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Durney welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host last week on the april fool’s edition, it was ask awareness for small shops that was with amy eisenstein. She’s, the author of fifty, asks in fifty weeks, and she shared lots of valuable insights for opening up relationships, identifying prospects, cultivating and soliciting all for small development shops. In fact, one of our listeners posted to the facebook page that it was the best hour she spent all week last week. I appreciate that this week we excel in email execution, it’s going to be dave pulis davis principle of granite partners and he’s going to share five elements of effective email marketing and also have other tips about list hygiene. Are you getting the most out of your e mail? How do you develop an email list if you don’t have one? Is your list hygienic and only engaging in safe practises? Also claire meyerhoff claire is editorial director at the plant e-giving company, and she is this show’s creative producer claire’s going to reveal how to write for email fund-raising so that your messages get opened rid. And responded to so we’re all about email in this hour between my guests, it’s tony’s, take two at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour, and this week on tony’s, take two five ways to be a planned e-giving evangelist or an evangelist for whatever it is that you love doing that’s on tony’s, take two. So we’re all about email this week. After this break, i’ll be joined by dave pulis and where we’ll get started with our excel in email execution show. Stay with me. Did the shooting getting ding, ding, ding, ding? You’re listening to the talking, alternate network waiting to get in. Good. Cubine is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police crawl are said to want to nine, six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio were all about email today, and i’m joined now by dave pulis. Dave, how you doing? Good morning. Thanks for having me, it’s my pleasure to have you welcome. Dave is the ceo and chief consultant of granite partners, which you’ll find out granite hyphen, part p a r t dot com he has been creating successful marketing programs for clients, mostly in the washington d c metro area for over twenty five years, and i’m very glad that his work and his expertise in email marketing specifically bring him to the show. Welcome again, dave, thank you, david. What does somebody do if they don’t have an email list to get started with him as well? Talk about building the list before we talk about what to do with it. Uh, there are a number of approaches that depends on what situation you’re in. If you’re looking for consumers, there are off a lot of ways to build a consumer list. Um, one of the more prominent and more recently evolved is the social media. You can use social media to evolve yourself into an e mail list based on friendster, facebook twitter followers linked in connections those kind of things can all be gathered and uses a colonel for a personal sort of networking list that you can use to promote whatever business you’re in. Okay, we’re non-profits fundraisers, it’s a little more complicated. Okay, well, that’s let’s deal with complicated cause. Our audience is small and midsize non-profit so that’s that’s where we want to be how should they go about it if they have a list of people who have been supporting them? Maybe just for a couple of years, maybe for many years, but they don’t have email lists. Uh, probably the first thing to do is make sure you have permission to communicate with their members are builders. They say something. Do you have a least an address for them? Send him a postcard asked him to send you back their email address. In response, you’ll give them some sort of data special report or a copy of research or something the value to them in response in return for them giving up their email. Okay, so use their their physical address to get their email address or okay on your website if the organization has a website. And you simply ask visitor’s log in before they can access certain pieces of it or certain information that they need include a lot to give them your e mail address. In that way, you can collect it and use it for later. Okay, so maybe not to get to your home page, but to get to some deeper content on your site. You mean then then there’s ah, little there’s an access that requires email address that’s one good way to do it. Because you’re making sure that it’s not just a casual visitor, you’re having themselves collect by their level of interest. Okay, okay. What’s, what you would end up doing if you if you put it on the front of the home page, you’re going to get every tom, dick and harry that entered that in the search. They wanted to see the front page and make sure they got to the right spot. See if there’s anything of interest there at all, you make them register, you get their email address, you send out e mails. You wasted all that time, money and effort to maintain the list. And they have no interest in on what you’re offering right? Ok? Or you might even just turn people off who might have an interest, but they said just to see the home page, i have to sign in, right? Right, you’re going to get some abandonment issues, they’re for your for your web page as well, and there are people that have a legitimate reason to see your front page and can use the information, but that you don’t want to write. I love how you call it abandonment. I’m not going to put you in jargon jail for that way have jog in jail here on tony martignetti non-profit but i already know you. I said it and then you called it abandonment. I just love the you know everybody every every business has its has its language. So abandonment issues. Yes, of your plus, if you know if you having spouse problems, that could be an abandonment issue. But we’re not going that deep again. That’s a different show that’s ahold of yes that’s a whole different person. Um, abandon ministers? Yes. Alright. What about what about events? And if you’re hosting an event, maybe just put post cards on the table at the events or something like that. Anytime you’re gathering an environment where you have potential donors or potential participants, you want to make sure you’re gathering, collecting email addresses, okay, people importing them on their business cards. It’s a good way to start raffles contest, even offering as i do on my website content in exchange for the information we talked about it buying, offering by mail some sort of special report i offer electronically a report on my website and i forced people to give me their email address, so i consented to them. Okay, electronically and it’s, a much fairer trade and people who are looking for something to read like to receive free reading material and return. It makes a lot of that now. Will people see that example on the site that i gave the girl to granite hyphen p a r t dot com they will there’s a new report there on how engaged customers on the left hand column. If you click there, you’ll be able to download on a free pdf of a report guard through some research. We did a little while ago about how to engage customers. Also have tto log in. To give me your email address, i can send it to you, you’ll get a response back that tells you yes, we received your order, and if you like anything else, please let us know, and you’ll also get a confirmation of the fact that you received the order and a questionnaire about whether you like it or not. Okay, so i assume those are all the best practices because you’re doing them for your business, it’s all automatic. I don’t have to do a dog gone thing, and it makes people connected to me much better and gives them a lot more opportunity to give me feedback on the information. And unless they collect their name without creating too much of a problem with their identity and something you alluded to in that description of the way you’re recommending things go about o r non-profits go about building this list is having permission. What? What is what is permission? Marketing and how do we get permission? Permission marketing is a critical step in producing effective push down marketing. What you’re essentially doing is letting people to give you their permission to market to them. And that does two things. One engages their level of interest and let them self select what they want to receive. Two it also tell you how they want to receive it by medium, he opted in is a way of gathering permission marketing. If you send out an e mail to all your members, say ifyou’re non-profit membership organization and say, we’re updating our record, we’d like to give you would like you to give us your email address so we can communicate with you that way. Check the following boxes about what’s appropriate what the best address to use is if we have this information correct listed below. Check that and we’ll keep that. And also, if you do not like to receive anything from us, check the box below to opt out, so opt in permission has sort of past it if you give them an opt out option it’s a little less over on a lot of people to sort of ignore it, which gives you sort of tacit permission to market to them. But the trick is they’ve given you the information and are allowing you to market to them directly without being directly at fort alright, and then you as the e mailer as the non-profit have a responsibility to honor all those selections that the person has made. Absolutely. And if you don’t honor them, your reputation with that person and in general, gets tarnished to the point where it’s almost unusable, and we’ll go into that a little further with, with the a little later on. Ok, we’re going to take a break right now. My guest is dave polish. We’re talking about excellence in email, execution, stay with us, talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. 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If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two, eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com oppcoll dafs you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Dahna hello and welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio we’re live today with dave polish. We’re talking about excel in email execution and since we’re alive, that means we’re taking calls so you can call with a question for dave about female best practices. Frustrations you might be having the number is eight seven seven for a tow for one two oh eight, seven, seven for eight o for one two. Oh, dave, now we’ve developed this list. How do we keep it clean? What’s a clean list? Well, cleanly is one that functions and deliver your message precisely where you wanted to go every time. And there are a couple of things that you need to start with. You’ve built a list that you think is right. The first thing is to make sure that what you start with is good, that we all know about computers, garbage in, garbage out. You have to make sure that you all the addresses fit and conformed to the format for proper email address. Okay. Typos, bat fingering the addresses, getting things backwards, transposing characters. Email addresses are far, far higher accuracy level than postal address. Write the e mail. I just has to be exact, right has to be perfect, another perfect every time or it will not go. I know what you have to do is check it bilich manually and electronically to make sure that all conforms and you, khun, send every piece of mail on their towards both to go ok is the simplest way to do that. To send a test email to someone to verify that on dh, then get their permission in the way you described is that is that a decent way to do it? Uh, you’re better off eyeballing a list firsthand mechanical and then going through optically and and making sure you haven’t missed anything. Because if you get things wrong, you may get stuck or trapped in filters and create problems. And what that’s going to do is block you when you get the right of duitz okay, you want to clean it up visually? First, as best you can make sure that all the symbols are right before the domain name it’s not a exclamation point instead because i’m gonna get the wrong key. Happens a lot. You can do search and replace doing this. It takes very little time. To do it electronically and then go through and i bought a list they just have to three people looking over, make sure there’s no glaring errors. You want to make sure that all the domain names that have the letters spam in them are taken out those traps put in there by the sometimes when you rent list more often than not, but occasionally somebody’ll flip one in there. When they’re registering, they’ll give you a bogus address that doesn’t really exist. You want to pull out the ones that have a domain name that’s sort of suspicious looking, you’ll learn about it after a while to make sure you’re getting exactly what you think you’re getting, okay, so to get behind to get into the content, let’s say so this wouldn’t thiss wouldn’t be people filling out cards at an event, probably or mailing back in response, it’s when registering so people might give bogus address you know i don’t have such a good hearted person, i don’t even think of e don’t even think of people cheating on something so simple is that really learned over time that it’s ok, you fill out a form somebody’s going to send you back something, and often those lists are sold over and over and over again, and by the time the third generation sale is over, you have no relevance to the list of all right, and you’re getting stuff that you really don’t want it clogging up your e mail box, and you don’t want that, so they either make up a fake address to give you so that bill passed through the filters as a legitimate address initially, or they’ll give you one that they never open, which isn’t gonna do you any good. Anyway, a lot of those gmail accounts or a well accounts that are free people will just have one of those strictly as they used to fill out all that junk drops into there. I see you don’t want to be in that list. You want to see a legitimate lift with a legitimate carrier, verizon or comcast, or or one of those for home and the businesses typically you want them to reflect the domain of the business there. Part of that tells you a legitimate what gmail but gmail dahna all those could be legitimate accounts, you couldn’t you couldn’t screen all those out? No, you can’t, but you can see one that looks, uh two, far from their real given name. If you have that to compare it to, uh, nobody’s registering, you know, as nerd sixty five jool and they’re not giving you a scientific address or their name is fred spelled backwards or something. You start to look at the bogus ones and figure it out. Okay? And since you did mention something that we hadn’t talked about in developing the list, let’s, talk a little about purchasing a list. What is that valuable for the small or midsize non-profit purchasing a list rental and compiled lists can be of value. You have to be very careful about the source if you go through a legitimate list broker and you’re looking for a very legitimate piece of a database that concerns especially business addresses. Yes, you can gain a lot out of that because those things have been double opt in check they’ve been verified on a monthly basis that they do exist and they are really and that they do fit the profile that you’ve selected when you rented the list. Now you have to keep in mind that those are usually for one time use only, and you cannot reuse them unless you have a special agreement from the renter compile lists are another story, those of those public things that you could buy that say have been scraped off of websites or have been captured out of the air from from email conversations and that kind of thing. Hackers will market these things to bring an extra bucks. They’re not very useful, they’re not very male herbal, and you’re getting into some serious spamming trouble by even attempting to use most of them because they’re loaded with with the monitors and traps and keys in their little tell people that you’re ok, then you want to be working with a legitimate company that you can verify you mentioned scraping off female what’s your trading closely to jorgen jail has, and it sort of has a a suggestion of what it is, but but i don’t want you to even be anywhere near drug in jail. So what? What is scraping somebody’s? It sounds like unsavory practice. It isn’t unsavory practice in its connotation, and it is information what you want to avoid. There are people out there, who will go to a business website and literally capture copy paste electronically scrape off every email address that’s buried in there. Your entire staff listing all your if you’re going to a law firm, they’ve got every lawyer listed on there with a love with a separate email address for them, they’re going to scrape all those off of there and compile them all into a big list. Listen, this may be legitimate, but they don’t know who they belong to or what they go to what level of persons is they have no information that goes with it, it’s just a list of addresses, as if people would really want to communicate with a bunch of lawyers or anything. There could be no manufacturing firm or, you know, the post office website or anything. They just gathered a bunch of e mail addresses from a bunch of list. Sometimes they’ll use. They’ll sort of piggyback on someone else’s, the internet activity as well, and their going from site to site start scraping through that. Okay, it gets very, very tedious and very touchy when you start doing stuff like that because you have privacy issues, you have legal issues? Uh, spam laws have teeth in them. Ladies and gentlemen, they can sue you for spamming. So you want to be careful what addresses you’re using and who you’re sending? Okay? And i didn’t want to suggest that. Buying a list from from verifiable source would be a good way of trying to get donors. I mean, as a fund-raising consultant, i didn’t mean to suggest that this is a way to acquire new donors, but maybe to acquaint someone with your with your non-profit but you’d have to be very precise in the type of list you bought in terms of the interests of the people. Is that is that possible, dave, to drill into get a list of people who are interested in, i don’t know environmental activism, and but maybe in the pacific northwest, i mean, do the lists from vera from from stable and appropriate cos come with that level of detail, some do, and some do not, uh, they’re further a head for business than they are for kapin consumer availability, drilling that deeply. Okay, if you drill down into segments that deeply on consumer list, chances are good you’re gonna have to pay a pretty penny for it. A good place to start with that if you have a specific interest, they look bilich environmental, you would want to try going to print publication that deal with that concept sierra club or audubon society or any of those that deal in environmental issues routinely subscriber list from them could be segmented by geography. And you could also rent additionally, email addresses that go with those mailing address him that way. Excellent idea. Okay, because that, yes, you know, the publications targeted. Okay, great. All right, so we need to get around that trying to pull that out of a compiled list is virtually impossible. Okay. Okay, good. Thank you. So we’ve developed our list. We understand how to get it clean and make sure it stays clean. Has to be maintained another thing, because now thing out, once you’re going to get some activity coming back from it, not only response is that you want, but response is you don’t want your going to get people that ask you to take them off. You’re going to get because you missed the target. It wasn’t who you thought it was not interested. And they don’t want you to lock up their box for the next six months with stuff they don’t need. That’s a good thing. You like getting those out of there? Because that saves you time and money. Yes, too. You’re gonna have people that were out of the office that day and i just bounced back and told you they may get hurt or they may not. Three you’re going to have bounced back for another reason, theis, and that part of the country was a little slow that day and missed something. There was a glitch in in a certain segment of the internet that went down for a moment your mail got trapped in it could be any number of other things. There’s a whole series of bounce back code that the internet service provider will give you that helps you interpret those bounce back unless you separate them out and decide whether to keep that address that is a temporary thing or whether it’s permanent it’ll tell you if you got the address wrong, if that person’s not at that address anymore. If that business is not there, that remains not active. Whatever they’ll tell you. What the problem woobox with it, when you learn how to read the code, we got to get those out of there. Once you’ve sent the first one, you’re gonna have to be prepared with how to deal with all those. Things that bounce back and those happen fairly quickly, usually within the first hour or so after you send it. Okay, so that’s that’s really list maintenance and that that’s going to be happening every time you send to your list sounds like there will be a certain level of activity depending on how little that down to practically nothing. Yeah, alright, depending on how many people you’re mailing to if it’s just a few hundred, you’ll have fewer of those which is get you in fewer because you’re making good decisions based upon those code taking the bad ones that are going to be permanently bad out. All right, you’re not re mailing, right? Okay. So, uh, well, let me just remind people that my guest is dave polish he’s, the principal of granite partners. And we’re talking about ex selling in your email execution. So then, dave, we have developed our list and it’s clean, and we’ve gotten the appropriate permissions and we know how to maintain the list over time. You have some elements of effective messaging, actually. What to say? What? What? What’s. Your first bit of advice on what the content of the message should. Be, uh, some of it is what to say, and so that is how to say it. Okay, um, the first thing you’re going to notice is that with the new influx of mobile customers that are out there that have their email come to a mobile device, you have far less real estate with which to impress the recipients you have basically a from a dress and a single subject line that’s all they’re going to see on a mobile device there’s no preview function. So what you have to do is make sure that a the address you’re sending from is from a brand they will recognize or at least understand. So whatever service you are using to send these out, if its outlook, you have to set up a box that sort of carrie’s co-branded makes sense for the outgoing mail or if it’s a service, you want to make sure that they’ve gotten you on outgoing address that reflects your brand so that they know who this thing is from and they recognize. But wouldn’t wouldn’t the service just be using your own? You’re you’re non-profit domain name, sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t they have what’s called rotating? Yeah, what’s. A rotating what’s, a rotating. Why would they understand? Why would they rotate for the same non-profit why would they use different domain names to send from? They’ll mask them behind an existing name, so the recipient will only see your name, but they’re using ten or twelve different outgoing addresses because they could shove more down the data pipe. That way they can spread your list out, get it out the door faster, but if you’re a non-profit you want it to come from your domain, absolutely time your domain is that the physical space that your domain inhabits doesn’t allow enough passed through dahna you can’t shove enough email through it fast enough because you just don’t have enough bandwidth, you didn’t run enough stone, so what happens is they’ll spread it out and they’ll mask it. They’ll refer to your domain name. The recipient only sees your domain, which is good, but they’re using ten twelve different ones with sam filters will pick up on the sub and block things out on who’s, the who’s the day that we’re talking about is this a company like constant contact? Is that o r who’s today you’re referring to there are service providers after that do nothing but deliver both female. They are, they’re registered there, certified they’re they’re very, very compliant with the service providers that give you internet access and then actually deliver and carry the mail. This is a middleman that you would go to as a non-profit if you have a list of of ten or twenty thousand potential donors that you’re going to be sending to routinely, you’re not gonna be able to shelve twenty thousand addresses through your outlook account and with any kind of accuracy or time limit. Okay, so what you’re gonna do is anything over about two hundred names you’re gonna want to goto what provider that sends out both female for a living that’s all they do and is constant contact an example of what you’re talking about male chimp? Is that an example? Or there are eyes that i am i in the wrong line, the wrong space, you’re in a similar space in a different scale gostin contact and male chimp and those kind of things arm or of the do-it-yourself version of that, their sort of big versions of outlook, they’re attached to larger relation all databases that lets you get mail out in larger volumes by yourself from your workstation, ok, here, but if you’re sending ten and twenty thousand, even though we’re gonna have a problem, they’re going to start to bog down and go very slowly, and they’re going to use up a lot of bandwidth, okay, but for our audience of small and midsize non-profits the ones i mentioned, what might be suitable absolutely after they’re a great way to get started. If you’re looking at that between two and five thousand names of any kind. Yeah, constant contact, be a very good bargain, ok, dave, we have just a little less than a minute left. Why don’t you tell us what you think is coming next? What’s the what’s, the next generation of email going to look like email’s going to get a lot more robust in the next six months to a year, you can bet on the fact that you’ll be able to embed photographs and video in your outgoing e mail and have it be interactive and reacted currently, if you put an image in an email, you run the risk of having it be screened out by spam filters or by network. Firewall because they don’t allow images, they scan for them and they remove the as being too large, and they cut down on the volume of data traffic so they get rid of them. So if you’re putting an image in there, one of the things we tell people who don’t let the image tell the entire story, have some text that tells the story because the image probably going to make it and you see video coming in email, absolutely video will be able to be embedded in outgoing email beyond the capability we have today where it’s, just a lincoln it’s, actually resident somewhere else. We’re going to be able to actually carry video imagery on before too long. All right, we have to leave it there. Dave pulis principle of granite partners, which you’ll find at granite hyphen part piela dot com dave, thank you very much for being a guest. Thank you for your excellent ideas. Pleasure. Enjoy it. Thank you very much. After this break, it’s tony’s, take two. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Geever oh, this is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy contact them today. Admission one one media dot com hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business, why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back. It is roughly thirty two minutes after the hour, which means it’s time for tony’s take two, and after that, i’ll be joined by claire meyerhoff and we’ll continue talking about ex selling in email execution five four tonys take two five ways to be a plant e-giving evangelist something i blogged about this week, it actually could apply to anything that you that you do that you love doing, and i hope you really love the work that you do so much so that you want to evangelize about it. I chose planned giving as the subject of my evangelism on this week’s blawg, and i’ll just share a couple of the things that i think go into being an evangelist for what you do. Yeah, i love it, you know, in my example, you gotta love plant e-giving you gotta recognize that it has value for non-profits and for donors and for their families, and recognize the good that it khun do for society as you’re helping charitable missions. So whatever it is that you want to evangelize about, you really have to love it and be unashamed about your love of it don’t talk you know sort of humbly or shyly about whatever it is you want to evangelize about, you got you need to be out in the open, you need to be enthusiastic, which should be easy because you love what it is you’re talking about, so carry that enthusiasm don’t don’t don’t talk, you know, sort of humbly about your your love of the subject you want to evangelize about lear, love of your work and and and as you’re being unashamed, spread that word, spread it to people that you work with, people who are in your network that you don’t work with, um, when the topic comes up, you know, what do you do? What do you love doing? You want to be unashamed about sharing it, and you want to use the opportunities that you have to spread the word. And so those are three of the ways that i think you could be a plant e-giving evangelist or an evangelist about whatever it is you love to do, and you can see my blogging m p g a d v dot com for more on those ways and a couple of additional ways as well, and also always the reminder that we are on itunes you can subscribe at itunes, listen and get automatic downloads of the show and listen at your leisure on the device of your choice, whether that’s, tablet or phone or desktop or laptop and that is always at non-profit radio dot net that is tony’s take two for friday, april eighth. I’m joined now my guest is claire meyerhoff. Claire, how are you doing, tony, right, how are you? Pleasure to have you back. I’m well, thank you very much. Claire meyerhoff is editorial director at the plant e-giving company, and she is the creative producer of this show. We’re going to talk about howto write for email fund-raising so that your messages get opened, read and respond to do so. Continuing the topic of excel ing in email execution claire so dave paulus sort of left us with write a perfect point, i think, talking about the header of the email he talked about where it’s from what’s your advice about the subject line of the email? Well, the subject line is really important because if you think about your own email use, what do you do? You’re on your iphone slip. Through it. So the subject find is very important and what you want to do, it make really some buddy. So so whatever you are promising them, you need to deliver it on the inside. All right, clara, i’ll tell you what were you sure need to repeat? Actually, what you said about the subject line because you were you’re breaking up. You’re on a landline, right? I am on a landline, and i’m hearing some feedback. Okay? I know the feedback is a little challenging. Try toe, i guess. Talk through the feedback and or maybe not listen so much, but just just talk on dh when you’re done talking, then put the earpiece back to your ear. But could you tell us again what your advice is for the subject line? I’ll do that. Ok, ok, my advice for the subject line is the subject line is going to be the thing that the person will either open it for. They will delete it so your subject line needs to be something that is really, truly news. What? What is it that you are going to be telling people or you want them to do or you want them to hear about most? So put that in there and basically only about thirty characters or so because they don’t even see the rest of us. Put your good stuff up front. Yeah, you sort of have to write that like headline, right, it’s, it’s, a lot like a headline and think about the news business and think about why you pick up a newspaper and read it it’s because of the headlines and any new yorker knows that york post the daily news, they’ve had a long history of really pretty interesting headlines that really grabs your attention. So think about the same thing with your non-profit what is your non-profits headline? And what is the headline for this newsletter that for sending people something generic, like may newsletter june newsletter? Okay, yeah, i have to. Yeah, the new york times are the sari, the daily news and the new york post. My favorite. Well, one of my favorites there’s a whole book about new york post headlines, which is it’s called topless body in head headless body in topless bar. Aunt, i have a copy of that, but it’s a headless body in topless bar from a murder. But one of my favorites was when jack cousteau’s ship crashed and the headline was calypso collapse. So isn’t that genius? I just have to show you right now, it’s go on and you’re like a save the whales organization. You’re not gonna have that to live so collapse. So are anything like that? So i think that’s pretty cool, it’s. Hard to be that clever. But those clever and you know what? If you were that clever, someone would probably open up your email. Certainly. What do you have any other advice for? The for that header information. Uh, maybe the from la who should be from or or any other advice there. Well, unless everybody knows that lisa is the head of your organization, it shouldn’t be from one person instead, make it from your organization and have it the name something that is sort of more of an action. Kind of a word. Like not information, but news. Maybe, you know, news at habitat for humanity, dot com or something like that. So give it give it a name that is a little newsy sounding might get someone’s attention better than, say, info at or or you know, something really generic and, you know, keep again, keep it really, really short. And you put the key words right up front and whatever some buzz words are that air right now in your field. So if sustainability or something is a good buzz word, that and so definitely just put the key words right up front that the main thing, okay? And you mean in the from line, so maybe sustainability at the domain is that is that what you’re suggesting? I’m talking about the subject line, so okay, you have your nature organization, and you’re always talking about sustainability, and the name of your newsletter is something with sustainability. Perhaps that could be your email address. I hadn’t thought of that, but it could be whatever, whatever you want. So that it’s recognizable and again it’s all about the brand and it’s recognizable and always be thinking about who your audience is. And i like to think of your email recipients, the people that will open the email and those are the ones we care about, the most people that actually open it, and then the few that follow through, right? Who were those people? Those are your most boyle people just like implant e-giving who were the best plan giving donors your boil donors, people, that e-giving for a long time with the people that are actually opening and reading. Your email, those who you’re really boils followers those year loyal supporters? Yes. Oh, so you’re you want you’re saying you want to have them in mind as you’re crafting your message? Exactly. Keep them in mind. What? What do they care about? So think about a few people that you know, supporters of your organizations have names and faces and think about what are they interested in? What is kathy interested in? What is robert interested in and crafted that way? Ok, on, daz were crafting our message. What’s your advice about how long it should be the subject line. Oh, no, the length of the body of the message. The body of the entire email newsletter should be chunked. So if you have, you know, one big article, you know, trumped that up into different articles. But faras length, you know, there’s. No specific lengths to into an e newsletter. It could be his long or short. As as you like. Think about the ones that you read and pattern yourself after that. If you’re bored after a certain amount of time, then your readers our board, pretty sure. Okay. What other advice have you got to share? I’ve been sort of, you know, suggesting topics, but you tell us tell me what? Your your advices. Well, here is some duitz do plan ahead. A newsletter done that’s on the fly usually looks like it’s been done on the fly. So plan your news letter ahead of time and that means preparing an editorial calendar. Maybe for the whole year. How often are you going to send these out? If you feel like you can send out one a month that’s great. And then think about what you might be doing in those months. Like, if you know, your annual report is coming out and you’re gonna have a lot of new information, then you know that khun, your main news letter might be packed with a lot of great, um, like statistical information, all kinds of cool stuff that you know about in may, but of course in december of the holidays, so you know that you can do holiday related things, so come up with an editorial calendar, so if you’re going to do it once a month, pick a day that you think is a good day to send it out when your readers are most likely to read it and then plan ahead, say well in in february and do this in march. We’re going to do that and have a couple of things knowing full well, what what’s going on if it’s september back to school and that’s important for your organization. Well, then that’s your back to school newsletter and you know you’re going tohave information about that and also decide on a goal before you do your newsletter what’s. The goal of the newsletter is the goal just oh, well, we want to tell people a bunch of stuff that’s going on. Well, that’s not a goal. What’s your real specific goal. Are you entering into a campaign? Are you announcing something? And you want everybody to know about it? Are you trying to raise money? Are you trying to get people to come to an event to sign up for a walkathon? What is the goal of the newsletter and then work backwards from what your goal is. Okay, claire, we just have about thirty seconds before the break. You mentioned planning ahead. And maybe as much as a year as you’re developing your email marketing plan. You want that? To be dovetailed with your other marketing activities, right, you might be sending print pieces as well around your events, things like that, right, absolutely. And marketing is a huge challenge for most small non-profits. The person doing marketing is also doing fifty other things, so the more planned you khun b, the easier it makes your job, so have a little marketing plan for the year, even if it’s one page and it’s a calendar, we’re going to do this in january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august and it’s all about when you send postcards. When you send email, when you send a regular newsletter and other mailing, okay, we’re going to take a break. My guest is clear meyerhoff editorial director at the plant e-giving company were ex selling an email execution stay with us talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Durney i really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness can help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com upleaf do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing for mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is, we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com. Talking dot com. Dahna hello and welcome back. I’m talking to claire meyerhoff and were ex selling in your email execution. Claire, you had a list of do’s that you wanted, teo continue sharing with us. Well, some other dues are due. Motivate your reader. You are sending this email to them, and you want them to do something and you need to motivate them to do it. And the easiest way to keep them unmotivated is too forthem, boring and dull. And the best way to do to motivate them is to tell them about something great that’s going on. That really would matter to them. So, do you have a really great event coming up? Do you have something really cool that you and your organization to tell people about it’s is? And news means it’s, usually something you what’s going on in your organization. That’s important to your reader? Not just what’s important to you? Yeah. You just finished your quarterly report, or or you have a new, you know, drink machine in the break room that might be important to you. But it’s not important to your readers. So think about the things that you are. Reader will think. Okay? And that’s consistent with your advice earlier just have a few people in mind and think about what’s interesting to them and write to that audience and think about what’s interesting to them also do the cocktail party saying or the or the coffee shop thing where if you ran into someone at starbucks and they said, hey, what’s new in your organization will help. Yeah, excellent, right? If you just had a couple of minutes, right? Excellent. Another any other dues? Uh, you might want to tell people why this is important now, which is usually through for fund-raising so what is going on right now? Why this is important. So if you’re an environmental organization and there’s some sort of threat that’s what you want to tell people about right now, we need to do this now you need to sign the petition. Now you need to send the money now we’re trying to fight it now your call to action it’s the call to action and make sure your call to action really is a call to action and that you’re writing matches the urgency of it. What i see a lot of times in email that i get from a lot of different non-profits is, you know, it’s sort of the henny penny email the sky is falling, they’re taking our rights away and they’re going to ruin the environment and they’re really bad, and i don’t really want to see that i want to see the action i want to see, like what you were doing, like, you know, we’ve got a bus on its way to this place full of volunteers, and they’re all going, and we need some gas money, like, i want to know what the thing is right now, the action that you’re doing that you need my help, why are you writing to may? Why is that news? So tell me that okay, before we get to your don’ts, which i’m sure you have, how do you make sure that you’re emails are consistent with your general identity for the organization? So they look like the rest of what you send out, whether it’s emails or website or or print well, that goes back to your marketing plan if you have one in some places, don’t you don’t have one it’s pretty common. So think about a couple of simple things that you always do and include that in your newsletter. So if you always have a pet of the month because you’re the animal adoption agency and you always have a pet of the month and you have a cute little name for it used that, make sure you use that in your in your identity, so use those identifiable things that you’ve already created, and if you don’t have some it’s time to create them, okay, so that’s excellent that’s the substance? What about just the appearance of the messages? How do you mean by the appear? What? What artwork? You might include the photos or our identity elements that you have for your non-profit well, i was listening todavia earlier about sending photos and e mails and how a lot of those get filtered out. So i’m definitely thinking about the photo thing because if people aren’t getting them that maybe not a great fool. I love photos if you can use photos, photos are the best and frankly, a lot of times your most loyal donors are also on facebook, and they’re a friend of your organization on facebook and as long as you’re not putting up things like ten times a day, they’re interested in being what you have there not gonna block you. Okay, so think about your facebook think about your email newsletter in conjunction with each other and how they can play off each other. So if you have a great, great photographic like the best photograph that tells the story of your mission like no other photograph, use that photograph a lot of times, repurpose it so you might want to send it in your e news letter and have it on your facebook and in your e newsletter say there are more photos like this on the facebook or on our web sights and people through the website where there are more of these great photographs and then take that really great that one great photographs and put it in your print newsletter used it on a postcard for fund-raising let’s say, you’re doing a little plan giving postcard campaign. Put that one great photo on that postcard so we use the good stuff that you have. Good, we have just about two minutes left. What are some of the don’ts that you want to share? Well, it’s funny that you say that because i try to be positive these days. So i wrote a big list. Do you have all dues and no don’t so i thought for sure. Ok, right around. Okay, well, so okay. Don’t don’t be not creative. Be creative, be creative use of environmental organization. And you just did a survey about ice source in your community. What are the top three? See, that would really get attention. So be creative with stuff. The good stuff that you have that’s interesting that your organization really had a handle on. So let’s say you are an environmental organization. You just did a big survey, and out of that survey results came the, you know, little thing that wasn’t the main focus, but in it was, you know, people complain the most about the certain areas in your county that we’re the biggest eyesores. Well, that’s a new story for you where you can say, what are the top three ugliest eyesores, the whole county. And you can do a lot with that that’s really interesting people will open up that email is your town, you know? Is this eyesore in your neighborhood? Why don’t you leave? Us with one more of your dues or however you want to phrase it dues or don’ts duse or don’t? Well, i like to talk about, you know, writing and words and storytelling, so just do tell really good stories that are about someone that affect other people don’t talk about yourself and how how great you are, talk about the people that you’re serving and how you’re solving prop emblems for people. I’ll give you this one. This is my one last tip i give everybody these days, you can’t think of a story, look at the money, find out a recent gift that you’ve got and how did you use that money? And then find the person that’s benefiting from the money that you’re using. So, for instance, if you just got a gift and you build a handicap ramp, who is benefiting from that handicapped wrapped rampant your facility to find that person and do a story about them and that’s where you find your story stories, they’re everywhere to follow the money, certainly because charities are doing good work so people who are people are benefiting those stories should be very common, right? Where’s the money. Going find, find someone benefiting from it and focus on them. And where would their life be without this organization? And where would their life be without specifically this money that just came in and how it was used? You had a big campaign. Everybody gave money, you raised thousands and thousands of dollars. Where did it go? Thank you very much. Thank you very much, claire. My guest has been clear meyerhoff editorial director at the plan giving company and creative producer for tony martignetti non-profit radio next week we’re going to be all about auctions if if we bring that a little further, may weaken do advertising and awareness advancements in auctions in america. But well, for right now will just stop with all about auctions silent, loud or online. What’s it all about auction’s. My guest is going to be roger divine of divine assistance and he’s going to explain what auctions are all about. I hope you’ll be part of that conversation on we’ll have a group sing at the end. Maybe also scott koegler, our tech guru, and he’s, our regular contributor. Of course, you know that he’s, the editor of non-profit technology news and he’s going to share what’s newest in technology for your non-profit keep up with what’s coming up on tony martignetti non-profit radio. Sign up for our email alerts on the facebook page at facebook dot com and then the name of this show. And while you’re there, like us, become a fan on itunes, as i talked about earlier, that is always found at non-profit radio dot net subscribed. Listen, any time on the device of your choice, as i said, a few times are creative producer is claire meyerhoff, our line producer and the owner of talking alternative broadcasting is sam liebowitz, and our social media is by regina walton of organic social media. Booker t and the mgs composed our theme music. Thank you very much, guys. I hope you’ll join me next friday, one p m eastern for tony martignetti non-profit radio, as always on talking alternative broadcasting found at talking alternative dot com. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get you thinking. Dahna cubine are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? 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