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.
Send me your fun graphs!
Posted by katya on Thu, October 09, 2008
If you haven’t noticed here on the blog, I’ve been posting some visuals lately. The reason? One, it’s something different, which is usually a good thing. Two, I’m hosting the next Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants here at Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog next week, and the theme is: Chart Fun.
Send me your insightful, funny, creative graphs. You may just get highlighted on October 15! That’s when I’ll post the best of the best. But even if yours isn’t in the top seven, I’ll be sharing the best of the rest in the days following.
HOW TO ENTER: Use the form here (be sure you are submitting the the carnival of nonprofit consultants on the dropdown) OR link to your graph in the comments of this post.
Seeking inspiration? Check out GraphJam. It’s fab.
How to Raise Tons of Money
Posted by katya on Wed, October 08, 2008
How not to have a retreat
Posted by katya on Tue, October 07, 2008
How to fundraise when the economy is tanking
Posted by katya on Sat, October 04, 2008
Jeff Brooks has a great roundup. The Agitator and Fundraising Success provided the tips. It’s a must-read.
5 Steps to Prettier Emails
Posted by katya on Sat, October 04, 2008
Here are more great email tips - these from our partner Emma, which powers Network for Good’s EmailNow. Thanks Emma for sharing your wisdom!
Choose a font style and stick with it.
An attractive campaign is one that’s easy on the eyes. After all, if the eyes are comfortable and enjoying themselves, they’re more likely to hang out and keep reading. Remember that too many fonts and colors, or too many 18-point over-the-top exclamations, can overwhelm those poor eyes and send them running for the hills. Start by choosing your font style. Are you a smooth Verdana person, or a straight-laced Arial type? Perhaps you’re more of an old-school Times traditionalist, or maybe your sophisticated palate lends itself more to Trebuchet. Whatever your font, using it consistently - and choosing your bolds and colors wisely - will make eyeballs everywhere happy.
Use images to enhance your content.
A recent study by MarketingSherpa found that recipients read more of an email’s text if it contains graphics near the top. (Incidentally, if you don’t know the ‘Sherpa, it’s a fabulous resource, and we highly recommend subscribing to the EmailSherpa newsletter.) If you’re using custom brand stationery and a stylish brand masthead in EmailNow, you’ve already got a leg up in this category. When adding other graphics, remember that bigger isn’t always better. Instead, use images that work proportionally with your overall layout and enhance your content instead of creating visual clutter.
Use simple, bold headlines to make your point.
An appealing campaign also makes its appeal to readers early. Too many otherwise nice-looking campaigns bury the lead, to borrow a bit of newspaper terminology. Stylish, bold headlines can grab your readers’ attention, help make your point, and add separation and structure to text-heavy campaigns like, er, this one. What can we say, dear people - we love words like we love a good bread pudding or red velvet cake.
Keep your content from being a chore.
How much content you include in a campaign depends in large part on what you have to say and how much your audience needs to see. But in general, remember that you have just a few seconds to convince a reader to, well, read. By presenting them with a newsletter that goes on for days, you’re risking coming out on the wrong side of readers’ mental math when they calculate how long it will take to get through it. Rather than getting them now, you may be relegated to the dreaded “Library” or “Read Later” folders.
Make sure your subject line is beautiful, too.
Don’t forget that the most important part of your email may just be the five to ten words that introduce it. After all, the relative appeal of your subject line can mean the difference between someone moving on or stopping to look, read, and respond. Experiment with different phrasing to see what works best for your audience.
Trying to figure out online video?
Posted by katya on Fri, October 03, 2008
Here is a great guide from See3. Free and helpful!
9 Ways to Fix Bad Email
Posted by katya on Fri, October 03, 2008
I’m very excited that my organization, Network for Good, has partnered with Emma to offer a new Email campaign tool. I won’t use this space to extoll its virtues (though as a marketing person, I have to say there are many), but I did want to celebrate the fact this week with a couple of email posts.
Here are 9 ways to create vastly better emails:
1. Define Your Audience. You could buy an enormous list of cold prospects (WARNING: bad idea!) or focus on a carefully built list of people who care. You’ll do much better with the latter group who has given you permission to communicate with them. No one likes spam. (Some people enjoy SPAM®, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of meat.)
2. Define Your Message. Do you have the right message and right time for that message? Focus your message on your audience’s interests, aspirations and desires rather than your own need for money. It’s all about “you marketing” versus “me marketing.”
3. Get to the point in spectacular fashion, in the first few words. The subject line of your email needs to seize the audience’s attention. Don’t ever bury the lead. (A good trick that usually works - throw out your first paragraph.)
4. Offer something of value to the reader-helpful tips, for example. Those are likely to be saved, not trashed. People will think of you in a favorable way.
5. Segment and personalize. The more the missive speaks to the receiver as an individual, the more likely they will perceive it as something other than spammy slop.
6. Be different. People are drowning in email. Whether it’s the tone of your message or the startling honesty of your subject line, a standout element is required.
7. Make the call to action so incredibly easy to do, people just can’t say no. Strive for a one-click or one-second level of ease.
8. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe or get off your mailing list. Include an unsubscribe button and an easy way for people to contact you to update their information. It’s convenient, transparent for you and keeps you in line with CAN-SPAM rules.
9. Don’t email donors, subscribers, etc. via Outlook. Ever. It will get you into trouble. You need a professional email outreach tool.
Do you have 5 year old or 9 year old marketing?
Posted by katya on Wed, September 24, 2008
My daughters will illustrate.
I asked them both how they would get someone to buy a toy.
This is what the five year old said:
Mommy can you please buy it?
I said that might not work. So what would be another option?
She said:
Mommy can you please, please buy it?
The nine year old said this:
First you have to make a good toy. Because it’s cheap, people will get mad and sue you.
Then you have to tell them all the great things about it and why it’s wonderful. Don’t make it too expensive.
Then you have to get them really excited by telling them the cool things it does for them.
Make the commercial colorful, interesting and realistic.
So which kind of marketing do you have?
Please, please, please give me money. Pretty please. (Repeat often.)
Or: We have really amazing programs, here is why they are interesting and here’s why you should care.
Model website… from the government no less
Posted by katya on Mon, September 22, 2008
I get a lot of inquiries during speeches and here on the blog about good websites. Which websites do I think are effective? Who has the right stuff?
These are hard questions to answer, because most nonprofit websites fall prey to “all about us disease.” They fail to be laser-focused on the audience. They forget to answer the question “how we can help you?”
Today, I was alerted to a website that does all these things right - and it’s from the government, no less. Bravo.
The newly launched healthfinder.gov has all the things a home page should:
-A big engaging visual focal point
-Clear calls to action (in this case, ways to get fit that are easy, clear and rewarding)
-A clear set of benefits for taking action
-Tools that help me
-Clever information-gathering mechanisms for the site owner - they are going to get great audience data from the quizzes on here
The only thing that’s missing is a way to take these cool tools and share them or post them on my blog or Facebook page. But I’m told they are planning widgets soon.
This is great stuff. Unlike the dreadful redesigned food pyramid, which I panned in my book, this is health advice I understand and want to use.
Follow this model. It’s going in my next speech.
Hat Tip to Dan Jeffers for the site information.
GREAT branding: Bald Girls Do Lunch
Posted by katya on Fri, September 19, 2008
Suppose you’re creating an organization for women with alopecia areata — the autoimmune skin disease which stops the normal growth of hair on the scalp, brows, lashes and body. You want to convey that you are about community, support and fun. You want to make women with this condition feel empowered. And you want them to be absolutely COMPELLED to join you.
Typical nonprofit approach?
Call it the Alopecia Areata Association.
A brilliant approach?
Call it Bald Girls Do Lunch.
Congratulations Bald Girls Do Lunch on amazing marketing.
PS Full disclosure: I learned about this group when they signed up for Network for Good fundraising services. I work at Network for Good. When I saw their name, I just had to know who they are. But this post isn’t about business, in fact they don’t know I blogged this:) Yet.
Wall Street is tanking, but your ROI is gold.
Posted by katya on Thu, September 18, 2008
It’s easy to worry the financial crises rocking our markets are going to kill fundraising this year.
Just remember, in an era when Lehman is nearly worthless and so many investments look like they’re offering low returns, you are priceless.
Remind your donors of their amazing ROI with you.
For a few dollars, they get a helper’s high. They feel good because they did good. It’s cheaper than therapy.
Their investment in your organization doesn’t yield paper profits. It changes lives. Always.
Be passionate and persuasive about your emotional ROI - and your human ROI.
Those who can afford it will get it and give.
Good thoughts from Seth Godin
Posted by katya on Wed, September 17, 2008
Seth Godin kindly donated his time to Network for Good yesterday, presenting our most popular Nonprofit 911 call ever. Over two thousand people registered for it! You can listen here, but here’s my most favorite thing he said (and I paraphrase slightly): we have to stop spamming people for support. Stop trying to interrupt them and get them to pay attention. There are too many people doing it.
As Seth said, this not working as well as it used to. The number of people who are trying to interrupt audiences has gone way up. The noise has increased dramatically, so a lot of nonprofits are struggling.
If you take this approach, you have to talk to 100 people to get one donor or 1,000 people to get one trustee.
Instead, you should get your biggest supporters talking for you.
That changes the equation fundamentally.
So what do you do? The opportunity is to not to interrupt people. What you do is empower people who already believe in you to speak up on your behalf. Create ideas worth spreading.
People don’t talk about our causes for many reasons, from discomfort to laziness, so we have to change that by organizing our work to be worth talking about.
You can read Seth’s free publication on this - called Flipping the Funnel here.
Thank you Seth for your ideas and inspiration!
Why and how to listen
Posted by katya on Sun, September 14, 2008
My father does a funny thing with chairs. If he hasn’t seen you for a long time, he’ll rearrange the furniture so he can sit directly across from you and fully absorb every word you utter. At my house, he once moved an immense armchair and ottoman clear across the living room to better hear an old friend sitting on my sofa.
It was startling gesture for the friend. It was something I’m used to. My father always removes any obstacle that gets in the way of listening to friends or family or patients in his work as a psychiatrist. My whole life, he has started most conversations with the words, “Tell me everything.” Now he says it to my own children.
This is very, very rare.
We don’t face each other very much any more, and we rarely listen. We are stunned when someone devotes their full attention to us. Imagine if you did that for the people you want to reach. Imagine what might change.
Bad things happen when we stop paying attention to the people around us. We lose them. Our relationships suffer. Social injustices occur – just ask a homeless person how invisible she feels. Our supporters abandon us. Our customers hate us. (Our customers really hate us – look no further than untied.com, a website devoted to people frustrated their complaints are not heard by United Airlines.)
My frolleague Mark Rovner and I believe that extraordinary things happen when we recognize people – when we truly hear, see and acknowledge them. Making people FEEL HEARD creates great relationships, strong societies, powerful organizations and profitable, popular businesses.
That’s different from listening to everything people say and acting upon what they say. Seth Godin has helped me see that distinction. They key thing is to make people feel heard - and then as a leader of a customer service department or philanthropic organization, figuring out what patterns in the comments and subtext beneath the comments signal something you should address.
Make sure, as Seth says, you have a way for them to speak. That gives you a way to make them feel heard.
More on that this week.
Becoming a Purple Nonprofit
Posted by katya on Thu, September 11, 2008
Author, blogger and marketing guru Seth Godin has spent his career helping nonprofits find a way to stand out. Next week, Seth will be offering his advice directly to nonprofits during Network for Good’s Nonprofit 911 teleconference series. As with all of the trainings, this call is free and we’re excited for Seth to share his words of marketing wisdom to teach nonprofits to become “purple,” as well as give an introduction to Squidoo. Registration’s open now for anyone interested in calling in.
Last week, Seth also stepped in as our guest author for the Online Fundraising and Nonprofit Marketing Tips e-newsletter. You can read it here. If you would like to be in the loop about future trainings and events, you can subscribe to Tips, too.
4 ways to turn one-time givers into monthly donors
Posted by katya on Fri, September 05, 2008
At one of Network for Good’s recent Nonprofit 911 calls, Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies and I were asked, how do you convert one-time donors to habitual givers. Thanks Alia for helping me answer this one!
Here’s what we said:
•Make sure your donation form asks what type of gift the donor wants to make ("Do you want to give us a monthly gift?"). Whenever you’re asking for money, ask for the monthly pledge, not just a one-time gift.
•Revisit the language you’re using in your appeals. Frame your ask in such a way that it’s a win-win situation—monthly donations for you, convenience and budgeting for your donors.
•Package the appeal in an exciting way. For example, some organizations have an ambassador program or a sponsor-a-child every month program. Put a face on that sustainable gift. This way you’re creating some tangible tie to the idea of giving every month.
•Don’t be afraid to ask for a monthly gift of support after someone completes a one-time transaction. It can be ingrained as a nice thank-you message: “Thank you so much for making a one-time gift. This is how you can put your support to work for us each and every month. Would you consider becoming a monthly supporter?” We’ve seen great success in converting first-time online donors into monthly donors by doing that within the first three days of them making their first online gift.
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