The NY Times had an interesting article yesterday on how Tufts University was inviting applicants for admission to submit YouTube videos as part of their applications.
Great idea! While enterprising students have been sending videos with their applications for some time at their own initiative, it appears Tufts is the first school to incorporate online videos into its "official" process.
Some videos have made their student-producers into minor stars. Here’s the most-viewed video so far. I wonder if this guarantees her admission! How could Tufts turn down the applicant with the most popular video?!
Does this have anything to do with fundraising?
The idea of these kids selling themselves via YouTube made me wonder …
Has any nonprofit linked a direct mail appeal with a supporting video appeal?
I.e., Have the signer of the mail appeal also deliver an online video appeal that drives home the key message and urgency of the mail piece. In my mind’s eye, not a slick video … just a straight-to-camera personal appeal.
I know lots of you have used online video incorporated into email campaigns, or to reinforce website "Donate" pages.
But here I’m curious about the synergy specifically between direct mail and YouTube.
For years, the prospecting control package for Planned Parenthood was signed by Katharine Hepburn. Can you imagine not clicking to the online video of her personally imploring you to donate?
Any examples?
Tom
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You might do well to check out this new anonymous blog noted above. Post after post is about just this very subject.
Here’s an example of a test being conducted for the New York Public Library. A direct mail prospecting package was sent out with the theme “What are you searching for?” in the copy. Recipients we’re invited to take a look at what others are searching for at the Library by viewing a video at this url http://www.nypl.org/donate
We’re testing this against a control package. Still in the middle of the campaign so we’ll see how it performs.
We’ve tested video integrated with a direct mail piece. It was more of a story rather than a straightforward appeal from the signer. In addition to the video, the copy and design were also different from the control. The video test did not win. We are now retesting the video and other elements individually.
We had some film-maker friends make a video of our kids asking for presents for the holidays and we sent it our a week after our direct mail piece had gone out. We raised more than $6000 in less than a week.
I have a design blog and posted it on that, and some of the other design bloggers picked it up and posted about it, so we got about 100 new donors, too!
Here’s the video.
We’ve been testing how video might help or hurt direct mail fundraising for some time now. Our videos have run the spectrum from simple appeal signer on camera as you suggest, to much more designed, and in some cases animated, pieces.
Last year, we did a head to head test of the letter signer video concept, almost exactly as you suggest it here. It was for a globally recognized nonprofit client of ours (you’d recognize them instantly), and we saw the video-enhanced kit outperform the control by nearly 50 PERCENT on ROI and Gross Yield Per Thousand (GYPM). This was for the annual vision-casting appeal.
Lest these results be interpreted as a call for everyone to drop what they’re doing and do only video, we also tested a very similar concept for the same client with an urgent summer slump offer and saw the video kit lose to the control by nearly 48 percent. So not a done deal.
But the general trend we’re seeing at Masterworks is that video works in fundraising, and it’s only going to grow in importance. Especially as our culture continues to grow more and more online-video-centric.
We have done video thank you’s from supporters, PSAs, lots (too many?) talking heads. I’d love to hear about people’s experience with distribution and marketing the videos. Yes, you can put it on YouTube, but that doesn’t guarantee the eye balls.
You can see lots of examples of great online video through the 4th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards
You can enter videos made in 2009.
Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/nonprofitvideoawards
You can also learn more about online video by watching the Guide To Online Video http://www.see3.net/guide