They expand upon ten resolutions for 2012:

1. I will put fundraising first.
2. I will stop treating my donors like ATMs.
3. I will not engage in crappy communication. [My favorite. Includes this parody of Dr Seuss: "I will not read it on a plane, in a car or on a train. I will not read it here or there. I will not read it anywhere! I will not read bad copy!"]
4. I will whip my website into shape.
5. I will enable and maximize online giving.
6. I will get my email on.
7. I will use social media wisely.
8. I will investigate my portable potential.
9. I will modularize my mission. [Interesting discussion here about breaking down your organization's broad needs into more concrete and compelling bite-size giving opportunities.]
10. I will connect with people & organizations that can help me succeed.

Some good links provided if you want to delve more deeply into the rationale for their various recommendations.

Thanks to Charles Langley for the pointer.

Tom

P.S. Keep those responses to our 2012 Agitator reader survey coming in. Takes only five minutes. The better we know you, the more relevant we can make our content.

I expected Mark to be making a point about building relationships. Your year-end giving isn’t simply a response to some clever tactics dreamed up in October and executed from mid-November on. Those tactics are simply tapping into a (hopefully deep) reservoir of donor interest and commitment that your organization should have been nurturing for months.

However, Mark focused on something more narrow … sharpening your online giving strategy.

To be sure, heaps of donations have passed digitally into nonprofit coffers over the past 3-4 weeks.

By now, you’ve probably counted it … compared it to your projections (resulting in high-fives or gulps) … and even compared it to last year’s results (which, as Mark points out — citing Blackbaud — were up 34.5% in 2010 over 2009 for the sector … a high benchmark to beat).

I hope your next step will be to identify exactly what worked and what didn’t with your year-end online campaign. What is there to learn … and fix? Especially with regard to your conversion effectiveness at every step along the online giving process — from initial response (e.g., email subject lines and use of URLs in mail packages) to close (e.g. capture rate of your landing pages).

While the largest chunk of online giving still occurs at year-end, you’ll be leaving a lot of money on the table during the year, starting with your first online appeal of 2012, if you don’t attend to these learnings right now.

Mark is right about that.

But all the ‘fixes’ are just that … tightening the nuts and bolts. Don’t forget that the fixes still ultimately rest on the bedrock of donor commitment, which some nonprofits enjoy far more than others (as we’ve reported here).

Tom

One was a short blog post by Jeff Brooks, Why it’s hard to raise funds online. Citing Smart Insights Digital Marketing blog, Jeff says it takes:

• 3 seconds to get their attention with your subject line and the from line
• 5 seconds, once they’ve opened your message, to draw them in.
• 7 seconds to get them involved, on the way to taking action

Jeff’s comment: ” If you thought the mailbox was a cutthroat place, it’s nothing like the inbox.”

What Jeff is talking about I would indeed term online fundraising. You initiate the pitch online and you close the contribution online. That’s the real deal.

On the other hand, I saw these survey results reported in the Chronicle of Philanthropy saying that ‘online giving’ was higher than most expect amongst older donors, with 51% of recent donors age 60 and over in this survey saying they had made ‘online donations’.

I wonder what was actually being said by these donors … Did they respond to an appeal delivered (one way or the other) digitally? Or did they merely use the convenience of going online to complete a giving transaction initiated via some other channel … most likely direct mail? I suspect what’s being reported as ‘online fundraising’ is more of the latter, and this I consider ‘online fund capture’, not online fundraising.

If you think this is just a semantic difference, I urge you to go back and read my recent post, Are Online Fundraisers Stealing Credit?

I note that the Chron item also reported that a quarter of donors said that at least once they had started to make a gift online but not finished the process. That’s leaving a lot of money on the table, however you regard the lost transaction!

If your direct mail team delivers 100 prospective donors to your website, but 25 fail to complete the online transaction, I hope the accountability for that disappointing performance is being placed on the right shoulders! Or should I say silo?

Tom

Done by Epsilon, the Consumer Channel Preference Study (registration required) focuses particularly on consumer preferences with respect to direct mail and email. But it also looks at social media and mobile. (One disappointment … nothing on telemarketing.)

Some findings:

• 50% of U.S. consumers and 48% of Canadians said they pay more attention to postal mail than email;
• 60% of U.S. consumers and 64% of Canadians said they enjoy checking the mailbox for postal mail, highlighting an emotional connection;
• The least trustworthy channels are social media and blogs, achieving only 6% trust among U.S. consumers and 5% among Canadians.

And specifically, as between direct mail and email, 30% of consumers prefer receiving solicitations for donations in the mail, versus 9% via email.

The reasons for preferring direct mail are (in rank order):

• More private if sent through through the mail
• Already get too much email
• Would prefer not to have to print the info
• A lot of online info can’t be trusted

The reasons for preferring email are (in rank order):

• I can print the info to keep if I want
• Can choose which info I want sent to me
• Can read the info when it is convenient for me
• To save on paper
• Can more easily share the info with others

Epsilon makes this recommendation (among others):

“Use personally addressed direct mail to provide information as well as an emotional lift for consumers. Recognize that more targeted communications are becoming the norm for consumers as they are engaging media on terms they prefer. Every opportunity to express more knowledge of the consumer in the channels they prefer is essential to building a relationship and driving action.”

Amen.

Tom

Whatever. I don’t think I’ve ever seen numbers like these …

Way back in September 2010 a donor survey was conducted by Campbell Rinker for Dunham + Company, a US fundraising consulting firm.

The remarkable findings I’ve just noticed (brought to my attention by a recent Queer Ideas post) relate to the interaction between direct mail appeals and online giving.

Take note:

• 14% of respondents (who were online givers) said that a direct mail letter prompted them to give online versus only 6% who said an email prompted their online gift;
• 1 in 3 donors (37%) who give online say that when they receive a direct mail appeal from a charity they use the charity’s website to give their donation;
• One in two (50%) of generation X or Y donors say they give online in response to a direct mail appeal with 1 in 4 (26%) of boomers turning to online giving when they want to give as a result of receiving a direct mail appeal.  Only 14% of those over 65 will do the same, as 3 out of 4 of this demographic prefer to give by mail.
• 20% say their online giving was prompted by someone asking them to give in person. (WOW … that still happens?!)

Now, I grant that this is survey data, as opposed to hard transaction data, but even so the implications are startling …

As much as one-third of the response to any given direct mail appeal could come in via the nonprofit’s website. And only if your mail appeal directed respondents to a dedicated response page would you possibly know that with any certainty.

So think about that …

Are your direct mail returns being ‘under-counted’, making your mail program look weaker than it actually is?

Are those geeks running your online fundraising getting a bit of a free ride?

Are you integrating your mail appeals and online capture such that you can find out?

Whatever your answer to these questions, the bottomline is that your online ‘donation’ pages had better reflect all known best practice, or you’re killing yourself.

Tom

Actually, it’s more of a tip sheet, but valuable nonetheless. I’ll preview their 12 tips, but urge you to get the full paper.

Best Practices

1. Write great subject lines.
2. Don’t forget the preview pane!
3. Avoid SPAM language. They offer words to avoid.
4. Make it look good.
5. Treat your recipients like real people.
6. Focus on meaningful content.
7. Establish your brand. Become familiar to your recipients.
8. Include an offer.
9. Avoid large images.
10. Ask to be on their list.
11. Know and follow CAN-SPAM regulations.
12. Study major email providers policies.

Straightforward and sound. You can find additional email marketing intelligence collected by Targeted Marketing here.

Tom

Here’s a post from Email Insider dealing with what to do about inactive, or non-responding, email subscribers.

The author makes four points:

1. No matter how your company defines inactives, the problem typically is huge. He says commercial marketers typically have 30-40% inactives on their databases.

2. Inactives are not created equal … for any number of reasons — acquisition source, purchase history, tenure on list, demographics, etc. So don’t treat them all the same, he says.

3. Reactivation programs usually don’t work well. The author cites typical reactivation rates in the 1-2% range. He treats that as failure … a distraction from focusing resources on the actives! Write-off 30-40% of your list?! That’s the nuttiest advice I’ve ever read … unless of course your new donor acquisition cost is zilch. All of you finding it cheaper to find a brand new donor than it is to reactivate a lapsed one, raise your hands.

4. The focus should be on reducing the potential for new and existing subscribers to go inactive. Don’t lose your customers in the first place. Well, OK, that’s music to The Agitator’s donor retention-obsessed ears.

Here’s what the author says you should do to ‘minimize inactivity’ (i.e., not lose them):

1. Identify the commonalities and characteristics, if any, of your inactive subscribers and take corrective actions. I’m OK with that.

2. Launch a welcome and onboarding program or improve your current one. Get new subscribers engaged — and purchasing if possible — as quickly as possible. To fundraisers that means thank donors and re-solicit quickly.

3. Capture and use meaningful data to deploy targeted and segmented programs. His suggestions in this area are very consumer-oriented. But, in the fundraising context, they boil down to using whatever donor information you can capture  or infer (e.g., from acquisition source) to make your further engagement as relevant as it can possibly be. In other words, different strokes for different folks.

So, mixed reviews on this advice. But still plenty of food for thought.

Tom

Regarding donation forms, based on testing across several clients, in Beyond Best Practices Convio reports that these variables can make a difference:

• Form length: A one-page form does significantly better for most organizations.
• Column layout: One or two columns – let your audience decide.
• Trust seals: Prominent placement above the fold matters, and more than one may help too.

Other variables Convio tested showed mixed results.

So while a guide like this can help steer you toward more promising aspects of your online presentation to test, the bottomline is still … you’ve got to do your own testing!

Regarding email subject lines, in Crafting Subject Lines That Work, Convio offers seven tips to make your email appeals more effective.

And you can probably guess #7: Test, test, test.

Tom

Rick Christ, a VP at Amergent, has just issued Donor Stewardship:  Making Virtual Friends for Life, a white paper that you should download and read today.

When it comes to retention, Rick doesn’t mince words, always writes well, and succinctly summarizes the Amergent analysis of millions of gifts.

Key takeaways:

• Pay attention to getting a donor’s email address. Donors who have entrusted you with an email address have an average donor value that can be 150% higher than donors who don’t provide their address.
• Donors who make a second gift in their first year (preferably within the first 100 days) are TWICE as likely to make a gift in their second year.
• This means they will renew in Year 2 at DOUBLE the average retention rate for first year donors – 56% vs. 28%.

Most valuable, from my perspective, is the advice Rick offers elsewhere in the report.

Advice on:

• Auditing your own website. Do it! Today!
• Getting your donation page up to speed.
• Thanking your donors – properly. Acknowledgments are far more than creative receipting.

Although Rick and Amergent work mostly for Catholic charities, this is great advice regardless of religious preference.

Rick, you deserve a raise!

Roger

P.S.  Pay particular attention to Rick’s advice on what he calls “virtual stewardship”. If a donor with an email address is worth 150% more than one without, I wonder how much $$ organizations are budgeting to get that address?

Compared to a year earlier, H-H sees open rates declining from 26% to 17%, while click-thru rates remained steady at 3%. ‘Unsubscribe’ rates (now at 0.19%) and bounce rates (now at 5%) declined, suggesting better list hygiene.

How do your marketing email stats compare?

Quoting H-H , here are their recommendations for improving email performance:

1. Keep your mailing list clean. Process bounces and suppress opt-outs immediately. Also suppress addresses that have not responded to your mailings for the past six months.

2. Target your messaging. Send relevant content at an expected frequency. The top two reasons your subscribers opt out of your mailings is because the messaging is not relevant to them or they receive too many emails from you. If the subscriber thinks the content is of value to them and thinks that the frequency is reasonable, then most subscribers will remain loyal and will look forward to your next email.

3. Test! For every email you send, test your top three subject line choices. Whenever you’re thinking of redesigning your message template, test your top two choices. Test new offers. Testing is never once-and-done.

The Agitator’s recruiting effort last week for our donor retention project surfaced the reality that a lot of small- and mid-sized nonprofits have relatively small email lists to work with. Nevertheless, all groups should take to heart the list hygiene, relevance of message, and testing recommendations made in this report … you’re not too small to get it right from the get-go.

Tom