Long Live Direct Mail

June 29, 2007

Here's some interesting (yawn!) data (yawn!) on consumers' preferences (yawn!) for direct mail (yawn!, yawn!) over email (yaw …)

WAIT!

Did they really say consumers prefer to get direct mail over email?!

According to (not entirely disinterested) Pitney Bowes, the answer is YES!

Here are the stats from a recent PB-sponsored consumer survey:

  • 73% prefer mail for receiving new product news from companies they already do business with, versus 18% preferring email;
  • Mail was preferred by 70% of respondents for receiving unsolicited information on products and services from companies with whom they are not already doing business;
  • For confidential communications like bills and bank statements, 86% prefer mail; and,
  • 31% discard unsolicited mail, while 53% discard unsolicited emails.

This could simply reflect that consumers have come to more jealously “guard the gate” when it comes to spam and other unfamiliar or unsolicited email. So maybe they pay more attention to what does get through the door and into the e-mailbox. But the data doesn't go there.

So, for now, as vintage direct mailers, we'll celebrate this preference victory for paper.

And there's more data from the survey regarding the advantages of direct mail. Compared to unsolicited email and telephone calls, 45% of respondents found direct mail less intrusive (doesn't interrupt other activities), 40% consider mail more convenient (can be saved and considered at leisure), and 30% consider mail less pressured (lets you consider your decision). Minorities, but still a sizable cadre of mail devotees.

Any reason to believe these preferences would not apply to fundraising solicitations? None that we can think of.

Excuse us, we have to find our pens and stamps.

Roger & Tom

Posted by admin | Filed Under Hot Research, direct marketing, online fundraising | Leave a Comment 

Who Owns Your Nonprofit?

June 28, 2007

Todd Cohen at Philanthropy Journal fittingly nails the “sleepwalking” Smithsonian board in this post for its dereliction of duty in letting Larry Small run amok as former CEO of the place. As he puts it, that board was MIA.

He warns:

“Unless they start acting as responsible stewards of the resources invested in advancing their mission, boards everywhere run the risk of losing control over their organizations, triggering a crackdown by regulators, and turning off their donors.”

The Agitator seconds that emotion. Hell, boards like Smithsonian's could even cause directors' liability insurance to skyrocket!

But we are intrigued by his phrase … “boards everywhere run the risk of losing control over their organizations” (emphasis added).

Control implies a sense of ownership. Are boards really the owners of nonprofits?

We can think of other plausible owners … the biggest donors, the rank-and-file dues-paying members and activists, the staff. And other stakeholders like volunteers and clients, and even the at-large citizenry (whose public needs lose revenue to the chaitable deduction).

In fact, we believe the staff owns nine out of ten nonprofits, because control of information and day-to-day implementation is where the power lies.

The staff spoon feeds information to the other members of the typical nonprofit family, and when this is done adroitly, thereby frames each and every “decision” put to the board, pacifies major donors with soothing success stories, and channels the rank-and-file in whatever direction is propitious.

Control over day-to-day execution of the mission completes the power equation. The staff is in the trenches, making myriad daily choices, responding to events and other externalities, allocating people and money, deciding what's doable next week … always spinning its activities as faithful to “board policy.”

The only real option in most situations for the dissatisfied non-staff stakeholders is withdrawal.

We'd submit that most nonprofit CEOs secretly (many not so secretly) follow the mantra: Give me the strongest board I can control. Show us a nonprofit CEO with more than five years tenure and we'll show you a board eating out of his or her hand.

Is this necessarily bad?

Arguably the corollary is that strong, able nonprofit CEOs attract equally capable boards. Machiavelli says the wisest prince gets the best advice.

Sure, we also read the Federalist Papers. We believe in checks and balances.

But we also believe in meritocracy. Face it, the senior staff out-knows, out-lives, and out-sweats 99.9% of even the most dedicated board members.

So it should be the rare exception when the CEO or senior staff does not call the shots.

A board that truly wants to exercise “oversight” must do a ton of homework, some of it independently, and do it consistently, not episodically. It must earn the right.

Ted Turner's famous maxim works for nonprofit boards: Lead, follow, or get out of the way! How many lead?

Roger & Tom

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Jeff, You Boob!

June 27, 2007

I read Jeff Brooks' Donor Power Blog every day. His creative insights are terrific. He really gets the relationship aspect of fundraising.

But occasionally Jeff gets it REALLY WRONG, as with his breathless advice the other day that we should all rush off to use the Headline Analyzer to punch up our headlines. Don't you dare click the Analyzer link until you finish this post!

The Headline Analyzer supposedly awards highest scores to headlines that use especially emotive words … and even better, words that touch deep spiritual chords.

But consider these headlines …

Jeff, You Boob
(today's headline)

Love Your Donors
(a recent DonorPowerBlog headline for an excellent post)

New Media Campaigning … Issues or Boobs?
(a recent Agitator headline)

Love and Hope Will Bring Peace to your Soul
(my best effort at a winner)

Boobs
(hell, why not?)

Which headline scores highest in emotional and spiritual content?

Your guessed it: Boobs! It's (their?) score: 100%!

The “analysis” from Headline Analyzer (and note I'm quoting here): “Your headline carries words that have a predominantly Spiritual appeal.”

I guess so … Hugh Hefner has always claimed he was doing god's work!

Which headline scored the lowest?

Poor Jeff's “Love Your Donors” with a 0% score. Zero. Zippo.

The Analyzer explanation: “Your headline has no words that invoke emotional impact with people …”

So much for the Headline Analyzer! Go with you gut instead. Ask: Did that headline make me think … or feel? Go with feel every time.

As for Jeff, keep reading his Donor Power Blog … a 900% batting average ain't bad.

Tom

P.S. Other scores:

Jeff, You Boob … 67%
New Media Campaiging … Issues or Boobs? … 67%
And,
Love and Hope Will Bring Peace to Your Soul … 22%

Posted by admin | Filed Under Don't Miss these Posts, copywriting, direct marketing, fundraising | Leave a Comment 

Voyeurgasm And Other Trends

June 25, 2007

It's Monday … time for some mind stretches to get yourself “brain on” for the week ahead.

Successful nonprofit marketers need to be sharp trend spotters … or at least avid trend watchers.

Old fossils that we are, we at The Agitator have just discovered trend spotter Michael Tchong at Ubercool, who shares some stimulating insights about the future of marketing here.

Key consumer trends today, says Tchong:

  • Voyeurgasm: the age-old consumer desire “we like to watch” is now on steroids, powered by do-it-yourself media tools that make everything recordable … fueling a growing expectation of tranparency in all things.
  • Digital Lifestyle: the average US household owns 26 consumer electronic devices … the “nation” of MySpace” is as big as the population of Brazil, the world's fifth largest. Broadband users spend nearly one-half their weekday spare time online.
  • Time Compression: we've crossed a tipping point of sorts when in response to the greeting “How are you?” the answer became “Busy” … instead of “Good” or “Fine.” Less sleep. More sleeping pill prescriptions. A $7 billion energy drink market. Forget oil, time is a commodity become steadily more precious to consumers.
  • Unwired: Manhattan's phone book is getting smaller as population grows … consumers switching from land lines to cell phones. Got your iPhone yet? Get ready for the “instant on” culture, as mobile phones become the primary access device for the internet.
  • Generation X-tasy: barraged with 3,000 marketing messages a day and 60 million SKUs, successful consumer interactions must be “experiences” replete with adventure, indulgence, variety.

Tchong elaborates a bit on each of these trends and what they mean for consumer marketing. Think about how they might affect the marketing of your cause or charity … or think about your retirement.

Roger & Tom

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New Media Campaigning … Issues Or Boobs?

June 22, 2007

The contribution of new media to the quality of political discourse is vastly over-rated.

I just got an urgent email from David Plouffe, Barack Obama's campaign manager. [There's the first problem … like I care about the campaign manager! You might as well send me a message from the campaign mascot.]

What's it about? Obama's energy plan? How American kids are going to compete with kids from China and India? What a President can do to reduce gun violence? How to exit Iraq while enhancing stability in the Mideast?

Not a chance.

The email tells me I can now sign up to “stay in touch” with the campaign “wherever I go” by receiving text messages.

WOW! GOLLY! OMIGOSH! What an important and informative use of technology!

Now I can be one of the first to get alerted about the next Obamagirl video. I can't wait to read Obama's energy plan on my cellphone.

If the Clinton campaign was this clever, I'd have gotten news of her Celine Dion selection SOOOO much quicker (enabling me to scratch her from my list that much faster).

I fear the biggest “contribution” so far from the Web 2.0, online campaigning, new media etc. politics is that campaigns can now get our money faster and more cost-efficiently.

And the tech-savvy can show support for their favorite candidate in more “modern” (i.e., electronic) fashion than displaying bumper stickers or wearing lapel pins.

But has any of this actually improved political discourse? As for deepening our knowledge of the candidates, their differences, and the issues, you can pretty much forget about it.

[BTW, have you ever actually read the political “dialogue” that occurs in the “Comment” sections of most political blogs? By and large, you just have to hope that most of these folks are not registered voters.]

I keep all my Obama (and other candidate) campaign emails. Going back to May 1, I found one Obama email, on May 31st, on an issue … in this case health care (BTW, I liked what he had to say … I'm not anti-Obama). I couldn't find any in April.

Interestingly, for some reason, when candidates do dive into the issues online, as reported here, they (or their advisors) seem to prefer to distance this content from their “main” websites. It appears as though the issues might be too off-putting or too intellectually demanding to co-exist with all the featured fundraising and “social networking” gimmicks the youngsters have loaded in. So they dump the issue stuff into standalone mini-sites to make room for YouTube, Facebook and MySpace buttons.

So it's a rare treat when I get an email like the one I got last week from Rudy Giuliani outlining his Twelve Commitments. Still pretty fluffy stuff, but enough to remind me how badly I don't want him to be President!

Another rare treat is the email I got from Chris Dodd yesterday inviting me to participate in a live video presentation and Q&A on his national service plan. An actual issue discussion!

All in, I'd say Edwards sends me the most issue stuff.

But maybe I've somehow developed jumbled up expectations about how the new media would enhance public issue dialogue in campaigns.

Maybe it is all about video spoofing and “gotcha” moments.

Judging from reaction to Obamagirl, maybe it is just about boobs. Amazingly, some bloggers have tried through contorted logic to elevate Obamagirl into an affirmation of the valuable contribution the online medium is making to political dialogue.

What next? Maybe an online wet tee-shirt contest. Obama babes against Clinton babes against Edwards babes etc. Any babe can declare for a candidate and submit her YouTube video. Online voting of course. Team with the most votes wins the nomination for their candidate. Real engagement. Something online politicos can be proud of.

But for my old-fashioned issue-oriented sake, could we at least have a Miss Health Care Reform and a Miss Energy Independence?

Tom

P.S. Regular readers know that The Agitator urges all nonprofit marketers to monitor the online exploits of presidential campaigners. Lots of new and different tactical stuff … but be discriminating!

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Fundraiser! Are You A Fraud, Or Just A Fool?

June 21, 2007

Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog just did a post that spiked my blood pressure.

He — correctly — took to task a report that, over a one year period, UK nonprofits earned merely 39 cents in donations for each $1 they spent on direct mail (and 44 cents for each $1 spent on all direct marketing).

The new study was reported in an apparently clueless article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review titled, “Pyrrhic Fundraising.”

Jeff points out that the study was “likely” talking only about donor acquisition programs, as opposed to looking at ROIs that factor in the entire donor development process (i.e. lifetime value). I emphasize the word “likely” because it's impossible to locate the actual study, purportedly just published in the Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing.

[Indeed, I was really excited to discover via the Stanford article that such a publication even existed, but my excitement was quickly quashed when my online searching could only produce a cite indicating the Journal's website was last updated in August 2006.]

Maybe the authors will read this post and furnish The Agitator with the study.

But meantime, I have to conclude that Jeff Brooks was too restrained in suggesting the article “might lead people astray.” Jeff's rightly worried that mainstream media tends to echo just the headline message of pieces like “Pyrrhic Fundraising” and that such secondary coverage might frighten off erstwhile donors.

I agree with Jeff. Read this article and you might well conclude that charity fundraisers were either fools or frauds.

In fact, Jeff is far too polite. Any “study” that does not examine donor acquisition costs in the full context of lifetime value is pure horse****!

And further, any reporter who doesn't “get it” shouldn't be writing about fundraising.

So I don't know who The Agitator should fire first, the study authors, or the Stanford Social Innovation Review's reporter!

Tom

Posted by admin | Filed Under You Oughta Be Fired, charities, fundraising, marketing metrics, nonprofits | Leave a Comment 

Credit Cards Are Your Friends

June 20, 2007

Here's a pithy post on continuity giving from consultant Jim Killion, courtesy of DMA's The Integrator.

Talking about the $$ power of monthly giving, Jim notes that credit card giving is the key to success, and suggests three tactics for maximizing your fundraising return:

  • Tailored reporting — no auto-responder thank you's for these folks
  • Targeted requests — again, be careful about including monthly givers in “asks” designed for irregular donors
  • Monitor card expiration dates — a simple process trigger can retain big bucks

Apart from the “lock-in” value of credit card use, data we've seen indicates over and over that credit card gifts are larger in average size. With lower processing costs.

Triple dividends from getting your donors to use the plastic.

Roger & Tom

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First Aid For Introverts

June 19, 2007

Acolytes of the Myers-Briggs personality profile project that 51% of Americans are introverts.

And even introverts in the nonprofit marketing biz face days when they must undertake that most dreaded chore … sell themselves!

Many would say that the messenger is as important to successful persuasion as the message itself. I'm convinced that's true. In situations from internal policy debate in the White House to watching Ted Turner do his thing in many settings, I've seen dumb propositions prevail because championed by more effective presenters, and skeptical, suspicious audiences converted into true believers.

Two of the most typical “selling” situations are one-to-one schmoozing and the formal presentation to a large audience.

Here from Guy Kawasaki, a pretty decent presenter in his own right (you might enjoy his presentation here on Innovation), are two posts that might help the bashful among us. Guy is the original Mac marketer, now a venture capitalist. He's done more than his fair share of presenting, but in these posts draws on some sources he admires.

The Art of Schmoozing talks about one-on-one engagement … working the room. Hints: prepare, smile, approach the loner.

And if you're ready to graduate to a large hall full of strangers, try Speaking as a Performing Art. Hints … snarl, bite your tongue, get quiet.

Learn how to sell yourself more effectively and you will deserve a raise.

There's hope for us introverts!

Tom

Posted by admin | Filed Under You Deserve a Raise, communications, nonprofit management | Leave a Comment 

Nothing Like Passion In Politics

June 18, 2007

Last week we reported on the impact of video watched online … it gets people to do things!

The data on online video use we cited was a year-old, ancient in the web timescale, so here's some new data from ComScore, from March 2007:

  • 71% of US internet users, or 126 million folks, streamed 7 BILLION videos that month (3 of 10 streamed from YouTube);
  • The average streamer watched 55 videos per month, for a total of 145 minutes.

A huge and engaged audience.

What's this got to do with passion in politics?

Politicians and campaigns seem to draw the most impassioned use of online video. Professionals looking to make a name, clandestine agents of campaigns, concerned rank amateurs … all are aggressively pursuing the online video audience. Micah Sifry has an excellent post on this phenom — and the important issues it raises — over at TechPresident, complete with convenient clickable samples.

Once again, we urge nonprofit marketers to monitor online communications and fundraising developments in the political campaign space, where competition is fierce. There's much to learn, even though not everything will apply directly … some of it might be more valuable in terms of what to avoid … some of it might not suit your taste.

Indeed, one of the hottest (in more ways than one) videos making the online circuit these days features a Monica Lewinsky wannabe, Obamagirl. Not exactly a stellar example of the internet and “social networks” lifting the level of political discourse in America … though some of the lyrics are clever if you focus on them.

What's your verdict? Is there any redeeming social value from Obamagirl?

Roger & Tom

P.S. Perhaps more helpful examples of nonprofits and consultants using online video are here at the League of Conservation Voters (a contest for global warming videos), or here from Planned Legacy (promoting an “electronic legacy memorial” product).

Posted by admin | Filed Under Don't Miss these Posts, legacy marketing, online advocacy, online fundraising, online video, politics | Leave a Comment 

Is Tele-Fundraising Dead?

June 15, 2007

Thanks to Don't Tell the Donor, we saw a news report recently that the Republican National Committee had fired all 65 of its in-house telemarketers. Figures given by one solicitor indicated that 2007 phone contributions might be down nearly 40% from 2006.

We wondered, “Is this just the result of a lousy political climate for Republicans, or is it really a sign of the fading effectiveness of tele-fundraising?”

After all, isn't all the buzz these days about online fundraising?

So we interviewed Ken Whitaker, President of Public Interest Communications (PIC), a nearly 30 year institution in the tele-fundraising biz, to get an update on the channel everyone (especially board members) loves to hate.

PIC's clients include a wide swath of the best-known brands in the cause and charity worlds — ACLU, Metropolitan Opera, DNC, WWF and Audubon, and public broadcasters like WETA and WNET, and many others. So it appears that tele-fundraising is alive and well … perhaps in more selective circumstances.

Among Ken's observations:

  • Telemarketing is an effective way to convert online leads;
  • Applications like recruiting for monthly giving and surfacing prospects for planned giving work well;
  • Typical contact rates top out these days at about 60% of those with available phone numbers (and for an active house file, phone numbers might be available for 65% of names);
  • The economics no longer permit cost-effective calling to folks giving at the $20 or less level.

For more, you can get Ken's interview here, or simply download from our Agitator home page in the White Papers section.

We'd be happy to publish some telemarketing success stories if you'd care to share them with us.

Roger & Tom

Disclaimer: Roger Craver founded PIC, but no longer has a financial interest in the company.

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