You can’t fake authenticity

• Wed, July 18 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

My esteemed colleague Mark Rovner has a great blog carnival this week on authenticity. In this era of withering scepticism about all things marketing, we’re best off being honest and flawed rather than slick and slimy.

Check it out, it’s worth the read. You can discover some new blogs in the process.

I think when you’re unsure of what to do, especially when it comes to talking to your audience, authenticity can help you out of the dark.

Wondering how often you should contact your supporters and by what means? Tell them you’re unsure, and ask them what they want. They’ll love it - no one else bothers.

Concerned that your story isn’t perfect? All the better, it’s human.

Worried people aren’t opening your mail or electronic newsletters? Label the next one, “did we bore you last time?” and ask your supporters what interests them.

Candor, directness and truth cut through the clutter.

10 things to engage constituents online

• Thu, July 12 2007
• Filed under: Websites and web usability

At yesterday’s AMA Foundation Conference, I had an excellent time presenting with three very smart people on the above topic.  They were Jonathon D. Colman of The Nature Conservancy, Jacob Colie of Mercy Corps and Arlin Wasserman of America on the Move.  Here were the 10 things we said were vital:

1. Do cross channel promotion (Jacob).  In the mail, email your donors before they receive postal mail appeals.  On the phone, give your donors the option to give online.  Send email to your best offline donors.  Make the pieces work together.

2. Make marketing a conversation (Katya).  Make sure all your online outreach and presences enable two-way conversation with your supporters, fans and non-fans.

3. Be accessible, easy, encouraging and intimate (Arlin).  Check out how well America on the Move does this on their site.

4. Show accountability (Jacob).  Make it clear where they money goes!

5. Make it easy for people to find you (Jonathon).  Optimize your search engine marketing.  Start by getting as many high-quality links to your site as possible - and link out to other good sites.

6. Segment your way to success (Jonathan and Jacob).  Talk with supporters differently, depending on who they are, how they give, the ways in which they support you, etc.

7. Test, test, test (Jonathon).  Never do one version of any appeal or newsletter.  Test different versions so you can learn and improve all the time.

8. Make your supporters your messengers (Katya).  Ask your supporters to spread the word among their friends and family.

9. Offer recurring giving (Jacob).  Mercy Corps does an amazing job of “supersizing” their donors into monthly gifts.

10. Don’t only ask.  Thank and inspire too (Katya and Arlin).  Show people the difference they are making.

Thank you to all who listened to us, and thank YOU for reading this blog.

 

Our Triple Bottom Line

• Thu, July 12 2007
• Filed under: Nonprofit leadership

It’s been a busy week - on Monday, I presented at the Association of Fundraising Professionals meeting here in DC.  On Wednesday, I presented at the American Marketing Foundation Foundation annual conference, and today I hosted a free teleconference called, “Nonprofit 911” about how to fix ailing online giving programs (675 people registered, so clearly it struck a chord!).  My experiences at these events have yielded loads of material for the blog, which I’ll be sharing for the next week or two.

Today, I want to highlight some points made by my professional mentor and marketing idol, Bill Novelli, who delivered the AMA conference’s closing speech.  His theme was the nonprofit sector’s triple bottom line.  Corporations have a single bottom line - shareholder value, which is driven by profits.  As people working for the public good, we have a triple bottom line, he said.  Namely:  social change, stakeholder value and revenue generation. 

What Bill said that was most interesting was that we’ve got to stop thinking about those three line items as separate and instead think of them collectively.  Specifically, he said we have to seek the synergies between them.  (Oops, I broke my vow never to use the word “synergy” in print, but at least I’m quoting someone else.  I promise to keep my pledge with respect to “leverage.”)  You could save the whales, send out plastic wristbands to thank your members, and sell whale-embroidered neckties at the holidays as separate endeavors, and they might work in isolation.  But wouldn’t it make more sense to save the whales by making the other two endeavors reinforce your mission of saving the whales - like naming whale pods after your most generous members and reporting on how they’re doing regularly to show value, and selling whale-watching trips so that ecotourism dollars would drive more environmentally-friendly policies in areas home to whales?  This is my example - Bill showed how AARP is building social impact into products from health care plans to financial products to achieve a self-reinforcing triple bottom line. 

“Synergy is the most powerful part of your work, if you can figure it out,” he says.

I like to think we do this at Network for Good.  Our mission is to get more resources to nonprofits online.  We provide tools and training to help nonprofits get more money online (stakeholder value) and also sell special paid (but inexpensive) fundraising services to nonprofits, which reinforces our mission.  This hasn’t always been the case in my career—I remember once working with a furniture company on a co-branded campaign that sure did nothing to promote social change.  Oops.

Is your triple bottom line reinforcing your mission?

Please, make it fun

• Tue, July 10 2007
• Filed under: Fun stuff

Call me vacuous.  Call me vapid.  Call me shallow.  But I like most things to be fun.  I’m more inclined to do something that’s fun than something that’s onerous, boring, depressing or guilt-induced.  And I think I’m not the only one.  In fact, there’s sound social theory saying people tend to do things that are fun, easy and popular.  So I suppose fun is not so vacuous after all.  It’s a way to provoke action.

Please consider injecting a little fun into your messages from time to time.  Please.  My email box overfloweth with onerous, boring, depressing and guilt-laden messages.  So does my mailbox, along with a lot of bills.  I’ll pay attention to ANYTHING with a gleam of levity.  Doing good should feel good, at least some of the time.

I can hear you now—you’re saying, but there is nothing fun about my cause.  I challenge you to think differently.

Helping kids with life-threatening illness - can be fun.  I’m a huge fan of Make-a-Wish’s new donor-centric campaign, showing the joy of supporting their organization.  It’s truly inspirational.  Click below to watch it on their site.

Making a donation to your favorite charity - can be fun.  Just ask lettuce lady.  (Click below, it’s FUN.)

Joining the fight against poverty - can be fun.  Just ask anyone in the Power Circle.

Hearing an anti-drunk driving message - can be fun.

And yes, these campaigns are effective - they brought in some serious cash and most important, they contributed to vital social change.

Getting personal

• Tue, July 03 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

Four months ago, talented blogger Britt Bravo tagged me for a meme. The meme was on media consumption.  What’s a meme?  It’s a contagious idea or unit of cultural information that one person can convey to another - like a joke, proverb, fashion, etc.  In this context, as described by the Daily Meme, it’s a list of questions that you saw somewhere else and that you decided to answer yourself.  Britt had a list of questions she answered about media consumption and wanted me and other bloggers to also share personal favorites in terms of reading, music, etc., as she had on her blog.  I told Britt I’d reply, but that I wanted to post on the whole concept of memes because I didn’t think you, dear readers, were exactly dying to know what magazines I read.  In fact, to be honest, my first reaction to ‘memes’ was that they were were not that interesting.  I suspect you come to this blog to learn about marketing rather than my personal preferences about other topics.  Then I started to wonder… maybe I was wrong (and we all know THAT is such a rare occurence).

In all seriousness, I think there is a good reason memes like this thrive and spread.  Our desire to connect is profound.  Our tendency to search for common ground is strong.  The personal is fascinating - and powerful. 

That means that when we support something, including a cause, we want to know and understand the people who are part of it.  The people who work there, the people helped, the people who support it.  That’s why it’s so important to put a human face on our work.

I recently advised a few nonprofits that have amazing staff - specifically, groups of lawyers that run around protecting threatened lands - to put those people at the center of their story.  A “green swat team” is a more interesting than an “advocacy project.”  I’d like to know about that swat team, and I’d support them.

An incredibly successful recent campaign with Barack Obama that several readers wrote me about (thanks, Samantha and others) was all about the personal.  Barack is raising a lot online, and one of the more interesting appeals offered dinner with Barack to four random donors who gave any amount in a certain time period.  Good idea.

So here’s the type of meme I’d like nonprofits to consider—Who’s the most unusual staff member at your organization?  What’s the thing they’re most proud of accomplishing?  What is the most surprising story of someone you’ve helped?  Can you humanize your work and the things you make better in this way?  I think we should.  We create connections and common ground through the personal.

In that spirit, I read both the New Yorker and Us Weekly cover to cover.  I like Made to Stick and Beyond Buzz for marketing reading.  Waiting was the best fiction I’ve read lately.  Big Love is my favorite TV viewing.  And Death Cab for Cutie is recommended for your iTunes.

 

Make me believe I make a difference

• Mon, July 02 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

I want more charities to make me believe that my actions will make a difference.

I want less gloom and doom and more inspiration.

I want to hear less about need and more about impact.

Do this with stories and charts.  Or do it figuratively.

I like this way of dramatizing the power of signing a petition.

I like this way of showing small contributions can really stack up to something.

Thanks to Houtlust for these.

Show people they can be powerful.  They will want to help you.

To Increase Charitable Donations, Appeal to the Heart—Not the Head

• Fri, June 29 2007
• Filed under: Fundraising essentials

By Jono Smith

Feelings, not analytical thinking, drive donations. According to a new study (PDF link) conducted by Deborah Small, a Wharton marketing professor, and colleagues George Loewenstein & Paul Slovic, if organizations want to raise money for a charitable cause, it is far better to appeal to the heart than to the head.

From Knowledge@Wharton

One pitch for charity described the needs of Rokia, a young girl in Africa who is desperately poor and faces starvation. Another pitch talks about food shortages affecting more than three million children, many of whom are homeless. Which pitch is more effective? Not surprisingly, it’s the first, but Wharton marketing professor Deborah Small and two co-authors delve deeper into the issue of sympathy and how it relates to charitable giving. Their paper is titled, “Sympathy and Callousness: The Impact of Deliberative Thought on Donations to Identifiable and Statistical Victims.”

That people would want to give money to identifiable victims like Rokia rather than unnamed famine victims may not seem all that surprising. But Small and her colleagues, in a series of field experiments, delved deeper into the issue of sympathy and how it relates to charitable giving. The researchers found that if people are presented with a personal case of an identifiable victim along with statistical data about similar victims caught up in a larger pattern of illness, hunger or neglect, overall donations actually decline. In addition, they found that if people are told about the inconsistent levels of sympathy evoked by identifiable and statistical victims—the “identifiable victim effect,” in the words of the researchers—people reduce their giving to identifiable victims but do not increase their giving to statistical victims.

Legacy Marketing

• Thu, June 28 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

By Jono Smith

Graham Richards writes in from the UK to share a very successful legacy marketing idea he used when he was working for St. Gemma’s Hospice, the UK’s 4th largest hospice, which serves Leeds, a major city in West Yorkshire, England.

St. Gemma’s relies on gifts in Wills to bring in around 25% of their voluntary income and, as such, are very proactive in communicating the message about this form of giving.

Our ad agency, who give all their time for free, came up with a very simple idea, which any of your readers who have visited the UK might recognise. On buildings in towns and cities, you will see blue plaques, which commemorate a famous person. They tend to catch the eye of the passers by, as you don’t see that many around.

Our agency designed a fake blue plaque, just like the real ones, but with the message: “It isn’t just remarkable people who can leave a legacy”, “Help St. Gemma’s Hospice with a gift in your Will”.

We started off using A4 size posters, then we made some life-size laminated plaques, which were hung in the windows of our 15 charity shops. However, the most effective use of them was when we had two cast aluminium plaques made, which I then got permission to mount on buildings in the city centre (photo below).

This was 2 years ago and last year saw our biggest legacy income to date at around £1.8million (approx $3.5 million), which is pretty good for a local charity in a provincial city. I’ve recently moved on to a new charity, the Ear Trust, who support cochlear implants in deaf adults and kids, but will be starting my legacy messages to a whole new audience!

Thanks, Graham!

Get $35,000 for your good idea

• Tue, June 26 2007
• Filed under: Fundraising essentials

Smart organizations don’t only have conversations with their audiences—they also act on what their audiences say.  American Express is doing it. So is Hillary Clinton.  Are you?

Our colleagues at the Case Foundation did it today.  They have launched a grant program that lets the public decide who should receive their funds.  The New York Times covered this unusually open approach today.  If you’ve got a good idea, please consider applying.  And think about how you can involve your audiences in your work.  If you’re not sure they should set your direction, at least let them help you make your marketing choices. 

The moral of the story: if you are still talking at your supporters, you’re going to lose them.  Kind of like this:

Three ideas to recharge your marketing

• Mon, June 25 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

I’m back from lying on a beach for a week, and I want to thank my colleagues Jono and Stacie for writing such wonderful posts in my absence.  You’ll be hearing more from both of them soon.  (No good deed goes unpunished.)

Since I’m feeling recharged, I thought I’d share some of the energy.  Here are three things you can do to recharge your marketing approach.

1.) Are you stuck in a storytelling rut?  Try telling your story with three photos with interesting questions next to each.  My friend Mark sent me the link to this great site, which tells this company’s story with intriguing photos and captions, which lead you through the site.  I love it.

2.) Second guessing your marketing materials?  Invite ten supporters to react to them on the call or through a quick survey, with a nice reward for their time and opinion like tickets to your next event, a picture drawn by a child your charity helped, etc.  Nothing like a little research and relationship building rolled into one.

3.) Want your donors to be inspired?  Give them a regular dose of it.  Instead of an “newsletter sign-up,” ask your supporters to opt in for a “thank you of the week” email, written in the voice of people (or animals, or trees) they’ve helped.  Just a short, personal note for their inbox.  It’s far more interesting and compelling, and it builds loyalty and trust in your organization.

Made to Stick

• Fri, June 22 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

By Jono Smith

A few weeks ago, Katya hosted "Sticky Week" in honor of the book Made to Stick.  I thought I would end my week of guest-blogging by interviewing someone who has spent much of his career helping nonprofits make and tell stories that stick.  Kile Ozier has created communications & development campaigns for a litany of nonprofits across the globe, having worked on everything from the 1992 Candle Light Vigil for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt in DC to landmark fundraising campaigns for Stanford University.

Four Questions for Kile Ozier

1. What are the most rewarding aspects of your job?

Frankly, it is the absorbing of the culture of the agency or institution with successive projects; learning and discerning what sets each apart.  Colleges and universities, for instance, are surely one of the three most pivotal moments in the lives of probably 95% of those who attend…but, each institution does this in a different way, with a unique ethos and culture that is reflected in the student bodies and the experience of that institution.  Immersing myself in the culture, learning it and perceiving ways to articulate that to an audience in such a way as to re-ignite the energy of First Experience and avoid the “running of old tapes” is the challenge and the reward.

2. What are the most challenging aspects of your job?

Helping non-profits through transition from grassroots to mainstream.  It is almost inevitable that the Original Visionaries become Obstructive Dinosaurs, as an agency grows.  The opportunity is to help these individuals see the value and to be come Resource rather than Management; and to open the door/pave the way for those who are adept at management of what the Visionaries have built to step in and do that very thing.  

Visionary Leadership is very different from Managing or Directing Leadership.  Both are critical at different junctures; rarely at the same time.

That, and getting agencies or institutions to make the appropriate investment in articulating the message so that the message can be effective.  The ability to “do things on a nickel” is a greatly overrated “skill.”  What usually results is an experience, a piece of video, a marketing or mission document that delivers less than it could.  No one likes to spend money; but what I hate is to spend less to less effect.  I don’t support extravagant budgets (and I never get them, either!), I do find myself spending a lot of time, enlightening clients to what things actually cost; and if one wants a message communicated compellingly, it’s going to take time, and cost something.

Lastly, time.  All too often, agencies wait far too long to initiate the research and creative process as these projects encroach.  Eighteen months prior to launch is a reasonable time to begin exploring possibility.  That offers time to discover if a certain approach is valid, or is even the best approach to deliver a given message.  Often, I enter a project with a client thinking they want an “event,” and what we ultimately deliver is something quite different, but that reflects the persona of the institution and delivers the message better; a dvd, a performance, a print piece…

3. What are the most common marketing and communication mistakes you see nonprofits make?

In creating the experience that is going to communicate the agency to the audience, it is the assuming of a level of connection that is truly no longer there.  Any emotional connection, I believe, becomes intellectualized, over time.  The quality of the original experience is remembered, rather than re-experienced.  Thus, I further believe it is our job to circumvent preconception and “surprise” the audience (whether live, through media or in print) with the visceral thrill of reconnection…of actually re-experiencing what was experienced at first exposure.  

This re-enlivening of the original experience – or, in the case of cause-related non-profits, the connection of that agency’s mission to a personal experience of each individual being exposed to this message – is what makes the difference between giving out of perceived duty versus giving MORE out of being moved to deepen one’s commitment to institution or cause.

This also works in marketing; but that’s for another conversation…

Another key error I see agencies and institutions making in crafting their messages is the omission of what I call the “shepherds of the mission” from the mix when canvassing, interviewing, and pulling together data and background in the process.  I always include the secretaries, custodians, clerks…the myriad, disparate personnel of the infrastructure, many of whom have been in place far longer than any of the principals of an organization, are often the most articulate when it comes to divining what keeps people in their jobs, doing what they do for the little they are usually paid.  It is a great method for discovering new ways to articulate a message that has been previously communicated…thus resonating more compellingly.

4. What big problem in the nonprofit community would you most like to see fixed in the next 5 years?

Assumption and Acceptance.  The level of assumption of effectiveness of the status quo is, across the board, far higher than most seem to think.  I believe that all of us in the community can be served with regular “objectivity sessions,” in-house or at conferences.  Truly stepping back and examining what might be being assumed in organization, messaging, appeals, communications will undoubtedly serve to surprise and enlighten even the most accomplished and successful of individuals and agencies.  It will keep our messaging fresh and the connection with our audiences evolving.

Transparency.  As technology supports greater access to information, the institutions and agencies that step up to that and keep their integrity unimpeded will be the most successful.  I would like to see ambiguous terms like “proceeds” and “net proceeds” be banned from the lexicon.  What IS a “proceed,” anyway?  Is it profit?  Is it a portion of the profit?  What is “a portion of the proceeds”?  This sort of ambiguity will, ultimately, serve only to lower the trust of a sophisticated audience in a given institution, agency, event or producer.

>> Thanks, Kile!

Greatest Hits

• Fri, June 22 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

By Jono Smith

With Katya on vacation, I thought it would be a good opportunity to go back into the archives and link to some of her bloggings from the early days of the Nonprofit Marketing Blog:

Is marketing slimy?
http://www.nonprofitmarketingblog.com/comments/is_marketing_slimy/

Help!  I have no marketing budget!
http://www.nonprofitmarketingblog.com/comments/help_i_have_no_marketing_budget/

Help!  My boss hates marketing!
http://www.nonprofitmarketingblog.com/comments/help_my_boss_hates_marketing/

Enjoy!

E-Mail is Core to the Nonprofit Marketing Mix

• Fri, June 22 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

By Jono Smith

Like many people, following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, I went online to make a donation. I knew I wanted to contribute to a secular, non-governmental, humanitarian aid organization, so I did a search through Network for Good, found a great match, and made an online contribution.  I’m reminded of this because I got an email appeal from this same group yesterday.  What’s amazing is that it’s the first time this charity has contacted me by e-mail since 2004.  I’ve gotten several direct mail appeals from them through the U.S. mail over the years, but never an email.

So what’s the big deal? This is a great example of the importance of knowing your audience, and providing information to your audience in the format they prefer.  By making an online donation to this charity, I expressed an implicit preference that I prefer to use the Internet for charitable giving.  And yet the more I ignored their direct mail, the more this charity spent their hard earned marketing dollars trying to cultivate me through regular mail—for 3 years.  Of the ten or so appeals I’ve received from them in the mail, I can’t remembering opening or reading a single one.  But I read their e-mail yesterday word-for-word because it was relevant, personalized, and delivered in the format I prefer (email).

Despite concern over spam and email fraud, email marketing remains an important and relatively inexpensive way to cultivate relationships with donors, and solicit contributions.  But building an email relationship takes time and attention to detail. Here are three ways to use email to drive donor response:

• Timing: Deliver your emails when the donor is most likely to make a donation.
• Relevance: Are you sending broadcast, mass emails or personalized email campaigns? Make sure your messaging reflects your donor’s unique values. Engaging your audience in more relevant communications will increase your fundraising results more than broadcast mailings.
• Personalization: Make sure your email is tailored—either aesthetically, contextually or conceptually—for the recipient. Research shows that personalized emails have lower opt-out rates and higher response rates than broadcast emails.

 

Are you finding your donors or are they finding you?

• Thu, June 21 2007
• Filed under: Fundraising essentials

By Jono Smith

When it comes to raising money, many nonprofits instinctively pick up their ‘mission megaphone’  and blast our their appeal, hoping someone is listening.  But when it comes to finding new donors and differentiating your organization from similar causes, this strategy isn’t very effective.  Nonprofit marketers need to adjust their marketing strategies to include a mix of tactics that both target potential donors, and make it easier for potential donors to find you. Consistent with our theme of borrowing corporate marketing savvy to help promote just causes, MarketingSherpa suggests some tactics for making it easier for donors to find you:

• Search engine optimization and pay per click management so prospects find you when they search
• A focus on donor satisfaction to encourage referrals and word of mouth advertising
• Public relations (including speeches, blogs, award, articles, etc.) so your brand appears wherever prospective donors are looking and reading
• Consistent advertising so donors are aware of you when they are ready to give

Here are 2 more tactics to add to the list:

• Make sure your Donate Now button is visible on your home page and throughout your website
• Carve out space above-the-fold on your home page to capture email addresses with a compelling call-to-action (i.e. sign a petition, subscribe to the newsletter, etc.)

While most people probably won’t make a donation on their first visit to your site, if you get their email addresses, you can start building a relationship and invite them back.

Transparency as a Fundraising Tool

• Wed, June 20 2007
• Filed under: Fundraising essentials

By Jono Smith

Hi everyone; I am the other guest-blogger who will be keeping the lights on while Katya is on vacation this week.

Every day here at Network for Good we see many great examples of nonprofits building trust with their audience through transparency. This example comes from across the pond from Save the Children UK.  Save the Children UK does a fantastic job of building trust with prospective donors right on their fundraising page by being crystal clear about exactly where donations go, and how they impact the beneficiaries on an individual level.

While Save the Children UK’s mission may be to find “lifelong answers to the problems children face,” donors are more likely to give when they know £3 will buy a didactic game used by disabled Bulgarian children for sensory and intellectual stimulation, and £50 buys 2 boxes of therapeutic feeding milk that contains all nutrients necessary in the treatment of severe malnutrition in an emergency situation such as Niger.