or a stinker. Your own benchmarks will be great - and you can also look at ones from the eBenchmark study, Convio, or Target Analytics.
3. Have a system: Keep track of each test, even if it’s only on a Google document, and evaluate and save the results. That way, you can look up past tests when making future decisions - and keep refining accordingly.
4. Lather, rinse, repeat: Set a goal for a campaign. Then measure the results. Then do it again. And again. Forever. Testing never ends. Learning is infinite. Fun!
I just returned from M+R’s presentation of its 2010 eBenchmark study of online outreach with NTEN here in Washington, DC.
I encourage you to review the whole report, but the most striking finding for me was how well small nonprofit did online compared to larger organizations. (Small is defined as an organization with a list size of under 100,000, Medium, 100,000-500,000, and Large, 500,000+ deliverable email addresses.)
Specifically:
*Small organizations saw an increase in online giving in 2009 (up 6% in dollars), driven by an increase in average gift size—this while large groups saw both their number of gifts and average gift sizes decrease (down nearly 4% in dollars) —at Network for Good, which serves mostly small organizations, our average nonprofit raised 20% more!
*Organizations with small list size (under 100,000) had DOUBLE the email response rate for fundraising compared to other groups.
*Small groups also had higher click-through rates and open rates on their emails (20% open rates compared to 14% across all groups, DOUBLE click-through rates compared to other organizations). This is good news because the largest difference between high and low performing email programs in the study was seen in email click-through rates. The study authors urged nonprofits to work to improve your click-through rates.
*Small groups grew their list sizes at double the rate of bigger organizations (likely due to the fact it’s easier to achieve a strong rate of growth when starting small)
*The only downside? small groups also had double the unsubscribe rate of their larger peers. Though M+R noted this is not necessarily a negative—small lists performed really well on fundraising appeals, so the high unsubscribe rate for small groups may be the result of a more attentive list - which is a good thing!
So what does this all mean? I asked that very question of Steve Peretz from M+R. Here are the thoughts of the study authors:
*Small groups are getting greater ROI from their online outreach
*This may be because small groups tend to have more engaged lists. A higher percentage of their lists are people who came to them, signed up on their website or otherwise signaled interest in the organization. Big groups may have bigger lists - but often there are more disengaged folks from lists that were traded or bought. They end up with a less passionate file.
I asked if M+R had seen this every year - but this is the first year they have broken out nonprofits by size, so that’s an unknown.
Smart nonprofit marketing people are always saying it’s list quality, not quantity that matters, and this is an interesting illustration of how a small but passionate core is better than a massive list of mildly interested folks.
Another interesting finding was when it comes to the share of online revenue attributable to different types of gift programs – such as monthly giving, one time gifts and tribute gifts – the study “showed marked differences across sectors. Whereas Environmental nonprofits in our study raised 96% of their online revenue from one-time gifts, Health nonprofits raised 50% of their online revenue from “other” gifts (including event giving) and tribute gifts, and International groups lead the way through monthly giving, which made up more than 25% of their online revenue.”
Here are other highlights from M+R:
■The average study participant sent 4 emails per subscriber per month, but Environmental nonprofits sent their subscribers 5.2 emails per month, while Health nonprofits sent just 2.1 emails per month, on average.
■Email fundraising response rates were .13%, and email advocacy response rates were 4.00%.
■The average gift size for a one-time online gift was $81.33.
■Annual email file churn was just under 17%.
■Online fundraising grew overall by 4.5% between 2008 and 2009.
■For half of the nonprofits in our study, online revenue either held steady with 2008 or declined. This decline was driven by a drop in the average gift size.
Last, some attendees noted the results of this study were different from Convio’s recent study and were asked about why there were some discrepancies. They said it may be that Convio has a different set of nonprofits on its platform - including more, smaller, ones. I’d like to hear Convio’s thoughts on that at some point.
(Fantastic DonateNow button from Network for Good customer Heartspring. We love you.)
UPDATE: apparently in the last 24 hours, Heartspring got rid of the baby button. So the above link is gone. As a colleague of mine says - “Nobody puts baby in the corner!” But I guess they did. Heartspring, bring back baby! That was my favorite DonateNow button of all time.
I’ve often joked about how the way to get someone’s attention - and compassion - is through babies and puppies.
This highly recommend blog notes an experiment in Scotland:
Hundreds of wallets were planted on the streets of Edinburgh by psychologists last year. Perhaps surprisingly, nearly half of the 240 wallets were posted back. But there was a twist.
Richard Wiseman, a psychologist, and his team inserted one of four photographs behind a clear plastic window inside, showing either a smiling baby, a cute puppy, a happy family or a contented elderly couple. Some wallets had no image and some had charity papers inside.
When faced with the photograph of the baby people were far more likely to send the wallet back, the study found. In fact, only one in ten were hard-hearted enough not to do so. With no picture to tug at the emotions, just one in seven were sent back.
According to Dr Wiseman the result reflects a compassionate instinct towards vulnerable infants that people have evolved to ensure the survival of future generations. “The baby kicked off a caring feeling in people, which is not surprising from an evolutionary perspective,” he said. [From TimesOnline - Want to keep your wallet? Carry a baby picture.]
The results were quite startling. Fully 88% of the wallets with the baby photo were returned. The next best rate was the puppy photo, at 53%. A family photo netted a 48% return rate, while an elderly couple picture scored only 28%.
Attention nonprofit marketers: Want to keep your wallet? Carry baby pictures. Want to win hearts and minds? Apparently, the answer is the same.
Now here’s a home page for you. Be sure to click on it for the full effect.
What to say?
First off, I have to credit Webpagesthatsuck.com for tipping me off to this splash page, which won the dubious honor of one of the worst nonprofit websites of the year.
Second, I hope it made you laugh. It is the month of April Fool’s Day, after all.
Third, this is no joke. It’s a microcosm of what’s wrong in nonprofit marketing. While this tacky look-at-me website and its flaming torches takes self-adulation to an extreme, it’s an apt representation of where we go wrong in online outreach. Too many of us are too focused on trumpeting our organizations and too forgetful of everyone else - the people we help and the donors who make that help possible. They deserve center stage, not our logo.
We need to exit center stage and let the spotlight shine where it belongs: on other people.
In fundraising, we tend to focus on what we can extract from our donors. Instead, we should focus on what we can give our donors: gratitude, social impact, good feelings. The money will follow.
Think of your donors and how they feel. It is a very personal, emotional choice to give away money to something you care about. You as the organization these donors support want to handle those strong feelings of your donor with care. They have acted in a way that is deeply meaningful to them. If the only way we react to their gift is with a tax receipt, we’re not only being rude, we’re being disrespectful.
It is far easier to keep and cultivate a donor than to go find a new one and convince them to care about your cause. That’s one reason to give thanks early and often in your online outreach. Another is that your gratitude bonds the donor to your cause. And, because most nonprofits stink at online relationship-building, if you are good, you are going to stand out.
When I was in elementary school, we’d send notes to boys on behalf of our friends that had check boxes:
_I like you
_I like like you
_I don’t like you
I was reminded of this today when Facebook announced that instead of forcing people to “fan you,” people who like you but feel “fan” is too strong a word can “like” you.
This spurred an interesting discussion on the Progressive Exchange, where the consensus seems to be this is good in that it lowers the barrier for attracting friends on Facebook for your cause - but also results in a less ardent following.
So what’s a nonoprofit to do?
I got an interesting email today from Shabbir Imber Safdar and Shayna Englin, who have just published an ebook about measuring Facebook’s impact on a nonprofit. They took a year’s worth of data from US Fund for UNICEF’s Facebook fan page and website, studied it, and used statistical methods to find connections between certain activity and success in clickthroughs and donations. “We found some amazing things about how posting frequency affects their clickthru and fan size, as well as some ways to optimize their work when there’s a high profile disaster that would yield them more donations,” says Shabbir.
They make lots of good points, the first of which is: have a goal if you’re doing this. They also recommend measuring carefully against that goal. Amen to that. These two things are not done enough by nonprofits!
Nonprofits need to answer a few simple questions to justify the time and expense they’re
investing into maintaining a presence on Facebook:
1. How effective is the work I do on Facebook in producing bottom line results for the
organization?
2. What should I be doing differently on Facebook to improve my results?
3. Should I take resources away from Facebook and devote them to something else?
Unless you can answer these questions, Facebook will become yet another unproven checklist
task you must do without justification because “everybody else is there”.
Their in-depth analysis of UNICEF on Facebook is fascinating:
1. Clickthrough response spikes on Wednesdays and is most sluggish on weekends.
2. Except in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, clickthrough rate drops off when
UNICEF-USA posts to their fan page more than 3 times per day.
3. Clickthrough rates skyrocket during disasters, providing the best possible opportunity for
fundraising. Though while the earthquake in Haiti had a tremendous impact on UNICEF-USA’s
Facebook fan base, other major events (natural disasters in Indonesia and the Phillipines) did not,
suggesting that unlike clickthrough and conversion, fan growth is more organic than episodic.
Especially of interest regarding the recent news about “liking” on Facebook: “Likes” and video plays on posts don’t correlate strongly with clickthrough.
So what does this all mean to your nonprofit?
Go read the full report here. They have good suggestions for you! Read it if you’re worried those folks on Facebook don’t really like like you…
The recent economic crisis caused the nation’s more than 75,000 grantmaking foundations to cut their 2009 giving by an estimated 8.4 percent-by far the largest decline ever tracked by the Foundation Center. Grant dollars fell from $46.8 billion to $42.9 billion. Yet according to Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates (2010 Edition), released today by the Foundation Center, this cutback totaled less than half the 17 percent loss in foundation assets recorded in the prior year. Several factors helped to moderate the overall decline in 2009 foundation giving. Principal among them were the decision of a significant number of funders to reduce their operating expenses and/or draw upon their endowments to shore up their giving during the crisis; increased giving by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other grantmakers; continuing gifts and bequests from donors into new and existing foundations; and the practice of asset-averaging by some foundations, which reduces the impact on giving of year-to-year fluctuations in asset values.
Other key estimates for 2009 include:
• Independent and family foundations — which represent close to nine out of 10 foundations — reduced their giving 8.9 percent to $30.8 billion in 2009.
• Corporate foundation giving decreased 3.3 percent to $4.4 billion in 2009.
• Community foundation giving declined 9.6 percent to $4.1 billion in 2009, exceeding decreases by independent and corporate foundations.
Findings from the Foundation Center’s annual “Foundation Giving Forecast Survey” suggest that 2010 foundation giving will remain flat — a less pessimistic outlook than respondents anticipated a year ago. Should the economic rebound not derail, foundation giving may show positive, though modest, growth in 2011.
About the Foundation Giving Survey
Giving projections for 2009 through 2011 reported in Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates are based on responses to the Foundation Center’s 2010 “Foundation Giving Forecast Survey” from 1,248 large and mid-size foundations across the country, combined with year-end economic indicators. Final giving figures for 2009 will be available in early 2011. Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates also presents findings based on actual 2008 giving and assets tracked by the Foundation Center for the more than 75,000 independent, corporate, community, and grantmaking operating foundations in the United States.
A new study on mobile is out, and it shows only 10% of nonprofits are using mobile for outreach.
The study from Kaptivate sought to gauge the rate of mobile adoption among non-profits as well as to provide insight into the experience of Early Adopters. The survey findings reveal strong interest and excitement over mobile’s potential (not surprising post-Haiti) but also identifies a lack of confidence among non-profits on how to get started. Other key findings of this survey include a general call for: broader education on mobile media; more integration of mobile and social media; and more compelling technology for users and non-profits.
If you’re not mobile, you’re in good company. And that’s okay - for now, though not forever. Unless you’re working in response to a large-scale disaster or have a massive friends-to-friends fundraising campaign underway, you aren’t missing out yet. That will change soon - but that change is not quite upon us. Yet.
• 77% of respondents knew that they could donate via texting to support Haiti relief work
• 17% of Gen Y & 14% of Gen X donated to Haiti via texting
• 3% of both Boomer and Mature donated via texting
• 36% of all respondents would consider texting a donation after a crisis
• 31% would text a donation if a friend was raising money for a charity
Most of us don’t have optimized websites or email outreach. Nail the basics. Then think mobile.
UPDATE: Kaptivate has added the following in comments - well worth consideration:
Thanks for acknowledging our survey on mobile adoption. While I agree that the mobile opportunity is just getting underway for non-profits, the pace is picking up. Driving this momentum is the extraordinary penetration of the mobile medium. Today, there are over 270 million mobile phone subscribers and increasingly this mobile handset is the way your supporters access the internet and engage social media. When the mobile meant SMS text, the mobile opportunity was relegated to the millennial crowd and their fast-twitching opposable thumbs. The arrival of the web-enabled smartphone (i.e., iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android, etc.)—now used by over 70 million Americans and growing at a 4% clip per month—is transforming the opportunity. Now, this more feature rich mobile device is shifting the demographics of the user, presenting a richer user experience, and delivering the functionality and data that non-profits can used to begin engaging donors on their terms. Moreover, early adopters such as the Human Rights Campaign and the American Heart Association are beginning to demonstrate how integrating mobile into your marketing mix can have real impact on results. So, yes, we’re just getting started but the time to get smarter about mobile is now.
If readers want a quick primer on the next generation of mobile engagement and fundraising technology, they should take a quick peek here.
I had a great time at the NTC over the weekend, including time with fellow nonprofit marketing bloggers Kivi Leroux Miller and Nancy Schwartz (pictured here to my left and right). Kivi has a new book out soon - The Nonprofit Marketing Guide - check it out here! (I was honored to write the forward.)
My session Saturday with Mark Rovner and Alia McKee was on Homer Simpson for Nonprofits: The Truth about How People Really Think and What It Means to Your Cause. (It was on behavioral economics.) If you missed it, you can download our eBook on the topic here.
Posted by katya on Mon, May 10, 2010
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