There’s an underlying phenomenon here that’s highly relevant, I think, to nonprofit fundraising.

Pew reports that more than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store to seek help with their purchase decision:

• 38% of cell owners used their phone to call a friend while they were in a store for advice about a purchase they were considering making;
• 24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store; and,
• 25% of adult cell owners used their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else.

What’s really going on here? Consumers are looking for reassurance … and they’re looking for it from the source they trust most — other consumers who are friends or who have written reviews based on their own experience. And they’re looking for comparison information, specifically with respect to price … seeking value for money.

In short, they’re realizing … “I don’t need to be on my own making this decision. Advice is just  a few taps away.” They are being trained to consult with others because it’s so easy and immediate.

So, now they’re home, having purchased a new iPhone or iPad, and your prospect mailing shows up. What might they do?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that they’ll pick up the phone and ask a friend … “Should I give to Worldvision or Save the Children?” Although indeed some might inquire of a friend if they support either. Or they might recall reassuringly that a friend has ‘liked’ one of the organizations on their Facebook page.

What I do think many (most even?) will do is go online for some form of validation. They’ll go to the organization’s website and poke around.

And, given the consumer shopping experience described above, where peer referrals are hugely important, what should they readily find?

I would suggest — above all — TESTIMONIALS!

Testimonials both from very satisfied beneficiaries of the organization’s work and from real donors who appreciate the organization’s accomplishments. Testimonials in a variety of formats, from short quotes to short videos.

Secondarily, but definitely not with the same weight as the testimonials, strong ratings from the charity raters (or some other straightforward reassurance/evidence about financial accountability and transparency). Price comparison isn’t really a relevant concept in the fundraising setting. But reassurance about money being properly managed and delivering big bang for the buck clearly is.

Few offers (or solicitations) are considered in isolation anymore. The best thing you can do to address that reality is make sure your online presence is your prospect’s reassuring friend.

Tom

What Rainie says, much of it related to the explosion of social media and mobile communications, applies to all messaging and communications, which makes these observations pertinent to fundraisers, and especially those in advocacy groups.

Some key thoughts:

• With hugely expanded networking capacities, there are many more — and new — civic actors, many operating independently.
• Four messaging opportunities — to traditional ‘paid media’ and ‘earned media’ now add ‘owned media’ (e.g., websites, customer service) and ‘shared media’ (e.g., social sites, YouTube) … all requiring communications strategies.
• Six stages of engagement — observing (Lurkers matter, he says), following, endorsing, contributing, owning, leading.
• Migration of authority away from organizations (like your nonprofit) to — traditional experts with new platforms (e.g., blogs), amateur experts who are avid contributors (some with tribes), new algorithmic authorities (e.g., Google, Bing).
• Different ‘attention zones’ — continuous partial attention to media streams, immersion in ‘deep dives’, info-snacking in free moments.
• All organizations under more scrutiny, where trust depends upon transparency — surveillance (powerful watch the ordinary), sousveillance (ordinary watch the powerful), coveillance (peers stalk peers).
• Age of big data is upon us, giving new power to analytics.

This is a powerpoint presentation, so you will need to fill in the blanks yourself. But it’s well worth the mental effort … a very stimulating presentation.

Lee Rainie, you deserve a raise!

Tom

What struck me was that 76% of the Haiti text givers said their text contributions are “usually a spur-of-the-moment decision”, whereas 45% say that about their online contributions. The surprise is not that text giving is quintessentially impulse giving … to me it’s that such a large percentage, 50%, say that they “usually do  lot of research before donating” online. I would have expected online donations to also be more spontaneous.

This report has tons of valuable information …

• Haiti was the door-opener to text giving for fully 74% of donors who gave via that channel.
• However, nearly all of the 73% of Haiti text donors in this survey who belong to a group or organization, have made a monetary contribution to their group(s) in the past. In other words, most are established donors trying a new channel.
• Many of the Haiti text donors have given again via texting (56% to one of three specified disasters, and 29% to other causes).
• Mobile givers are more racially and ethnically diverse than the overall population of charitable givers. Whites comprise three-quarters (75%) of all charitable givers, but make up two-thirds (63%) of this sample of Haiti donors and just half (51%) of all text donors.
• 43% of text donors encouraged others to give, but 75% who did so encouraged others by talking face-to-face.
• After making their Haiti contribution, six in ten say they haven’t followed the ongoing reconstruction efforts (43% “not too closely” and 15% “not at all”). Here today, gone tomorrow.

There’s just too much in this ‘must read’ report to summarize here, including an interesting profile of text givers versus other givers, and a look at how text givers prefer to communicate with groups in which they are involved (surprises here).

Well done, Pew!

Tom

While this guide specifically looks at online political advertising, any nonprofit looking to target and engage a constituency online will find it very useful.

As the guide says: “What makes video advertising unique is its ability to incorporate calls to action and enable supporters to easily respond. So, not only can campaigns target a persuasive message to voters, they can fulfill secondary goals like generating email signups, helping voters find polling places—and, yes—raising cash.”

In other words, the techniques and tools presented in this guide are applicable to just about any online call to action.

While the guide provides case studies and strategic/tactical advice from various consultants, perhaps most useful to nonprofits will be the basic ‘nuts and bolts’ information — costs, online advertising types, format standards, video ad networks and what they offer, and various ad technologies that can add interactive functionality to online video ads.

Kate Kaye, you deserve a raise.

Tom

In my book, improving that rate of interaction is the toughest challenge for any nonprofit’s web team.

If anybody out there is doing better at ‘capturing’ website visitors, I’m sure Agitator readers would like to hear your secrets!

Especially since the job is getting harder by the day.

Along come social media sites, with their own engagement challenges.

And now comScore has just released some new data on on US mobile phone use in regards to social media.

Says comScore: “In August 2011, more than 72.2 million people accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile device, an increase of 37 percent from the previous year. Nearly 40 million U.S. mobile users, more than half of the mobile social media audience, access these sites almost every day, demonstrating the importance of this activity to people’s daily routines.”

Facebook alone has 57 million mobile users.

Adds comScore: “Mobile social networkers also were likely to interact with brands on these sites with more than half (52.9 percent) reading posts from organizations/brands/events. One in three mobile social networkers received a coupon/offer/deal, with one in four (27.7 percent) clicking on an ad while on a social networking site.”

Sure, plenty of opportunity. But how to capture it?!

The margin of error for ‘not getting it right’ on a small mobile screen is tiny. Mobile users want to see and (maybe) react instantly, often in a context of high distraction. Or they’re gone in a flash. They’re rarely on mobile to browse.The design challenge is huge.

Your run-of-the-mill website homepage is almost certainly inadequate to the task of engaging mobile viewers. As noted, already it works only dismally for leisurely web browsers, who can see much more of what’s on offer … and often, that’s too much!

And so, your work gets harder! Sorry.

Tom

Seriously though, I’m not the Luddite I appear to be … hey, I sent two text messages today.

However, that does mean I’m dragging down the curve, according to the latest figures released by Pew Research.

According to Pew, for the American adult texting population as a whole (83% of US adults own cell phones and 73% of those text), the average user sends or receives an average of 41.5 messages on a typical day, with the median user sending or receiving 10 texts daily. This level of usage is the same as reported in 2010.

But hold on to your shorts, the median cell owner age 18-24 sends or receives 50 messages a day … and the average for this tap, tapping cohort is 109.5 messages per day.

Keep in mind that where smartphones are involved, texting is on top of all other uses , including checking email, taking photos, web/social net browsing, using various apps … and even talking. As for talking, 53% of cell owners still prefer to be reached that way if someone needs to reach them.

Most interesting to me is the education factor — against a mean for all users of 41.5 texts per day, the numbers are: for less than high school, 69.4 (I get that … kids); for HS diploma, 45.4; some college, rises to 53.0; College+, drops to 23.8. Most of the professionals I see seem to be texting more than that.

All in all … as a fundraiser, I’d still rather have your email address than your cell number. Any disagreement on that?

Tom

Today we have even more social net data from Nielsen.

Like Pew, Nielsen notes some especially strong growth amongst older demographics, in this case pointing out that internet users over age 55 are driving the growth of social networking through mobile devices. 40% of all social media users access these nets via their mobile phone (37%) or IPad (3%) .

Nielsen reports that social nets and blogs now account for 23% of the time Americans spend online. The core demographic — female, age 18-49, educated.

While the research didn’t ask specifically about charitable giving, the report does note that 70% of active online adult social networkers shop online, 12 percent more likely than the average adult Internet user.

I would hypothesize a similar ‘consumer’ pattern with respect to online giving. Evidence: Social netters are 26% more likely to give their opinion on politics and current events. And without giving stat details, Nielsen says that offline, active adult social networkers are more likely than the average adult Internet user to be found at political rallies … tweeting, no doubt!

Finally, 53% follow a brand on a social net … it could be yours!

Tom

P.S. The report indicates usage of all the major social net sites, and includes some limited international data as well.

As reported by Melinda Krueger on ClickZ Marketing News, here’s the first item I’ve seen regarding his insights on the usability of mobile sites. I wish it were more thorough, but it’s a start.

Some of Nielsen’s thoughts …

• Mobile user has low commitment to any mobile content, so poor usability is even more of a killer than with computers.
• Users download plenty of apps they soon ignore — casualties of poor usability.
• Apps have the advantage over mobile sites because they’re faster and incorporate features like location, which improve the user experience.
• Don’t require the user to remember things from screen to screen — user won’t use mobile to research or compare large amounts of info.
• Copy must not just be short … it must be ultra-short.

Working against your content is the user’s lack of both commitment and focus — he or she simply won’t take the time and effort to figure out something tricky on mobile. It either works quickly and easily, or the user moves on … either to another app or back to the ‘real’ (i.e. off-mobile) world.

According to Nielsen, big mistakes on mobile include making it too difficult to touch and manipulate (e.g., use large touch targets), and trying to do too much (e.g., don’t overload the first screen, use progressive disclosure to build the experience).

If you want to see Nielsen ‘in action’, read his critique of the Wall St Journal mobile app.

And if you see more from Nielsen on mobile usability, let us know!

Tom

That’s a heap of online video watching. And there’s plenty of fresh material to watch … the latest statistics from YouTube are that 48 hours of content are uploaded every minute to the site!

I’m especially struck by YouTube data indicating that their service receives over 200 million views a day via mobile connections.

Pew Internet survey data from May 2011 indicates that some 34% of the cell phone owners in the country have shot video with their phone; 26% have watched video on their phone; and 22% have posted videos or photos online.

I hope you have online video in your workplan. And if you want to see ‘best practice’ use of the medium, visit CharityWater.org.

Tom

Smartphone Adoption and Usage

• 35% of all US adults have a smartphone.
• The biggest users — those with income of $75K or more, college degree, under age 45, African-American or Latino.
• Some 87% of smartphone owners access the internet or email on their handheld; 25% of smartphone owners say that they mostly go online using their phone, rather than with a computer.

As we’ve asked before, what does your website look like on a smartphone screen?

E-reader & Tablet Ownership

• E-reader ownership has doubled in last six months, to 12% of US adults.
• Tablet ownership, now at 8%, appears to be leveling off; 17% of those with $75K+ income own one, and 13% of college grads.
• Confirming the overall trend toward adoption of mobile devices, laptop computers are for the first time as popular as desktop computers among U.S. adults.

Social Networking Sites and Our Lives

• 47% of US adults use at least one social network site (SNS), close to double the number in 2008.
• Half these users are now over the age of 35.
• 92% are using Facebook, 18% LinkedIn, 13% Twitter.

But the big news was political (the underlying survey was taken over the November 2010 elections). Says Pew:

“At that time, 10% of Americans reported that they had attended a political rally, 23% reported that they had tried to convince someone to vote for a specific candidate, and 66% reported that they had or intended to vote. Internet users in general were over twice as likely to attend a political meeting, 78% more likely to try and influence someone’s vote, and 53% more likely to have voted or intended to vote.  Compared with other internet users, and users of other SNS platforms, a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day was an additional two and half times more likely to attend a political rally or meeting, 57% more likely to persuade someone on their vote, and an additional 43% more likely to have said they would vote.”

I’ll wager that a question about involvement in issue advocacy would have yielded similar results.

Tom