Is Your Website Lost In The Crowd?

August 29, 2008

Roger sent me this press release the other day, with the short message … "Talk about competition!"

The release notes that there are now over 7 million organizations with websites using the .ORG domain (ranking 3rd behind .COM and .NET). This number has been growing at the rate of 20% per year over the past five years.

Public Interest Registry, the outfit with stewardship over the domain, attributes the growth to interest in social networking, issue awareness, personal blogging, online political organizing and issue advocacy.

Your nonprofit website faces a lot of competition and clutter out there in the digital space. Perhaps you need to pay more attention to how compelling it is and how your target audience views and responds to it.

Here’s one set of suggestions, from web consultant Tim Ash, on how you might go about assessing the main landing pages that receive most of your traffic. Options include web analytics (in depth stats on site usage), useability reviews, focus groups and surveys, analysis of "help" calls and emails, even eye-tracking.

How much should you invest in website assessment? Hmmm. How important is it not to get lost in the crowd? How important is it, with all the resources you put into the site, to have 90%+ of most visitors leaving without a trace, or spending nanoseconds on it?

Tom

Filed Under Don't Miss these Posts, communications, new media, online advocacy, online fundraising, online publishing
 

Are Hispanics Important To You?

August 27, 2008

For most US nonprofit fundraisers, Hispanics are probably just appearing on the edge of their radar as an audience to target. Indeed, fundraisers prepared to retire within, say, the next ten years can probably do so before they need to show hard results from this population.

But for the rest of you, this is an audience you must learn to address. It’s big. It’s disposable income is increasing. It shares the cares and concerns of most other Americans … but views them through a different lens.

From the recent New York Nonprofit Conference, here are some mistakes and attitudes to avoid, courtesy of Michael Saray of the Hispanic marketing agency bearing his name:

“Just translate the stuff we have.”
“Those people don’t have enough money.”
“Make the tests as cheap as possible.”
“If the test doesn’t work, that’s it.”
“We don’t have a budget for this.”
“We’ll use Maria Gonzales from accounting to translate.”
“We can’t afford to adapt back-end infrastructure right now.”
“We tried that before … ”

He also offers some good advice … take a look at this summary of his remarks.

Tom

 

Filed Under Don't Miss these Posts, communications, fundraising, latinos, nonprofit management
 

Is A Long Email Too Long?

August 26, 2008

A quiz for you e-marketers out there …

What generates the most click-throughs in an online pitch … like your e-newsletter or email fundraising appeal?

  1. A bold banner at the top
  2. A sidebar hotbox with take-action button
  3. Links in the body copy

According to copywriter Karen Gedney, writing for the Clickz Network, the most response comes from the sidebar button.

But next is a link in the body copy. Which link? One at the end!

Gedney concludes that action-takers read a long time before they are motivated to click.

I would conclude, slightly differently, that some prospects need more convincing than others, so feed them what they need. In the online medium especially, you have the opportunity to adopt a "different strokes for different folks" strategy … easily providing multiple opportunities for response, whenever the impulse strikes (i.e., the sale has been made).

This shouldn’t be too surprising. Think about how important the reply card is in direct mail. Many mail recipients read it first … and respond.

Most importantly, as Gedney admonishes … test, test, test. In email as in mail, don’t assume shorter is better.

Tom

P.S. And as she notes, don’t forget the power of the postscript! Test a link there too.

Filed Under Don't Miss these Posts, copywriting, email marketing, online fundraising
 

Global Issue Advertising Campaigns

August 25, 2008

James Morgan of The Nonproft Quarterly recently pointed me to Osocio, a blog and website that features issue and social advertising campaigns from around the world. A great window to how advocates around the world are advancing their agendas.

Tom

Filed Under Pushing the Creative Envelope, communications, issue fundraising, online advocacy
 

Meet The Net-Newsers

August 22, 2008

Pew Research Project has just released its latest study of the news consumption patterns of American adults.

These consumption patterns are useful in terms of both targeting media and issue advocacy campaigns and understanding how — and to what degree — your donors might be following news and public affairs.

Of special interest are two of the four segments in Pew’s news consumer typography … Net-Newsers and Integrators.

Here’s more on the Net-Newsers:

"Net-Newsers are the youngest of the news user segments (median age: 35). They are affluent and even better educated than the News Integrators: More than eight-in-ten have at least attended college. Net-Newsers not only rely primarily on the internet for news, they are leading the way in using new web features and other technologies. Nearly twice as many regularly watch news clips on the internet as regularly watch nightly network news broadcasts (30% vs. 18%) … Fewer than half (47%) watch television news on a typical day. Twice as many read an online newspaper than a printed newspaper on a typical day (17% vs. 8%), while 10% read both."

These are the folks making your online contributions!

The typology is rounded out with Traditionalists (46% of the public) and Disengaged (14%).

This report is rich in insights about news media usage. Well worth a read if you plan communications strategy for your nonprofit, but also useful for issue advocacy fundraisers.

Tom

Filed Under Hot Research, advocacy, communications, media usage, pew internet project, research
 

Avoiding The Dead Zone

August 21, 2008

Lift your head above the weeds for a few moments and think about this admonition from marketing maven Seth Godin.

Talking about marketing, he says that what works is either purely "authentic" or super "slick." In between authentic and slick is The Dead Zone. In that zone, everything fails.

Says Godin: "We crave handmade authenticity and we adore perfectly professional slickness."

It’s a marvelous point. Presumably, by definition we all have the capacity to be authentic (barring neuroses and over-socialization … hmmm, maybe that does rule out a lot of us!). But it takes rare and special attributes to pull off "slick."

So it would seem that the conservative, but successful strategy for most of us and our organizations is to stick to authentic. Slick is for Madonna.

Is anyone making "slick" work in the nonprofit arena? Nominations please.

Tom

Filed Under Don't Miss these Posts, Seth Godin, branding, fundraising, nonprofit management
 

Stephen Colbert, CFRE

August 20, 2008

Rejoice! The world of Fundraising Esoteria is now much richer and I just couldn’t wait to share the joy!

The most recent issue of PS: Political Science and Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association carries great news for Democratic fundraisers and candidates: Democratic politicians receive a 40% increase in contributions in the 30 day period following their appearances on the comedy cable show The Colbert Report.

The analysis was done by political scientist James H. Fowler of the University of California at San Diego and an avowed Colbert fan.

What’s the “Colbert Bump” worth? Democrats who come on the program raise $8,247 more than their same-party colleagues who don’t – a bump of 40% over the normal rate of receipts according to Prof. Fowler.

And, probably in the interest of bi-partisanship, the good professor notes that Republicans don’t appear to benefit at all by appearing on The Colbert Report. In fact, they raise more money in the month before coming on the program and less money in the month following their appearance – a possible “Colbert Bust.”

Mercifully, Fowler notes it is “important not to read too much into these results” (really?), but does conclude that due to the “elite demographic of the program’s audience" (about 1.2 million viewers) The Colbert Report appears to exercise "disproportionate real world influence.”

Does this “disproportionate real world influence” translate into election victories also? We’ll have to wait for the outcome of the 2008 races to see.

My breath is bated.

Roger

Filed Under General Post, celebrities, communications, fun, fundraising, politics, research
 

Greener Direct Mail

August 19, 2008

Earlier this month we published an article on how to lessen the environmental impact of direct mail programs. We invited further suggestions from fundraisers.

Fundraising agency Mal Warwick Associates pointed us to their firm’s environmental practices statement, which describes the steps the company takes in its own business operations, as well as the steps it takes — from list hygiene to careful selection of production vendors and paper procurement — to reduce the impact of its clients’ mail programs.

It’s an impressive commitment that we’re pleased to share with you. And we repeat our request to readers for additional "green" practices that direct mailer fundraisers might consider.

Roger & Tom

Filed Under Don't Miss these Posts, accountability, direct mail
 

Which Ads Do You Respond To?

August 18, 2008

Mediamark Research has come up with this study segmenting American consumers according to which media they respond to.

Your possibilities, together with the US profile, are:

  1. Emerging media (9%) — mobile, product placement
  2. On the road (12% — billboards, buses, taxis
  3. Mass media (17%) — TV, radio, the internet
  4. On paper (17%) — newspapers, magazines
  5. Events (13%) — sports and entertainment events
  6. Ad adverse (32%) — avoid them.

Personally, i don’t think that "ad adverse" is a meaningful segment. To the extent that we all avoid (and disparage) advertising that is IRRELEVANT to us, we’re all ad adverse. But address a relevant message to me, it doesn’t matter if it’s in skywriting, on a t-shirt or inside a bottlecap, I’ll notice it … and the same is true of you.

Mediamark is most fascinated by the emerging media segment:

This 9% of U.S. adults are far more likely than the average adult to agree with the following statements.

• A celebrity endorsement may influence me to consider or buy a product.

• I’m always one of the first of my friends to try new products or services.

• I follow the latest trends and fashions.

• Brand name is the best indication of quality.

If I had to pick, I guess I’d be a paper guy … as long as there are pictures to go along with the copy. What are you?

Tom

 

Filed Under communications, media usage, new media
 

Challenge To Agitator Readers

August 15, 2008

Attention all you fundraisers out there!

We’re looking for some savvy folks who have "solved" any of the key challenges — or should we say opportunities — we see presently out there in the nonprofit fundraising world.

Here are the challenges:

1. You have improved you first year renewal rate in the last twelve months over the previous twelve.

2. You have acquired brand new donors online through a replicable program for a true cost per acquisition less than your direct mail cost.

3. You have tested alternative "donate" pages on your website, found actionable improvements to make, and produced higher conversion rates as a result.

4.You have used social media (Facebook, MySpace, personal website badges, etc) to generate more than miniscule response of some kind (this implies you were actually looking for a measurable response of some kind, as opposed to just being cool).

5. In the last year, you have beaten your previous new donor prospecting mail package by a sufficient margin to switch to the new package.

6. You have improved your bequest fundraising results by more than 20% in the last twelve months over the previous twelve (remember that gazillion dollar inter-generational wealth transfer happening under your very nose?!).

If you or your team have conquered any of these challenges in the last year, we want to give you a raise! Three of them and you enter The Agitator Hall of Fame!

Roger & Tom

Filed Under You Deserve a Raise, direct mail, direct marketing, donor retention, email marketing, fundraising, new media, online fundraising, planned giving
 

Next Page »