2011 is history.  (image from Jalopnik)

Okay, so the holidays are over.  Officially.  You probably won’t be seeing the type of donation volume you had over November and December again until next year’s holiday, but that doesn’t mean you can’t turn your organization’s website into a lean, mean fundraising machine.  Give your organization a fresh start for 2012 with these simple tips for increasing your fundraising power in the new year:

1.) Mind Your Manners.

By this I mean, be sure you send a Thank You to everyone who donated this year.  I’ve discussed how best to do this at length in previous posts here, but it’s different for every organization.  Be sure you send out an acknowledgement to everyone who supported your organization this season (yes, it’s different than a donation receipt!); it’s just about the best and easiest way you can motivate your donors to contribute year round.

2.) And Your Metrics.

Hopefully, you’ll have lots of data from the holiday season this year, so you can see what worked and what didn’t.  Doing some social networking campaigns that didn’t pan out as lucratively as you’d planned?  Pull ‘em.  Donors getting hung up on one of the steps on your donation form?  Change it up.  Do a review to begin 2012 strong and start making changes to your donation page, your site’s funnel, and anything else that’s seems to be in any way impeding the online donation process.  If you haven’t been tracking your donors behavior on your website this year, put some energy into getting it set up immediately.  The results will be enlightening and provide invaluable information how to further optimize your site’s fundraising functionality.  Our service can easily integrate with your analytics program, so if you haven’t yet taken steps to collect measurable data (outside of dollars raised) about your donation page as it functions in concert with your site, do it now!

3.) Incentivize.

So, the idea is that your organization has been building, through a series of interactions (online and otherwise), a relationship with a donor base that believes in your organizational mission enough to put their donation dollars behind you.  But even your wonderful, generous, saintlike donors like free stuff (everyone does).  Figure out something awesome (and cost effective) to give away to your donors in a planned fundraising drive- if you’re a water-conservation group, give away eco-friendly water bottles in your summer fundraising push; it doesn’t need to be something big or valuable and ideally it will also act as a guerilla marketing tool for your organization.  Bumper stickers, mugs, bandanas, those crazy LiveStrong-style plastic bracelets, packets of flower seeds with your organization’s logo (I think these are an awesome giveaway item for environmentally-oriented organzations). . . all these options can be made fairly inexpensively and are a little added perk for donors, especially at non-peak times of year.

4.) Get Some Fresh Perspective

Have a meeting early in 2012 and put your head’s together- get everyone on board with the fundraising plan for the year.  You might find that folks from different departments can shed some light or bring new ideas to the table and even if not, this meeting is a good time to reiterate to everyone (yourself, too!) that online fundraising is an organizational priority.  Online fundraising doesn’t just take a good donation page and good marketing, it takes a dedicated, organized team that manages and enhances donor relationships and has a collective sense of excitement and dedication.  Have a post-holiday re-group session to increase your chances for year-round fundraising success.

5.) Think About Your Ideal Donor.

To borrow a concept from Maureen Carruthers (whose work I love!), you ‘perfect supporter’ is that ideal donor you’re writing and appealing to.  Figure out who he or she is- Maureen offers a fabulous worksheet on the topic and while this exercise may seem simplistic, it’s a perfect tool to help guide your marketing and fundraising asks, as well as a way to shift your perceptions of your donor base.

6.) Best Laid Plans. 

image from Design*Sponge

A lot of your fundraising success this year will come from careful planning and forethought; no getting around or out of it.  The beginning of the year is a crazy time for everyone (we’ve barely taken a breath here at DonationPay since, like, September!), but to get your head wrapped around your fundraising goals for the year, you’ll probably need to set aside some fairly substantial time to plan out your online fundraising appeals and programs and how they fit into the landscape of your year.  Know the exact days in your email calendar when your asks will go out, when your online presence should support specific fundraising events, when you’ll be doing ‘maintenance asks’ (a soft ask reminding your donors that your mission is ongoing), and most of all, who and how this will be executed.  It’s helpful to have an overall picture of your year’s fundraising arc and to consider the how your fundraising methodology will be perceived and received by your donor base, as a whole, not as individual asks.

Knowing how everything will go, to the last detail, is of course not going to be totally possible and much of the reason that everyone involved with the non-profit sector (yours truly included) are closet adrenaline junkies, is that the wild deviations and pivots and improvisations necessary to stay current, are actually kind of fun or at least invigorating.  So, even knowing that much of it may fly out the window at a moments notice, do yourself and your organization a favor and set up a comprehensive online fundraising workplan.  Even if it only ends up acting as the vaguest blueprint for how you’d like things to go, it will help, I promise.

6.) Get Help. Online.

I’ve been browsing the internet quite a bit these days, and lest you think I’m shirking my work duties to do some Ebay shopping, let me clarify: I’ve been surfing the web with purpose.  I’ve been impressed with the Biz Ladies posts at Design*Sponge lately (brief aside: I’ve been obsessed with D*S forever and most recently made an awesome version of this amazing herringbone-painted dresser for my house and I love it!)- they provide a lot of advice that’s not too lecture-y about planning, stress-management and how to integrate your creative life and goals into your day-to-day.  I’m trying to be better organized, better tempered and more connected to the community here in the Bay Area in 2012 and I’m reading everything I can about how other people go about doing what I want to do.  For fundraising advice, do the same: check out the blogs of organization’s you support or are impressed with, read all the expert advice you can find, and think of the web as a gigantic support group for your fundraising efforts.  Because, if you look in the right places, it kinda is.  Obviously, our readers are already on top of this (pat yourselves on the back, y’all), but try to freshen up your online reading list by seeking out some specific information about particular fundraising or organizational goals for the coming year.  My favorite news aggregators for non-profit info are AllTop and Mashable, and there are so many good blogs out there, so many good books. . . find time to do some productive web research about how to freshen up your fundraising approach in 2012 and it will pay off!

Got some good ideas to share?  How is your organization going to effectively fundraise in 2012?

-AJ

-Keep available navigation minimal. Make sure that your users don’t get distracted by other navigation on your donation page. It’s a great idea to have links/navigation on the Thank You page (the page that your contributors will see after they’ve made a successful donation) but don’t distract potential contributors with bells and whistles.  If your organization runs lots of events or has a particularly content-rich website, be very sure that you don’t include full navigation on the donation page- it will likely be a distraction for your donors and will tacitly encourage them to explore other areas of your site instead of contributing.  Let them accomplish their business (by business, I mean financially supporting your organization), then direct them back to a full-nav page of your site to maintain engagement with your organization.

-Keep It Donor Friendly.  Simple, clean and usable: make sure every graphic and word of text on your donation page packs a big punch.  Your donation page is not the time to give a lengthy description of your mission statement- if they’re ready to contribute, they already know what you do.  Keep information about your organization’s mission brief and instead use your text to illustrate where your donors dollars will go, specifically, and, of course, to profusely thank them for their support.

-Make Your Suggested Amounts Count.  Many organizations include suggested amounts on their donation forms and it’s something we highly recommend.  It’s different for every organization and fundraising campaign, but using a very small amount as the example donation (i.e. just $5 will do x at our organization) is a great way to shoot yourself in the foot.  Unless it’s specifically necessary to your fundraising plan, start your suggested amount buttons at between 20 and 25 dollars.  Asking for 5 bucks here and there may work for Ira Glass, but it’s probably not going to yield a substantial enough result for organization that don’t have massive donor bases.

-Your Donate Button Is Not Your Fundraising Campaign.  Putting a ‘Donate Now!’ front and center on every page of your website is a given, but easy donation buttons do not a fundraising campaign make.  Track your Analytics (and if you don’t have Google Analytics or another program already installed, for the love of God, install it now!) numbers and figure out which page of your website is most effectively funneling donors to your donation page.  Know your potential donors likely pathways through your site to conversion (donation) like the back of your hand and make sure it’s a simple leap from every page of your site.  For organizations relying largely on individual donations, it’s extremely important to clarify to donors how and why they should donate.  Don’t just slap a button on there; make sure your donation links are well and prominently placed and provide a logical through-line for a donors visit to your site.  Be sure your website sets up a narrative-style process your donor can follow from start to finish; Home page to About Us page to Blog to Donation, know what I mean?

More fundraising season prep posts coming soon!  Happy Fundraising!

-AJ

Designing Websites for Non-Profit’s

As a web designer/developer working with non-profits and grassroots organizations, I have probably learned more from the groups I work with than they have learned from me. Groups working for social change have specific needs that differ from those of other organizations and individuals.

Step Back, Listen

This is the hardest part – especially for techies who tend to think that we already know everything. But the fact is that before starting the design process, and before implementing the technical solutions, you need to have a very clear idea of three things:

- What is the goal of the organization?
- What do they want a website for?
- Who is the intended audience of the website?

The more specifically those questions can be answered, the more closely integrated will the website be with the actual work of the organization, and the more relevant and useful it will become.

Reflect the Work of the Organization

A website isn’t just a collection of cool widgets – it’s a communication’s tool that is supposed to support the work of the organization.

Within 10 seconds of looking at the front page of a (good) website, you should already have a pretty good idea about what the organization does, what their current projects are, how to get involved in the work, and last but definitely not least – how to contribute financially to the organization.

Designing Technical Solutions Based on Needs

The expertise of the web designer really comes into play once the initial research has been done. Every design decision that is made hereafter, whether technical, graphical, or relating to content, should convey the essence of the organization to the intended audience.

This goes for the design of the logotype, the choice of font and colors for the site, but also more general attributes such as how “busy” you want the website to be.  A bustling, overflowing website conveys a wide array of activity and action, and a simple, clean and less cluttery website allows for a stronger focus on a certain goal or project. One is not better than the other, rather, they serve different purposes.

Integrate With the Cloud

Creating content is a time-consuming and costly process for the staff and volunteers of any organization. Because of that, it is important to make the most out of every piece of content that is created.

So, when the non-profit project manager hits “Save Post”, without having to do anything else, we want that information to pop up on the front page, we want it to be tweeted, we want it to be sent out to the mailing list, appear on Facebook, and so on.

The internet today is not so much defined by a collection of individual websites, but rather by the communications between them — the apps and social media that exists in “the cloud”. I’ve yet to come across a non-profit that doesn’t use Facebook, Twitter, and other networks in their outreach. And the web designer needs to look at what the organization wants to accomplish, and design a strategy for how to make that happen in the cloud.

Website Launched, Project Finished! Or…?

The launch of the website may be the end of the project for the web designer, but it is most likely the beginning of a project for the organization.

Thus, the web designer needs to be upfront about the time and cost involved in maintaining the new website once it’s launched. The hosting account needs to be renewed, the CMS system needs to be upgraded at regular intervals, the database needs to be backed up. Who is going to oversee these processes?

It’s a big mistake to leave these things unsaid. Staff will rightfully get annoyed because their work gets distracted by work they haven’t accounted for in advance. And a web designer needs to be aware that not all people in the world knows what a database is, or that it has to backed up. So it’s important to be really attentive when communicating these things, and make sure that everyone involved understands what is being said.

Avoiding these bits will cause grievances for the organization that was to benefit from the new website. It will also most likely mean that they will never hire the web designer again – and who could blame them?

Easy to Update

Back in the days of static html websites, updating content on websites used to be a time consuming and technical process. Now, with user friendly CMS’s in abundance, we’ve moved forward, right? Well, not always.

It should be a priority of the web designer to make the website as easy as possible to maintain. Is the organization going to add a newsflash? Well, then there should be a button in the admin panel that says “Add Newsflash”. End of discussion. These days, with tools such as WordPress available, if the website is configured correctly, there is really no justification for asking non-profit staff to add html tags to their text – they have more important things to do.

Tight Budgets and Fundraising

There is one characteristic that seems to be present in every single non-profit organization: a tight budget. For one, that means that we have to work hard to find simple, yet powerful solutions to the needs of the organizations. Few organizations have the money to pay a web developer to work for hours and hours.

And because of the tight budgets, most organizations spends a lot of time fundraising.  A website can — should — play an important role in a fundraising strategy, and it’s up to the web designer to propose how that is going to look. And in order to create effective fundraising solutions, the web designer needs to understand the process of fundraising. What does it mean to “cultivate a donor”? Is that some sort of organic farming?

Which conveniently brings me back to the original point: to create effective websites for non-profits, the web designer needs to understand what non-profits are, and what their needs and goals are. That’s first, middle, and last.

Get to work!

Johan Genberg is a lead developer at DonationPay and a Web Designer/Developer with TrickleUp Web Design, where he works with non-profits and grassroots organizations working for social change.  Check out his webpage at www.trickleupweb.com or get in touch: johan(at)donationpay.org.

The Pre-Holiday Donation Page Workout

Warm Up Your Index Page: Start on your website’s index/main page.  How easy is it to get to your donation form?  Can you immediately see the button that will take you to the page?  Are your Donate links and buttons prominently displayed?  If you have various fundraising campaigns running, are there links, front and center, that will take the user (who right now is you) directly to a page where you can easily complete whatever conversion your organization wants (whether this is signing up for an email list, making a donation, engaging with the blog content or following your organization on Twitter)?  Check the other pages of your site- is the Donation link prominent and easily found?  What you’re looking for in the warmup are any stumbling blocks to making a donation or engaging with your organization in the intended way. . . make sure you note any confusing areas or extra steps.  From the Donate links on your front page, you should be taken directly to the donation form- every page between a donate button and the actual donation form loses some donors.  The idea is to make the process as easy and painless as possible- don’t give your donors any excuse to ‘abandon the shopping cart.’

Exercise # 1: Donation Page Calisthenics

Donation page dress rehearsal- you’ve arrived on the donation page after a brief warm up and review of your site’s pages.  Now that you’re here, take a look around.  Is your page understandable and easy to use, even for the least tech savvy folks?  Make a test donation and see how it feels.  Is it easy to enter your billing information, to set up a recurring payment and maybe to enter an honorarium message if you’re donating in someone else’s honor?  Does the Thank-You page you land on after you’ve successfully completed a payment acknowledge your contribution and give you an option to return to the home site, sign up for a blog, or share new of your donation with friends through social media?  Make sure your donation experience is smooth, quick and makes you feel more deeply engaged with your organization.

Exercise #2: Strength Training For Your Story

What’s the story?  It’s tricky to bring a narrative to the forefront of the donation process, but the most successful donation pages do just this.  Is it apparent to your donors where their donation will go and how it will be spent?  Do they have an idea of what their donation will do?  It’s important to keep your donation form clean and user-friendly, but donors also like to see graphics and small text blocks describing what your organization does.  Limit long-winded explanations and favor anecdotal evidence of your donors positive effects within your mission.  Earthshare’s donation page does a fabulous job of this, as does A Home Within’s- both give great specific examples of what a donation will do and donors can easily visualize where their donation dollars will actually go when they make a donation.  Review your page- does it tell or suggest a story that donors are a part of?

Exercise #3: Some Social Media Cardio 

Are you linked in to social media? Once you’ve made a donation, can you easily Tweet about it or post to your Facebook page through links on the Thank You page or on your organization’s website?  Is it easy to join the conversation?  Is your donation page taking advantage of the, essentially, free marketing available through your donors social networks?  Make sure that once their donation is completed, your donor can immediately share a link to your donation page or a link to a content page on your site.

Exercise # 4: Stretch To Keep Your Fundraising Limber

What are the suggested donation amounts on your site and donation page?  Are you selling yourself short?  Donors respond well to suggested donation amounts, but will donate less if given the option.  Unless your fundraising plan is specifically based on lots of small donations, your suggested amounts should begin at $20 or over.  Of course, donors have the option of donating whatever amount they want, but does your site present a substantial enough example donation and with the example, provide a compelling enough reason for them to make that contribution?  Make sure your donation page offers inspiring reasons supporters should make a considerable donation to your organization.

 An Analytical Cool Down

Now’s the time for analysis: do you have your analytics program hooked up to your donation page?  Is it easy for your organization to track a donors path from site entry to donation completion?  Are you set up to do the kind of tracking necessary to make improvements to your site’s funnel and conversion rate?  Be sure you’re set up to collect as much data about your donors and your donation process as possible, because even if your fundraising is booming, there is always room for improvement.

Whew, that’s it for now!  Pat yourself on the back, take a look at your notes from the workout and get started improving your donation page.  We’ll be posting lots of helpful tips and tutorials in the next few months to help get prepared for the upcoming push.  The holidays are upon us, folks, let’s get your organization’s donation page tanned, rested and ready to bring in record fundraising dollars this season!

Happy fundraising,

AJ

The Convio white paper is very detailed and well-written, per usual, but the overall message is at once disappointing and liberating: there really is no magic bullet when it comes to donation page formatting.  There’s no set of rules that, if you follow them to the letter, will ensure online fundraising success.  There’s a major upside to this, though, because while there’s no perfect donation page that all organizations could use to really rake in the donation dollars, there’s also no wrong way to go about figuring out what works for your organization.  For our company, the most efficient method we’ve found to improve our site’s conversion rate is through direct user testing.  This does not have to be expensive, or massively time consuming, or unpleasant.  For us, it yielded some amazing results without breaking the bank or requiring the focused attention of our whole staff.  It was also fascinating.

We recently went through a redesign of our own website- new logo, new materials, pricing changes, new add campaign, etc.  While we performed hours of testing in-house and drove ourselves crazy over what to add, what to leave out, how much information is too much and how much is not enough, we couldn’t really come to a resting point on what we wanted the final site to present.  We’d all reviewed the site so many times that we started to not even be able to see it, you know what I mean?  We didn’t have a ton of staff time or financial resources to devote to strenuous testing, but we wanted to make sure that visitors to our site were converting into clients, or at least contacting us if they had further questions.  There are many user testing companies to consider- we chose UserTesting.com and I can’t tell you how highly we recommend this totally reasonably-priced, super-gosh-wow-awesome service.

Here’s how it works:

Once you choose how many users will be in your testing round, you’ll choose the targeted demographic (you can select your users by age, income bracket, gender etc.) that you’d like to test your site or you can leave it up to the company you’ve chosen and keep it completely random.  With the service we’ve used, we were able to then assign the testers three tasks to complete on our website.  For one of our rounds of testing, these were the three tasks we set for our users to complete:

-find and complete the online application.

-find and use the contact information to contact us for more info on the service.

-learn about our service and describe in detail what our company does.

For us, the testing was intended to gather information on how the ‘funnel’ works on our website (i.e. if folks can move smoothly and easily through our site to our application and if they feel like they have the information they need to come on board immediately).  For a non-profit, the list of testable tasks they could create might include some of these options:

-find and use the donation form on our site.

-find information and describe in detail what our organization does.

-describe in detail what a donation will be used for.

-sign up to subscribe to our blog, newsletter and Twitter feed.

-Share an interesting piece of content from the site via social media.

-find and describe a particular project our organization is working on.

-find and use any usual or signature features our organization’s site has.

Once you set tasks for your testers to complete, the fun begins!  Watching videos of random users trying to navigate your site is alternately exciting, painful, revelatory and, most importantly, extremely informative.  The videos provided by the company we used actually showed the testers mouse moving around our site, along with a running commentary from the tester.

Seeing actual users with no previous experience of our site or our company was shocking- many of the assumptions we’d made about our site’s user-friendliness, appeal and information architecture went instantly out the window.   Of course, you can’t take every piece of each testers opinion to heart; everyone has different personal taste and a different experience level with standard practices on the web.  However, it became apparent, pretty much immediately, that there were trends with every user that tested our site.

For us, it was that we weren’t offering enough information and not the right kind- it was making it difficult for site visitors to feel confident enough to sign up for our service.  The most significant change we made to the site was beginning to offer a live-chat feature so our staff could interact in real-time with users who were exploring the site and considering the sign up process.  In keeping with other trends we saw through all our tester videos, we also rearranged the information section of our website and made clear a few details about our service that we’d thought no-one would want to read the find print about (but which were making users feel confused about our service).

After implementing some website changes based on our user testing several months ago, we’ve already seen an enormous benefit to our company.  We are signing up about 35% more new clients per month, even though we’ve raised our pricing (slightly) and we’ve had nothing but positive feedback about the live-chat feature on our site (SnapEngage, check it out, y’all, seriously).  The reason I’m sharing the results of our user testing here on the blog is because it yielded a substantial result, with a minimal effort and financial investment on our part.  I think this type of testing will truly benefit non-profits looking to improve their online fundraising and it’s an option that’s scalable and affordable for organizations of all sizes and budgets.

The holiday season will be upon us in no time- though these have been some very tough years for the country, online giving is still growing yearly.  There are lots of ways to get your site in fighting form for the upcoming prime fundraising season, but I’d suggest considering a round of user testing before you send out your first call to action email to your donor base.  It’s an easy (and, weirdly, fun) way to give your donation process a tune-up and you might be surprised the results.

Happy Fundraising!

AJ

And I hope you do too. . .

Because I am an intermittent blogger at best, I end up accruing a large number of interesting gems from the Interwebs and elsewhere that I intend to share or reference later in my blog and then sometimes get lost in the shuffle.  I always think I’m going to use my favorites in one big, extensive blog post that really ties the room together, but alas, it’s not happening today.  There is literally no end to the useful information available online, but today I thought I’d just leave you with a hacky little list of food for thought:

1.) This 2008 article from the Harvard Business review is detailed and asks hard questions and about the viability, clarity of mission and operating procedures of healthy non-profits and offers extremely smart suggestions on how to improve.

2.) 10 Essential Social Media Slideshare Presentations For Non Profits is just what is sounds like.  Which is to say: awesome.

3.) 10 Blogs (actually 15) Pamela Reads.  You should listen to her.  She’s smart.

4.) The Arts Resource Network has a lot of information for emerging artists and arts-related non-profits.

5.) More on Founder’s Syndrome and how to tell if your founder has a little case of it.  Don’t let the picture put you off.

6.) 3 Apps And Networks Spurring Social Good.  Allyson Kapin is just amazing, she really is a wonderful resource for the non-profit world.

7.) A list of ‘how-t0′ resources for grantwriting.

8.) How A Non-Profit Brand Goes Bust, Part 1 was Nancy Schwartz’ opening salvo analyzing the KFC-Susan J. Komen brouhaha and how it weakened the brand.  Here is her in-depth analysis on the situation.  Right-on as per usual.

9.) I’ve been reading the Mission-Minded blog lately and you should check it out too.

10.) Wild Apricot’s tips on how to keep your organization Free of Spam Complaints.

Thats it for the day but I promise a real post for the next time, folks.

A.J.

Take Your Victory Lap with Pride, Marketers

Welcome to the third and final chapter in our basics-of-email-marketing tutorial; you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll come to terms.  At this point, you’ve written a carefully worded, engaging, attractive, compelling email and sent it out to your email list.  Now what?

Part 3

1.  Tracking and Collecting Metrics

Whichever service you’ve chosen to use will be able to give you stats on how your email was received.  You can check who actually opened and read the email, whose spam box it went to and who discarded it without even reading, amongst many other things.  This data will be invaluable for your organization as you calculate your ROI and decide whether or not to rework the campaign.  I hope you’ll have success the first time, but if not, take advantage of this aspect of email-campaign services to help you do user segmenting and collect information about how to connect to your potential donors in a more focused way.

2. Use Google Analytics.

I’m quite the fan of this free tool that Google offers, as evidenced here (and a lot since then).  I’ve posted this tutorial video before, but if you didn’t catch it the first time, here’s a concise summary of how to use Google Analytics.

After sending out an email newsletter, you should see a major bump in traffic to your site, that day and the following, at least.  Figure out which pages people from your email are visiting, how much of an increase of traffic you had and how long traffic is lingering on your site to determine the effectiveness of your email.

3. Website Improvement

The  days following an email campaign also provide crucial information about how your site is working.  Using analytics, look closely at how the site traffic that comes from your email is moving through your site.  Is your landing page converting or are your visitors just bailing after a few seconds?  Is your site funneling your traffic correctly or botching the job?  When you send out an email campaign, you want to be sure that any link on the page takes your user directly to a place where the can perform the task you’re asking of them, whether it’s the donation page or the blog.  If people are coming to your site from your fundraising email, then just lollygagging around not making donations or commenting on your blog or signing up for your workshops or whatever, it’s worth making some tweaks to your site, to make sure it can actually convert once you bring people to it.

4.) What now?

Those are the basics of launching a successful email marketing campaign.  There’s a lot you can add to the process through careful assessment of the needs of your particular organization, market testing and further demographic investigative work.  The return on investment for email marketing is so high that it’s almost always worth it, if you can put together the interest-piquing material to initially draw people in.  As you are tracking your email marketing metrics, consider this

-How accurate is your list?  How many bounces were there out of your total sent mail?

- How current is your list?  How many people opened your newsletter, out of the total amount sent?

-How many positive responses did you get (how many people actually clicked through)? How many negative (how many people opted out)?

-The number of responses to an email campaign varies wildly based on the content of the email- an informational newsletter will get far fewer click-throughs than a specific promotion.

-3 is a good number to keep in mind with your marketing process: if you’re doing a fundraising drive, give your subscribers three chances to pitch in.  A typical response pattern goes as such: the numbers for the first two mailings will be pretty similar (with a slight decline in the second) and the third will help coax your undecided recipients into completing the task you’re asking of them.  The third mailing may bring in just enough to take  care of the cost of the mailing.

-If you’re not seeing a return by the time you’ve sent three emails, you need to change it up, re-analyze your data and try again.

All right, that’s it for this how-to.

Good luck, happy fundraising, and see you all tomorrow.

Try not to let the office dullard cramp your style, as you create your newsletter

So it’s an exciting day in the office for us nerds, as Glee is returning tonight after a terribly long hiatus- our squeeees! can be heard for miles.   I will try, however, to focus on the business at hand, which is Part 2 of this weeks email marketing tutorial.  Here goes. . .

Part 2:

1. Check It, Y’all

So you’ve written and designed a fabulous html email marketing newsletter or fundraising manifesto (or whatever it is you crazy kids are working on these days) and you think you’re ready to send it out.  Well, bad news: you’re not.  You have to test this thing before you send it out, so you don’t flood your entire list’s inbox with incorrect usages of their, there and they’re, dead links, inappropriate exclamation points and spellings of the word ‘definitely’ that somehow use an ‘a’.

As you are checking your email, make sure:

-your spelling, grammar and flow are impeccable and in keeping with the tone you will use in future emails.

-the content of your email matches the subject line.

-your organizations contact info is in two (2) different places in the email, but usually not more.  A link at the top and a link at the bottom of the page will do just fine.

- An opt-out message is included at the bottom of the page.   With a good, content-rich, engaging e-newsletter you won’t lose many subscribers, so don’t sweat it; an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the page is just good form and also a lot of services you might use for this project actually require it.

- you’ve checked EVERY link in your email and made sure it goes where it needs to go, not to anywhere inappropriate, of course, and not to a ‘Page Not Found’ purgatory.

- your email is written as if it is to one person only.  No ‘all of you’ or ‘you guys’- just ‘you’ and ‘your’ and other singular statements.  If you’ve written your email as you would address a speech to a crowd, please change it now to address the individual reader.  I’ll wait.

2.) Test It

Now that you’ve checked your email for errors in tone, grammar and content, it’s time to test it out.

-check the look of your email in as many different email and browser platforms as you can.  Create test email addresses at all the free sites (gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc.), so you can test every newsletter in this way.  You want to be sure that all your images work, the layout of your page is not radically altered, and that every relevant piece of information is visible.

-Spam-check.  Send copies out to ten people you know personally and find out if the email went to their spam folders.

-get notes on the effectiveness of the message, the aesthetic and the content of the email, maybe from your spam-test folks.

3.) Send It Out

This part should be extremely self-explanatory, especially if you’re using a service that makes this step even easier.  However, timing is important here: consider the demographic of your audience.  If you’re sending out a volunteer recruitment newsletter aimed mostly at high school kids, avoid sending it during school hours.  If most of your readers will be working standard hours (Monday-Friday, 9-5), don’t send it on Monday morning, when it will blend in with the beginning-of-the-week spam influx.  Best practice for a normal, working adult demographic is to send marketing emails on Tuesday or no later than Wednesday morning.

Tomorrow: tracking and follow up in Part 3!

Have a great Tuesday, everyone.

-A.J.

Get Suited Up For An Email Marketing Extravaganza!!

This week, I’ll be doing a three part tutorial about how, exactly, to launch a successful email marketing campaign.  I know that this method of direct marketing can be frustrating and expensive, but a well-calibrated e-fundraising letter can really rake in the dough or drum up serious interest in your non-profit’s website.  There are plenty of services out there- like Constant Contact and Emma (we prefer the latter)- who can help you get set up with a minimum of fuss; their whole business is making email marketing easier for you.  There is also software you can buy, consultants you can hire and ways you can do this a little more on the cheap.  For this how-to, I’m going to assume that your organization has a little money to spend and has someone reasonably web-savvy on staff.

How to Launch Your Successful Email Marketing Campaign, Part 1:

1.)  Strategize

To begin your campaign, have a strategy meeting with everyone on staff who will be involved in the project.  Talk about what message you want to send with your newsletter- is it a hardcore fundraising email or are you going to start with a soft-sell email trying to solicit traffic to your site or blog?  With a monthly service, you can advance your message every time: maybe start with a ‘Welcome’-ish letter, detailing the resources and info available on your site and a brief description of the undoubtedly amazing work your organization is doing.  You can move forward with specific fundraising drives more easily with an email list that’s already quite familiar with your organization.  In any case, get everyone working on this thing on the same page in your initial strategy meeting.

Also to think about while strategizing:

What is your budget and how will your money be best spent?

-What service should you use?  We recommend Emma, but there are dozens out there that could fit the bill for what you need.

2.) Design Your Email Template

Emma and similar services all offer free html email templates for your organization to use while setting up your online campaign.  These are easy to use and can be customized to fit your non-profits’ aesthetic identity.  When you’re designing the email, just remember that all best design practices and principles apply: keep it consistent with your site, your branding and ambiguous enough to be used for the variety of e-newsletters you will want to send.  Use your template for every email you send; your recipients will associate the visual design of your template with your organization, so make something you like enough to not switch it up for awhile.

3.) Write Your First Email Newsletter

When you sit down to write your letter, first consider the tone.  The tonal content of your newsletters should remain consistent, every month or week or however often you choose to send it out (btw, we recommend not more than twice monthly).  You don’t necessarily need a professional copywriter, just someone familiar with your organization and who can create engaging, concise content.  No matter what, keep the tone consistent.  If you use serious, corporate language the first time around, be prepared to keep it that way.  If you want your emails to be hee-larious more than you want them to be informative, than be prepared to sustain the funny.  A good tenet for most organizations is to follow the same rules that apply to blogging, but in a slightly more formal medium: keep it light, short, personable (but not too personal) and direct.  If you’re doing a fundraising drive, devote your letter to asking for money, telling your readers why you need it and what it will be used for.  Period.  If you want people to visit your site or blog, include excerpts or examples of the materials available.  Don’t muddy the waters with too much content or send out an email without enough content to be compelling.  A definitive call-to-action is essential.  The idea is to develop a distinctive, immediately-identifiable voice, that your readers respond to and don’t send directly to their trash box.

4.) What’s Up with Your Email List?

There are 3 above-board ways to acquire an email list: buy one, rent one or cultivate one yourself.  The best way, of course, is to develop a list yourself.  A list can be culled from blog subscribers, donors, site visitors, contacts out here in the real world, and dozens of other sources that all your non-profit worker bees out there are already pretty familiar with.  That being said, though, if you are a mid-size non-profit, it can still be pretty hard to come up with ten thousand email addresses that you’re vaguely sure will open your emails and not instantly trash them.  Even if you start out with a purchased list, which is frowned upon, make it a major priority to be building up your own marketing index.  This article about building up your email marketing list has some helpful tips and also a very persuasive passage about why NOT to buy pre-made email marketing lists.  The author’s most salient point, as far as I’m concerned, is this: if you could have an email go out to 100 people who care about your organization or 1000 people who couldn’t pick it out of a lineup of one, which would you pick?  That’s what I thought.

All right, folks, that’s it for now.  Stay tuned for the sequel and threequel to this post, arriving at a laptop/desktop near you later this week.

-A.J.

Shake The Money Tree

Fundraisers Galore

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . for fundraising.  But seriously folks, all terrible, obvious literary references aside, fundraising in a recession can be incredibly difficult and incredibly rewarding.  Giving means more when there’s less to go around.  I’ve written at length in previous posts about how fabulously the Interwebs can convey your marketing messages and how useful a tool basic SEO is, but have left the direct, out-there-in-the-community side of things without much comment.

Grass-roots fundraising can be so much fun.  Observe:

Pie throwing, HA!

Some of the most satisfying experiences in my adult life have been coming together with my friends, family and community to do some grass-roots fundraising.  It’s spring, we’ve got good weather coming (though in the Northwest it will, admittedly, be a bit of a wait), and the time is right to get out there and raise some cash for a worthy cause.  This type of fundraising doesn’t need the power and structure of an organization to make things happen, it just needs a motivated adult or savvy teenager to get things started.  With two recent major natural disasters and all the non-profits we all know about that ALWAYS need money, why not add a fundraiser to your list of things to do for spring cleaning?

Five Community Fundraising Ideas

1.) Throw a Secret Cafe

I did this with friends in college on several occasions, for various causes that floated our boats at the time.  It helped us build our activist community and taught us some extremely valuable lessons about marketing, the many perils and joys of restaurant management and, weirdly, how to properly cook a turkey.

The idea is this: Your home is a restaurant for one night.  Put up some flyers at your local grocery store or neighborhood bulletin board (and don’t forget to tell all your friends), advertising the date and time of your Secret Cafe and a number people can call for reservations (I’d recommend 2 seatings- for dinner, one at 6 pm and one at 8), though of course walk-in guests are welcome.  Decide on a donation amount that people will pay at the front door (usually between $5 and $20, for a low-key SC).  A Secret Cafe works best in a house with indoor/outdoor space.  Set up a bunch of tables and enlist your pals to be the servers for the night.  You can either decide to buy the ingredients for your Secret Cafe Meal (here is a sample menu) or go and ask local restaurants to contribute ingredients or dishes.  In my  experience, some restaurants/co-ops/farms/where ever are willing to at least donate a side dish, a crucial ingredient or maybe a keg of beer (if it’s that kind of party), especially if you display news of their generous sponsorship on your flyers.  The easiest meals to prepare for Secret Cafes are ones that lend themselves to family style eating: roast a couple of large turkeys,  multiple racks of ribs or large casseroles of pasta or veggies.  Make cupcakes for desert or something similarly easy to serve.

For a busy SC, you’ll need to consider your ‘staff’ for the night and plan accordingly: maybe 3 people in the kitchen, 1 or 2 shifts of dishwashing (if you’re not using disposable plates), 3 servers and a host at the door to seat people with reservations and without.

The food takes some working out, but this is a great project for a group that’s already enthusiastic about entertaining.  I’ve had some of the most delicious meals of my life at various Secret Cafe’s and been a harried waitress, cook-in-a-pinch and bartender at a few, as well.  This is a great way, slightly more formal than a barbeque, to have a fabulous meal with your neighbors, not to mention raising that moola.

2.) Car Wash.

Total cliche, yes, but it’s spring, dammit, and you shouldn’t tamper with this tried and true formula for hustling up some quick cash.  This is a great one for teenagers to plan and have fun with- turn up the tunes (like this one), put out that money jar, and be sure to have a large cache of dry towels at the ready.

3.)  50\50 Community Garage Sale

As an avid garage saler, there is almost nothing that delights me more than running across a whole block that has pooled their used-goods resources and organized a multi-family garage sale.  Extra awesomeness at these events is often generated by a baked goods or cold drink table.  The next time you’re planning one of these extravaganzas (and, c’mon, spring cleaners, you know you want to!), consider giving 50 percent of your proceeds to a designated cause, or making an agreement with your neighbors that everyone will give half to the charity of their choice.  This can not only help you get rid of those old bar stools, VHS tapes and Star Wars posters, it could also, say, do a lot toward the rebuilding efforts in Haiti or go to your favorite local arts organization that is suffering in these trying times.  Or, for us stalwart Commie liberals, there’s always, always, an NPR pledge drive.

4.) Fun Run. Just don’t eat a big plate of Fettucini Alfredo (a la Michael Scott) beforehand and you’ll already be ahead of the game.  I’ll let EHow tell you how to get this thing rolling, as it is a complicated process.    This event will take a lot of planning, but is an incredibly fun and healthful way to join a community in a single purpose.

5.) Rent a Karaoke Machine.  This is not so much an idea for a specific fundraiser as a general tip: go out, rent one, invite 30 or so friends, neighbors and strangers, mix up a couple (or six) big jugs of hard tea or blended margaritas, put out that donation jar (a buck per song you sing, five bucks so you don’t have to sing, 5 bucks donation per drink etc.) and just see where the funnest night of your life takes you.  This is another fundraiser that could be held in a friendly bar, willing to yield their mic and karaoke system to some folks trying to raise some money and have a good time.  You can also use a rented karaoke machine to have a kid-friendly fundraiser, but that’s not really my area of expertise.

And now onto online fundraising: here are some sweet basic adjustments you can make to your site to take in more money for your organization.  Tinkering with your website in the middle of a beautiful spring day is, yes, slightly less fun than having a backyard barbeque or making bracelets for a cause, but suck it up, and you’ll be glad you did.

5 Easy Tips for Increased Donations Online

1.) Keep your Donate Button visible and above the fold.  If you’re a non-profit and one of your websites objectives is to raise money (and, somehow, I have a feeling it is), don’t be scared to place it prominently on your site.  ’Above the fold,’ in this case, means placed in the top half of your website, so no one has to scroll up or down to see it.  It needs to be immediately visible when your visitors land on your index page, or you’re looking at countless missed opportunities for donations.  This seems basic, but you’d be surprised how many people resist, or somehow, crazily, believe that online fundraising isn’t a big enough deal to warrant coveted space in the most visible areas of their site.  It IS a big deal and you WILL regret it if you don’t let your fundraising flag fly, in the most prominent place possible on your website.

2.) Make Your Goals Clear.  Keep a running tally of how much money you’ve raised and how much you need to raise to meet your fundraising goals- donors like to see the progress and are more inclined to donate if there’s a target amount specified.  I’ve already praised The Uniform Project for their use of this exact fundraising technique, and it’s still going smashingly for them, as they round the corner into this last couple weeks of their project.

3.) Provide Volunteer Opportunities. It’s counter-intuitive to be offering people ways to not contribute their cold hard cash, as a way to increase fundraising efforts, but the fact of the matter is that most organizations need from their donors both time and money and the two usually go hand in hand.   If you offer non-monetary options for people to contribute to your organization, this will also help you build up your donor base.  People who care enough to volunteer their time will almost always end up giving money to your organization.  When you do rope some folks into volunteering for you, here’s how to keep them happy.

4.) Timing is Everything.  If you use a service like Constant Contact or Emma to send newsletters or fundraising outreach emails (or if you don’t), there are some best practice tips to take into account: for the love of Pete, send your fundraising emails out early in the week (by Tuesday morning).  You want your email to be waiting in your potential donors inboxes when they get to work in the morning, so the smart thing to do is to send out any mass-mailings (repeat after me: it’s not spam!) late on Monday night or early in business hours on Tuesday.  Disobey me and regret it, dear readers.

Also, parenthetically, here are some things to ponder as you’re assembling those definitely-not-spam newsletters:

-keep the tone personable, but professional.

-keep it short.

-send consistently or don’t send at all.

-don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.

-if you’re not seeing any return, change it up and see what happens.

5.) Get Your Narrative Straight. People love a good story. Donors in particular love to be told exactly how their money is being put to use.  We all know the why, the who and the what we’re giving to; what we want to know is the how. How does it work, who does this money go to, how does it get there?  These are questions all your potential donors will have in their minds as they’re deciding whether to add that extra 50 bucks to their bills this month.  Explain it to them, in a relatable, specific way, with a minimum of overly-salesy language and you’ll increase your donation volume almost instantly.

All right, those are my dueling lists for the day.  Those you already enjoying shorts-weather, get on out there to your car washes and secret cafe’s and outdoor karaoke fundraisers- enjoy that sunshine, raise some cash and get to know a neighbor you’ve never met before.  The rest of us cold-weather nerds will still be inside, hiding from the drizzle and bluster of  long winter, making some slight adjustments to our websites that will yield some big cash.

-A.J.