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[00:02:13.44] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with hantavirus pulmonary syndrome if you got ratted out that you missed this week’s show Communications trends report. Kimmy LaRue Miller returns to share her 11th annual non profit Communications Trends report, released just last week. We talk about the impact of the pandemic, the resurgence of email, email, best practices, leading a Girl Scout troop and a lot more tony steak, too. The people are seizing power were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo and by dot drives. Prospect to donor. Simplified here is communications trends. Report. What a pleasure to welcome back to non profit radio Kivi LaRue Miller. She is founder and CEO of non profit Marketing Guide, helping hundreds of non profit communicators and participants in the communications director mentoring program. Each year, she called leads a Girl Scout troop and is president of the Lexington Farmers Market Association in Lexington, North Carolina. She also co founded Grow and Go Girls, a small bakery where all net profits go into a travel fund for a group of small town girls to travel. The big World non profit Marketing Guide is that non profit marketing guide dot com? Where else would you expect it from a master communicator? Where else would it be? And at N p m k t g d. I’m not sure about that one. Kivi is at V l m. Welcome back to the show,

[00:02:19.89] spk_0:
Kivi. Thank you, tony. I’m glad to be here. It’s a pleasure to have you

[00:02:23.39] spk_1:
back. You got a little screwed on your Twitter handle for non profit

[00:02:27.08] spk_0:
marketing. You know, it’s too many letters that profit marketing God is just ridiculously log. So you gotta abbreviate these things.

[00:02:43.94] spk_1:
N p m k T g d. I’ll find you on T V l m get you there. All right. Um, what about this Girl Scout troop? What’s that? Like hurting a bunch of girls through a pandemic? Uh,

[00:02:55.57] spk_0:
well, we’re just grateful that the big trip we’re working towards us in 2022. So 20 we will be going to bullies in 2022. God willing so, you know. Yeah, it’ll be a 10 day trip. They are all ninth and 10th graders that we’ve had with us since they were little itty bitty brownies and Daisy Girl Scouts. So, um, it’s great. It’s great. We started the baking business to help them earn more money because you can really only earn so much via Girl Scout cookie sales. But we’re also doing that, too. So it’s alright.

[00:03:23.97] spk_1:
So is an adjunct to the Girl Scout cookies. You’re you’re baking your own throughout. Yes, yes, that’s a short term

[00:03:30.11] spk_0:
campaign. Exactly It Z

[00:03:33.24] spk_1:
is there a brick and mortar store? Thio grow and Go girls.

[00:03:36.32] spk_0:
Well, we participated the farmer’s market six months out of the year. So they have a booth at the farmer’s market. And, uh, we did a little renovation in a building that used to be my father laws electrical shop. So they have a little kitchen out in our backyard, and they do bread and cakes and all kinds of delicious,

[00:03:53.74] spk_1:
so they don’t have to do it in their own home. You have ah,

[00:03:56.28] spk_0:
commercial. We have a state approved home kitchen. Yes, so they can stand that they can sell their stuff legally.

[00:04:05.34] spk_1:
How big is the Girl Scout troop?

[00:04:07.48] spk_0:
It is six girls.

[00:04:09.94] spk_1:
That’s outstanding. Alright, that’s a smaller troop. It’s a small,

[00:04:14.34] spk_0:
uh and you know, the girls they tend to drop out of girl scouts is they get a little older. I think the same is true with boy Scouts to, uh, the promise of international travel is what’s kept them all super engaged in girls

[00:04:26.43] spk_1:
who have Teoh. You have to bake a certain number of gross gross number of dozens or something to get to qualify for your bellies trip. No es somebody somebody brownies.

[00:04:41.04] spk_0:
They’re doing really well. There, there, you know, they’re They’re making significantly more money at the farmers market than we do for the cookie sale. I’ll just leave it at that. We’re gonna be fine. They’re gonna have a great trip. So,

[00:04:49.79] spk_1:
Lisa, what a wonderful exotic place to go.

[00:04:52.54] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:53.82] spk_1:
You need any male?

[00:04:55.45] spk_0:
Uh, schedule is very flexible. We’ll put you on the wait list. Tony.

[00:05:08.14] spk_1:
It really wouldn’t matter when you’re going. I know I could accommodate it. Very flexible schedule. Believes I would love. Yeah, Wonderful. Um and so how about the girls through the pandemic. Well, what’s what’s that like right now?

[00:05:32.24] spk_0:
It’s tough, you know? I mean, they’re all doing online schooling, so they don’t really want to get on Zoom to do Girl Scouts. So we we occasionally do things outside, whether permitting, you know, here in North Carolina, it’s not totally frozen out. It’s certainly a little too cold right now, but, um, we were doing some things outdoors with them. It’s a small enough group that we could meet outside. All

[00:05:39.16] spk_1:
right. Wonderful commitment to non profits. You got. You got a bakery. They got the farmer’s market. I love farmers markets. When I lived in New York City, I would look forward to Saturday Farmers markets.

[00:05:49.54] spk_0:
Oh, yeah? Well, New York City got some

[00:05:51.40] spk_1:
amazing one. Yeah, they do. But now here in Emerald Isle, North Carolina, I could just go to the farm stands. There is a There is a local farmers market a couple towns away, but it’s only every other week, you know? So all the farmers are together in a big lot, but But otherwise, you know, we have the luxury of farm stands. I mean, I could go to my favorite please get my apples in the winter. Get my straw. Get my strawberries. Starting in like April May uh, for my favorite You pick place. You go right to the farmers here in North

[00:06:19.19] spk_0:
Carolina. Right? We’ve got lots of lots of roadside stands and curb markets. All kinds of choices

[00:06:26.06] spk_1:
stuff so But I admire your You have a six month, six year, six months a year farmers market in Lexington too.

[00:06:33.54] spk_0:
Yeah, made October. So being a communications professional, I got roped into being on the board. Shocker. Eso now. So now the president of the board

[00:06:45.24] spk_1:
another? Well, food, food, food. Uh, the emergence of girls as leaders.

[00:06:51.94] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:07:19.34] spk_1:
that’s all. Great baking. You got your food component. It’s You’re staying active. Alright, so let’s talk about the trends report. Um, coming out Well, by the time we record is just last week, it z Tomorrow, as we’re recording, congratulations on 11 annual reports. Thank you. Uh, this was presumed this was an unprecedented one. I mean, you had the we had the recession, but that’s that Z not as significant as the pandemic.

[00:07:38.74] spk_0:
Right? And so, you know, we we there are sets of questions that we ask every other year. So we stuck with some of those. But then we did shift it up a little bit and asked a number of questions. Specifically related. Thio. How people, Whether the pandemic in 2020 and I suspect given how things were going this year, we may ask some of those questions again. Next year is well, since I think we’ll be living with this through 2021 as well.

[00:07:48.84] spk_1:
Uh, certainly a good part of it. Yes. Uh, So what What’s your What’s your like number one take away from from this year’s report?

[00:08:17.24] spk_0:
Well, you know, I think, Ah, a lot of people did really well Ah, lot of nonprofits did really well in a lot of non profits did not do well, And I think there’s a There’s a pretty big stark contrast between the ones that were able to really pivot. I know that everybody hates that word now, but, uh, really pivot in to do things differently. And to do that successfully and the ones that were really just kind of stuck and paralyzed by all of the change that was thrust upon them

[00:08:32.64] spk_1:
and your you have your acronym for what characterizes those who distinguishes those who did well from those who didn’t.

[00:09:18.34] spk_0:
Yes, yes. So we the way that we talk about communications, management frameworks and and effectiveness is calm and calm stands for collaborative, agile, logical and methodical. And that is true. Pandemic or no, the organizations that really embrace those for qualities and the way they manage their communications work are always more successful than those who don’t. And you know, I was very curious to see if that would have an impact if the if that mattered or not in 2020 and in fact it mattered quite a bit. Based on our survey results, it’s time for a break

[00:09:55.74] spk_1:
turn to communications. The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CBS Market Watch, The Chronicle of Philanthropy You want to be in media outlets like this. Turn two has the relationships with outlets like these, so that when they’re looking for experts on charitable giving, non profit trends or philanthropy, they call turned to turn two calls you because they know you because they’re your their client. Turn hyphen two dot ceo. Now back to communications trends report. Um, I don’t suppose you consider bomb I was thinking a bomb like bold, bold, agile, logical, methodical.

[00:10:03.04] spk_0:
We’re going. We’re going with com e like bomb, too, but, you know, already wrote the column. Not busy book, tony. So late on your A little late on your assistance with the acronym there.

[00:10:13.74] spk_1:
Well, I wasn’t. My opinion wasn’t solicit. Well, that’s my opinion. Wasn’t solicited 30 seconds ago. And you got anyway, so that doesn’t hold me back. All right, we’ll stick with bomb. No, you’ve been with You’ve been with calm for years. Of course. E. I was thinking balmy. You put a y in maybe.

[00:10:28.64] spk_0:
Yes. Okay. This is you living at the beach. Be

[00:10:32.73] spk_1:
for beach. Alright. So let’s let’s define com for folks who are not part of the non profit marketing guide community. And then we’ll talk about how that how that helped folks during the pandemic. So your collaborative, agile, logical and methodical What

[00:11:18.50] spk_0:
do you mean so collaborative? When you are being collaborative us, the communication staff are working with your management team with your program ah, leaders with your fundraisers, if those are on a different team and really collaboratively developing and implementing a communications plan. In contrast, to that. We often see communication staff that are just sort of thrown in the quarter by themselves, and they only communicate with others when those people are coming to dump work on their lap. Yes, yes, it’s so. You know, we use a lot of metaphors, that non profit marketing guide. So the metaphor for this is like, Are you the drive thru fast food window where people are just coming and barking orders at you? And then you have to turn around and quickly deliver a somewhat mediocre product often, um, or are you more like a You know, a nice restaurant where people are coming in and sitting down and having conversations about what they’re going to eat, and it’s more of a collaborative, high quality product at the end.

[00:11:46.09] spk_1:
You can even bring over the Somalia if you wanna. You wanna high end wine choice

[00:12:56.54] spk_0:
right? It’s a little different than just the like barking orders and get in the back of seat out the window, so that’s collaborative. When we talk about agility, it’s really about trust. Ultimately, so do the managers of the organization. The program managers trust the communication staff, trust their ability to do a good job, trust their intentions and supporting the goals of the organization or not. And when that trust is there, the communication staff have the ability to really be responsive to what’s happening in the world. And to do that very quickly and to have their professional judgment about how to make those changes be trusted and followed through. They are the experts on a lot of the communications work. You know, a lot of executive directors come up through the program side. They don’t know anything about marketing on dso. You know, the agility really comes and building those trusting relationships and trusting the professionalism of the communications staff again. On the flip side, as you can imagine, when that trust is not in place, there is tons of second guessing what the communications staff are recommending. There is a really inability to make a fast decision. Uh, people just get really paralyzed. And I think we saw a lot of that, um, paralysis and decision making, uh, in the comments that we saw in the trends report.

[00:13:23.54] spk_1:
Okay, how about logical? Methodical?

[00:13:57.44] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s a logical is all about. Does your communications plan makes sense for what you’re trying to achieve. So when we talk about you know what is your objective? What are you really trying to accomplish with your communications? Have you thought that through, or are you just making all the things? So the people who I would say are less logical are the ones that air just doing the stuff, putting this stuff online because that’s what you dio the people who are more logical, understand what they’re actually trying to achieve through their communications and methodical is really about workflow and process. It’s kind of the boring stuff, in a way, but it’s the it’s the kind of secret sauce. It’s the things that we tend to geek out on most at non profit marketing guide. So things like Do you have an editorial calendar? Have you talked about the process by which people will create drafts and who’s gonna edit those things? And who has final say, How many times do people get to see things? Or is it just these endless review loops, you know? Is there a style guide all of these sort of process and workflow things that keep communications moving and produce high quality product relatively quickly

[00:14:37.73] spk_1:
keep things orderly.

[00:14:39.32] spk_0:
Exactly. Exactly. And so again, organizations that don’t have that in play, um, tend to be the communication staff that burn out very quickly on get very unhappy on Don’t produce good results because it’s really just kind of chaos And how stuff is produced and approved and published,

[00:15:14.64] spk_1:
Right? So what was Cem? Were some bad Some bad spots? Or maybe still are. I mean, we’re still in a pandemic. Of course. Right. Um well, uh, I was like, I want to end with Yeah, I wanna end on the upward trend. You gotta start low. What are some? And and of course, you learn from mistakes, too. I mean, this is basically asking what not to do when when your besieged by by a crisis at your non profit or worldwide, you know, what should we be avoiding? So what do we see? That’s not such That’s such good work,

[00:17:21.24] spk_0:
right? So we asked people to explain in their own words. You know what we’re what? Problems were exacerbated by the pandemic. So we were We were assuming that some of these things were kind of already in play, and then the pandemic made the worst so well, that’s how we asked the question. And so we saw a number of themes come out from those answers. One won’t be a big surprise to anybody that’s been working in our sector a long time. The having to cancel all those in person events was obviously traumatic for everyone. Whether you were successful in doing something different or not, there was a big split there. So the organizations, like I said that are not calm in particular, not agile, ended up just canceling and not really doing a lot of replacements or took a very long time to make those decisions. So staff were just constantly scrambling around and there was a lot of mixed communication and a lot of confusion. Um, so you know, that was a problem. We also saw. You know, a lot of organizations have not invested into their digital communication strategies. They have old, clunky websites. Uh, their email lists are pretty small or un engaged. And so when we really had to shift to more of those communications channels, a lot of organizations just weren’t ready for that, and, um then failed toe move quickly. Again, it goes back to that agility and be able to make fast decisions and to ramp things up quickly. And they just weren’t able to do that. We saw a lot of people complaining about additional sort of crisis. Communications associated with the pandemic piled onto the workload, but nothing being taken off the plate. So this sort of ignoring the reality that everything was changing pretending like they were going to keep doing things, Um and and just not really changing quickly.

[00:17:45.24] spk_1:
Do you know how this cuts across? Um, organization size,

[00:18:28.44] spk_0:
You know, we have found in our research. And it was true this year that the organization size by itself doesn’t make that much of a difference. Nor does the mission over the organization or where they’re located. Um, the things that really make a difference are the communications team size, which does not necessarily track with organization size. So you have some very large 10 $20 million organizations and bigger that have a single communications staff person. So those two don’t necessarily track. Okay, so it’s really across the sector. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:32.74] spk_1:
How could How could an organization be that big? I mean, $10 million organization with a single communications director. I mean, a person. How can that function organization with that much staff and that much activity? And there’s just one person talking to all their constituencies.

[00:19:28.34] spk_0:
Yeah. Yes, it does. It does. It does No. And you know, how are they doing that? Well, in a lot of cases, they’re not doing it very low. Um, and in other cases, you know, it’s just it comes down to how they view the role of communications. And and so if they think that, well, all of our program staff are capable of communicating, uh, then you know, they’ll just have that one person that basically tries to play traffic cop with everybody else putting stuff out. But when you know, you take a look at how those organizations were performing, it’s usually not fabulous. Um, you know, some organizations have more need for communications than others.

[00:19:33.04] spk_1:
How about one of your questions reveals level of control that you have over your workload.

[00:19:39.84] spk_0:
What

[00:19:40.96] spk_1:
do you What do you I guess. What have you seen over time and what we’re seeing now in this report?

[00:21:32.64] spk_0:
So that is definitely one of those indicators that we look for when I’m coaching communications directors. It’s one of the first questions I ask, because it really gives you a sense for whether, um, they could be strategic or not. If they if they feel like they have some level of control, then that tells me that they are willing to say no to requests. Or maybe not yet. Or maybe if you know, they can push back on it. Just the overwhelming number of requests that air. It’s just endemic to our sector, like the communications have always being asked to do more than they can. So whether they have the control to really be strategic about what they actually dio and what they say no to or push off is a pretty big indicator for us about whether they’re going to be successful, long term or not. And, of course, in the pandemic, we did ask people, uh, if something’s changed. So we saw more planning, more collaboration, but basically less or the same amount of a feeling of control. And I think some of that is natural, like all of us are in this pandemic. And you know, none of us have control over the pandemic. But um do you have control over your reaction to the pandemic and your response to it? And so you know, we would like to see more people saying Yes, you know, I had a role in deciding the strategy going forward. That wasn’t always the case, you know, in part again because of the I think that our over reliance on in person events and the sector is a big part of this with canceling all of those events or putting them online. That was a huge communications lift for non profits. We’ll see if you know now that people have some experience with the online events there. We’re seeing a lot of organizations that are getting better engagement now reaching out to different kinds of folks through the online events that they didn’t get to the in person. So I think it’ll be really interesting to see a year or two or three from now what that mixes between in person and online events.

[00:22:37.04] spk_1:
You know, folks have been talking for years about diversifying beyond events. Those conversations were always focused around the value of having different streams of revenue, whether it’s earned income, individual giving, corporate Azaz event sponsorship monthly sustaining etcetera. So, you know, obviously nobody anticipated they’re being a Nev ent. That would cause all events to be canceled. But it certainly does go again to the the value of diversification in in all realms, whether it tze fundraising or communications channels. Um, you know, it’s it’s risky to be to be dependent on 11 source of In this case, we’re talking about one source of revenue and it all be events. And plus we know how much time events take versus return on a lot of

[00:22:48.26] spk_0:
them. Exactly. And, you know, again, this sort of goes back to the logical. It’s like how many of these organizations were actually paying attention to just how effective those events were with that are Oh, I was. A lot of them aren’t paying attention to how much staff time is included, or they only pay attention to the event coordinator. They don’t add in all the communications time associated with marketing those events. So I do hope nonprofits will take a much closer look before they just sort of revert back to what they used to Dio.

[00:23:26.94] spk_1:
Yeah, good. Critical. Look. Right. All right. So we know that the organizations that maybe maybe thrived is overstating it but succeeded during the pandemic. Those are those are the calm

[00:23:30.59] spk_0:
ones.

[00:26:31.44] spk_1:
It’s time for tony. Take two. The people have seized power. My concern is that non profits are not exempt. Stopping the work of the U. S. Congress seizing the capital. Five people dead, maybe even more now. Ah, suicide from one by one of the officers. And just this week bringing Wall Street hedge funds to their knees so that they needed many billions of dollars of infused capital. Thio keep them going. Groups of people are organizing collective izing and seizing power, seizing it from Washington, seizing it from Wall Street. My concern is that nonprofits are not exempt a crowd. However they put themselves together, however they organize could easily see that or could easily decide that your good work isn’t so good to them. That might look like some kind of attack on your website. It could even look like an attack on a physical office. I mean, does that really seem impossible now? So these air my concerns that the non profit community we need to be planning for the possibility that these insurgency’s hit us hit our organizations. I don’t think it’s so far fetched. Folks are seizing power from institutions and nonprofits, our institutions. So I just want you to be thinking about it. Planning for it. I don’t know how overt overtly you plan. I mean, certainly in terms of disaster recovery communications, you don’t know when it’s gonna happen. In it happens. I think in an instant I just wanted folks to be conscious of it. That’s all that the non profit community isn’t, isn’t isolated and is not immune from the whims of large groups. That is tony steak, too. Now, let us return to communications trends report with Kivi LaRue. Miller, you wanna you got a story of or a case you can share of somebody. That was some organization that was exemplified. Calm

[00:26:37.49] spk_0:
calmness. Sure. So we we saw a number of people talk about, um they’re essentially their leadership team, sort of stepping up and saying yes. Now I’m ready to listen, and I’m ready to invest because their hands were really forced, right? So you know whether it may have been a little collaboration before, we did see a number of organizations really step up from the programmatic management side as well, a sort of the executive director side and say, Okay, we’re with You were ready. What do you need? And so those organizations that really gave that attention and time and resource is to their communications staff. We’re able to really make some great things happen. And we saw a number of organizations really beat their fundraising goals, beat their community engagement goals. Um, so you know, it really speaks to having that sort of full collaboration across the organization around those strategic communications goals.

[00:27:38.04] spk_1:
Talk about engagement a little more now. You mentioned twice. You’ve some organizations. So higher rates of engagement in the pandemic. What what was what were they doing that caused that?

[00:29:56.54] spk_0:
So when we talk about engagement, it’s It’s almost like everything other than fundraising, right? So a lot of people are communicating for fundraising goals, but about half of non profit communicators don’t actually consider fundraising to be a primary goal for them. What they’re usually trying to do instead is the sort of big term community engagement, so it’s trying to get it depends on the organization, but for some of them, it’s people that are actually using their programs, and service is so recruiting them and keeping those people engaged in in those service is other people. It’s more of an advocacy or education or awareness kind of engagement where they’re trying to get people to care mawr or to think differently or act differently on different issues. Um, so you know, we saw a lot of successful organizations really experimenting this year, particularly with moving events online and the ones that were really willing to try some new things, I would say moving events online. We saw a lot more people talk about video this year than we ever have. We have been, you know, preaching video as engaging online content for many years now. But, you know, it’s kind of hard, and people get nervous about being on camera on DSO. The pandemic has really again sort of taken that barrier away. And we saw a number of organizations say, You know, I could never get my program staff to do a video for me before they just always No, no, no, no, no. And now they’re you know, people are used to being on Zoom. They’re more comfortable using their own phones to video themselves. So now we’re seeing tons more program staff, cooperating with their communications departments on creating video in particular. So that’s been really nice to, um, you know, just mawr attention to the online channels in General Thio email to social media. Whereas those might have been considered sort of nice toe have sorts of things before now. Leaders we’re really seeing them is essential tools to communicate for fundraising and engagement. Instead, attention is nice.

[00:30:15.24] spk_1:
The attention is nice. Yeah, leads. Thio leads to calm leader leaders got dragged by the pandemic. Thio Thio. Execute what you’ve been saying for for years. Be calm. Let’s be calm. Email. You got a lot to say about email. Email is not dead by any means, but no, no, not only not dead, but it’s resurging. You’ve got ideas around anybody. All right, so first, let’s start with the resurgence of email. What happened?

[00:31:30.84] spk_0:
Yes, so you know, for as we said, this is the 11th year of the trends report and then the first five or so we you know, every year we would ask Okay, what is your most important communications channels? And we kept getting the same answers every year. It got kind of boring. So we stopped asking. So we haven’t really asked in five years. And the last time we asked, you know, websites were always number one and then email and social media kind of flip flop between two and three. Well, so we waited five years, we asked. Email is now number one, and I don’t think that’s just because of the pandemic. I think in part it’s because, you know, it’s still a direct way to communicate with people, unlike the website, which you sort of have to draw people to. But you have so much more control with email than you do with social media, you never know what Zuckerberg and all the rest of them are going to do with their algorithms and what changes they’re gonna make to the way. Yeah, you know. So it’s extremely frustrating for folks. Um, so, you know, it makes a lot of sense that email is now number one. But there’s some problems too now, I

[00:31:45.54] spk_1:
see. Yeah. Um Okay, well, you’re the guest. So you talk about the problems, I cease? Um, e c. Some dissonance between importance and use, but we’ll get to that talk about the problems that you see with email, please.

[00:33:29.54] spk_0:
So there are a lot of best practices associated with email, and this is true for anybody that’s using mass email, not just the nonprofit sector. So managing your email list, for example, paying attention when people stop opening, you really have to stop emailing them. Um, it goes into what’s called your sender reputation, and that effects how often your stuff shows up in the spam folder. And I don’t think nonprofits really appreciate that. There are these algorithms at work, much like there are in social media, where the inbox providers. So the Google’s and Microsoft’s of the world are deciding whether to send your email to spam or not. And, um, you know, I bet tony, if you look at your inbox, I know I see this. When I look at my inbox, I’m subscribed to a lot of different non profit newsletters, etcetera. Sometimes those things show up in my inbox and other times, same organization. It will show up in my spam folder, and I honestly never go look in my spam folder unless someone has told me I missed something or I’m trying to do some research like this. So a lot of non profit content is going to spam. How do we stop that? Well, there are a number of best practices, and unfortunately, in our surveys both this year and last year, you know, maybe 25%. Maybe a third of nonprofits are implementing those different best practices. The overwhelming majority of nonprofits are not doing it. So while email is becoming more important, the likelihood that you’re nonprofits email is going into that spam filter is going up a ZX.

[00:33:30.53] spk_1:
Well, all right. Um, personalization s. So we got to talk about the things that that are simple organizations should be doing thio over. Overcome the the algorithm, the spam filter algorithms personalizing. You mentioned personalizing subject lines. Even

[00:33:50.24] spk_0:
so, is that your name

[00:33:52.55] spk_1:
in the subject line?

[00:33:54.84] spk_0:
Sure. So that’s one way you could do it. Another way to do it is to like if it’s a fundraising email is thio put in the body of the email? What? Their last gift, waas or the last time they gave? If depending on how robust your data tracking is, you may know which programs people care about the most. And so another way to personalize email is to, you know, send them the content that they care most about. You know, we just sort of simplify it. We say, Okay, if you’re a humane society, like, who are your cat? People who’re your dog? People like you want to put the dog photos and the dog people emails and the cat photos and the other one’s

[00:34:31.12] spk_1:
right.

[00:34:43.54] spk_0:
Exactly. So that’s kind of all related to personalization. And we do see nonprofits doing that of of all the different things we asked about. The majority of nonprofits have tried some level of personalization, so that’s a positive for

[00:34:48.48] spk_1:
sure. I see you have 59% but we’re still missing for that. We’re still missing 41%. Yes, like 40% of non profit. They’re not doing that

[00:35:00.14] spk_0:
right. All right,

[00:35:01.04] spk_1:
I’m not I’m not focusing on the negative, but, you know, pointing out everybody is not. This is That’s a pretty simple practice, like Hello, you know, first name code. You know, that’s not hard. I mean, even I do that.

[00:35:23.74] spk_0:
It’s it’s not hard, you know. The thing is, it’s like it’s it’s more than just copying and pasting email template and going right. You have to pay attention. And but

[00:35:25.05] spk_1:
there’s value in doing

[00:35:33.94] spk_0:
so. Yes, you have to test it. But it’s time consuming. Like all of these little extra things, you have to dio take time. And so if you’re super busy and dot com, you don’t have the

[00:35:43.84] spk_1:
time. You’re the one person, the one person shopping, a $10 million organization. You don’t have time for the 1st 1st name code,

[00:35:55.64] spk_0:
right? And then also, you know, to really do that, you have to have confidence in the data. So if you have a really messy old database, it could be a little scary to think about what they might be merging into that first name slot.

[00:36:01.19] spk_1:
It might be a letter, right?

[00:36:03.63] spk_0:
Yeah, I could

[00:36:05.81] spk_1:
be any name,

[00:36:06.42] spk_0:
or it could be nothing. You know, you might not even have first names in your database, so yeah, so it could be a mess.

[00:36:17.33] spk_1:
Alright, Data integrity. What else s O A. B testing is another common simple that you mentioned it. You could test subject lines. You could test just about anything the color of the, uh, color of the give now button the body of the text, the photos, the videos.

[00:36:48.83] spk_0:
Yeah, and the email service providers. Most of them are making that a little easier, but again, it’s an extra step you have to take. And then you have to sort of think about Okay, What makes sense to test? How do I keep track of all this? It sounds like you’re

[00:36:49.92] spk_1:
you’re very empathetic.

[00:36:51.77] spk_0:
You

[00:37:03.13] spk_1:
do for the I can see it. E c it, I hear it do. I’m sure listeners gonna hear it. So what do you do for the one person in the $10 million organization who can’t find the time or doesn’t feel she confined the time and which means she can’t? She feels she can’t. We’re not looking at it objectively. Subjectively perception. Find the time for the for the first name code. How do you meet that person where they are?

[00:38:21.42] spk_0:
Well, what we talk about is really getting riel about their workload. They’re often trying to do too much, Um, and to manage too many channels and talk about too many different things. And they don’t have the trust. They don’t have that ability to say no or not yet. So we go back to basic boundaries, you know, I mean, all of us that do any kind of coaching work ultimately end up talking about boundaries, what the people were coaching because so much of that comes back to people sort of personal control and agency and ability to say yes or no to things. And so that’s usually where I start. And then once I can help them kind of get rid of some of the noise that’s not really contributing to success or to just give them the confidence that they’re not going to get fired by saying no to something stupid within their organizations. Um, then we can talk about, you know? Okay, if we can just get two hours a week, we can implement a lot of these best practices that are going to make a huge difference. It really doesn’t take that much time. It’s just kind of getting over that hump.

[00:38:23.42] spk_1:
What about advocating for more help for these beleaguered communications directors? Do you talk about trying to make the case toe leadership absolute for adding another person who’s a professional

[00:38:36.37] spk_0:
community? Yes, absolutely. We talked about that a lot Andi and we’re seeing some of that, you know, like we do a number of different coaching programs and I’m just starting a new group. And there are a number of people in that group that are growing their team from 2 to 4 or 3 to 5, even because they were finally able to make that case.

[00:39:01.22] spk_1:
How about when it just comes down to This isn’t direct place for you. You just You just should leave E mean your coach, and you have to be

[00:39:05.85] spk_0:
absolutely

[00:39:07.82] spk_1:
good for the good of right,

[00:39:10.72] spk_0:
right? It’s It’s one of the secrets of our training and coaching programs that we don’t advertise. So, yeah, just for you, tony and your listeners. But, um, you know, lots of times, we’ll get nonprofits that pay for training and coaching with us, and then I end up encouraging those people to find another job, and they do. They they you know, they realize that they’re working in an environment that is not supportive and that there are lots of other opportunities to work in an environment that is supportive, and they go find those jobs so

[00:39:44.12] spk_1:
well. Our listeners are the CEOs, so they could be on that side of it. But our listeners are also focusing communications, and they may be beleaguered. And so they need to know the the range of opportunity available to them. Of course, yeah, waiting, that’s the last. That’s the last step After you.

[00:40:01.44] spk_0:
It is, but, you know, but

[00:40:07.81] spk_1:
other less drastic methods. But But it has, uh, it’s a possibility,

[00:40:08.72] spk_0:
right? And, you know, I think we all know there are some really bad managers in our sector, just like there’s bad managers in every sector. Just because we’re trying to do good doesn’t mean that, you know, everybody is a perfect human being who’s got all kinds of training and how to be an exceptional manager. That’s just not the case.

[00:41:34.11] spk_1:
Yes, I’ve heard rumors to that effect. Yes, yeah, time for our last break. Quote. There’s nothing as simple as dot drives. Our executive team meets once per week to sit down and go through our dot drives pipelines. It’s fun to watch them have a healthy dialogue and to see them get excited about their numbers rising toward their goals. DOT drives has allowed us to take those key relationships and bring them to a deeper level and quote, that is Wendy Adams, director of donor engagement at Patrick Henry. Family Service is dot drives Prospect to donor. Simplified. You get the free demo, and for listeners, there’s a free month. You do that at the listener landing page. Tony dot Emma slash dot We’ve got but loads more time. I’m glad of that. We got, but loads more time for communications trends. Report. You got one more that I really like, uh, welcoming, welcoming and re engaging campaigns around. Email s. So if you have a lackluster list that’s not engaged on and to bring people on board the on board them to your to your organization talk about those those two potentials.

[00:41:45.81] spk_0:
Yeah, these air super easy things again like it doesn’t take. It’s not a lot of time on going. It’s a It’s a little bit of time up front, right? It’s one of these prevention kind of things, like you do the thing up front so that you don’t have to worry about the problems later. So there’s some things you could do with your list to keep the vaccination

[00:41:59.92] spk_1:
your vaccination and then you need occasional childhood boosters

[00:42:03.38] spk_0:
exactly. So Okay, so we’ll stick with your metaphor here. So you’re welcome. Syriza’s your vaccination, right? Someone gets on your list. The hard part is really done. How do you keep them on the list? So the welcome Siri’s? It’s just a quick Siri’s. We recommend three emails over the course of a week or 10 days, where you really just sort of introduce people more to the organization and how they can be involved. You really want to get them excited about this new relationship and try to build that relationship. And so there are a lot of different approaches that you could take to a welcome Siri’s. But the idea is that you’re really trying to say, Hey, we see you, We’re glad you’re here. Let’s do some amazing things together to change the world. And

[00:42:42.79] spk_1:
And don’t email providers often have. Ah, excuse me. Have Ah, a process that you you for on boarding, You know, You know, you’ve got a new you know, you’ve got a new member to your organization do list. And so within 24 hours, you want them to get this and then 36 hours and then 72 hours and there’s your like, there’s your three.

[00:44:34.99] spk_0:
You just gotta go. You just gotta go fill it in. But, you know, making the decisions about what goes on those emails is sometimes too hard a decision. So again, it goes back to whether you have collaborative support from your leadership about what should be in those emails or the authority to just decide for your organization. So filling that out, you know, really, it doesn’t take that long, so going back to your your booster idea. So let’s say people are on your email list. They’re open an email cruising along, and then they just kind of stopped. For whatever reason, who knows? Right, but haven’t opened an email from you in six months. At that point, most of those email companies both the inbox providers and the people sending your email are going to consider that person un engaged. And that again has implications for how often that email will be in the inbox versus spam. So we want to re engage, so you can also do another set of emails just to those people who haven’t opened an email recently and what you’re trying to do. There is basically to get them to open or click on the email, so you’re sending them your best content. It’s the sort of in case you missed it kind of messaging. Sometimes people will do kind of, you know, funny little. Oh, you know, Do you still like us? Are we breaking up? You know that kind of thing? Not my favorite, but you know, it’ll work for some organizations, but you’re basically telling people, Hey, we’re still here. Do you still want to get our email or not? And if you don’t, you should stop emailing them. And that’s a really hard thing. We find that the overwhelming majority of nonprofits just cannot.

[00:44:43.83] spk_1:
They’re not. They’re not stopping there. They’re

[00:45:01.79] spk_0:
not. They’re not. And it’s really bad because they’re going to continue. I mean, that’s That’s the nut. That’s sort of the worst thing you could do is continue. Thio email people that are not opening your stuff and haven’t opened it for months or years. At this point that really tanks your

[00:45:02.45] spk_1:
your sender reputation. It all goes into your algorithm. I

[00:45:05.57] spk_0:
mean, it doesn’t know

[00:45:07.22] spk_1:
that the email providers know how your emails are being treated

[00:45:12.29] spk_0:
right. Sometimes people will call us and they’ll say, Can’t be I subscribe your email, but it’s in spam. I wanted you to know it’s in spam and you know my response to that is, Well, that’s really your behavior problem less than mine because I know I’m not sending bad content. The problem is, you’re probably not opening enough of our emails. So what I need you to Dio is go ahead and rescue it out of the spam folder, and then the next couple times you see it come through. Just go ahead and open that email and that will send the signal that you know, you don’t consider a spam.

[00:45:44.49] spk_1:
How did you get the great name? Kivi? What a lovely

[00:45:46.52] spk_0:
name. Eyes

[00:45:47.85] spk_1:
that from Yeah, it’s It’s like I think of a little bird like it reminds me of a hummingbird. What? What?

[00:45:54.17] spk_0:
What? It’s a Hebrew name, But, you know, I also joked that I was born in 1969 in Northern California. So my parents thought they were hippie, so they wanted to give me a fun name.

[00:46:04.28] spk_1:
It was a fun name, but it’s just Hey, Bru, what does it does it mean something in Hebrew.

[00:46:09.38] spk_0:
I believe it means protected one, although I might have

[00:46:13.83] spk_1:
that non protector. Maybe it’s protector.

[00:46:39.48] spk_0:
Yeah, it tze something nice. It’s also a male name in, I think, something like a one of the Scandinavian languages and it means stone. It’s a it means stone or rock, I think in a e Don’t know camera. But when a camera Which name? Yeah, it’s a male. It’s a male name. So sometimes if you if you’re like looking at Kitty’s online, it will be a bunch of tall blond guys,

[00:46:53.28] spk_1:
right? Right, eating, eating a lot of salmon or swordfish. I like the protector or protected one. Now, uh, contrary to what I usually do, I let you mentioned something. So I said, You’re the guest, So let’s go there. I usually don’t do that.

[00:46:59.78] spk_0:
Yeah, that

[00:47:00.16] spk_1:
surprised ultimately, for you as a za marketing communications professional, because usually I take

[00:47:12.08] spk_0:
over. Yeah, I was a little surprised when that happened, but resume your normal personality. Tony, please. Let’s talk about

[00:48:13.07] spk_1:
the center of the universe is me in this show. The the dissonance I see between your respondents say that email is either very important or absolutely essential is like 50/50 percent, 53%. But then the usage Oh, and then and then Facebook. They about about the same percentage. 54% say Facebook, not at all important to them. But then you have a lovely another lovely, colorful bar chart on community use of communications channels. And Facebook is being used week, either several times per week or daily by 80% of the org’s. And email is down like only 21% are doing daily or or then 53% of doing several times per week or daily. So I see a distance between the the importance the relative importance of email on Facebook and their actual usage.

[00:49:19.07] spk_0:
Well, I guess I don’t quite see that because they’re they’re just different channels, right? And so what would be considered best practice is going to vary so on Social media, You know, people update its shorter updates more frequently, um, than with email, which is somewhat longer content. But you know, most organizations probably shouldn’t be emailing every day, whereas they probably should be posting everyday on social media. So with email, what we really say is, you know, if you’re on Lee doing email monthly or even quarterly. It’s like, Why are you even bothering if you’re only emailing people quarterly? But you know, we we try to really encourage people to move in the direction of weekly for email. Now, of course, it depends what they’re doing, right? Like the organizations that air really actively involved in advocacy work. Our political topics for things were changing very quickly. There’s tons of breaking news, you know. They are going to email daily in a lot of cases, but even kind of your average non profit. That’s not doing super newsy things. You know, I would still encourage them to do a short email once a week. A short email once a week is better than a long email once a month.

[00:49:59.67] spk_1:
A short email once a week is better than a long email. Yeah, yeah, more, more frequency. People only hear from you 12 times a year. That just in 2021. That just seems completely inadequate from educations standpoint. Month. Yeah, they’re gonna forget you in between. All right. All right. So I understand. Maybe there’s not the dissonance that I that I saw Just What about Facebook, you know, Do we still have to be? You have to talk about it because there’s 30 you want me to get Julia Campbell to talk about it, E

[00:50:10.23] spk_0:
I recommend.

[00:50:11.68] spk_1:
Yes, I know. I’ve We’ve We’ve had her. We’ve talked. I’ve talked to her. Um, Alright. There are still 3.5 for whatever billion

[00:50:18.62] spk_0:
people there. You

[00:50:19.39] spk_1:
still have to be

[00:50:20.47] spk_0:
there. I mean, it’s still the, you know, the big the big monster. Right?

[00:50:26.49] spk_1:
So

[00:51:43.06] spk_0:
you know, what I encourage people to do is to really think about how to use Facebook, though. So when you look at what is most engaging on Facebook and where Facebook itself is investing, most of its resource is it’s into video, particularly Facebook Live or it’s into the group’s function of Facebook. You know, tony, I don’t know if you’ve how much time you spend on Facebook or, you know, if you really analyze your own personal use, but I know the overwhelming majority of time I spend on Facebook is in Facebook groups, okay? And so, you know, a group isn’t right for every organization, but if it if you’re interested in both communicating with people and having those people communicate with each other. So you’re really interesting in organizing that community and facilitating that community conversation. Then I think a group can make a lot of sense on. Then again, Like I said, video is something that ah lot of people are embracing now with the pandemic, they’re just going for it. And so Facebook live could be really helpful in that way, too. Um, you know, I don’t encourage people to spend tons and tons of time on just sort of random posts on their Facebook pages. Um, I think there’s a better ways to use that time. Okay,

[00:51:48.06] spk_1:
what would you like to wrap up with? What should we say about the non profit communications trends report that we haven’t talked about yet?

[00:52:59.95] spk_0:
Well, you know, I think you mentioned how empathetic we are, um or I enormously. Yeah. I mean, I am not, like, normally, a cheerleader type of person, but this is the one place in my life, you know? Besides, maybe my girl scouts that I do feel like I am a cheerleader is is really trying to encourage calms, folks, Thio, uh, you know, step into the role to lead in the role to really move their organizations forward. And, you know, I think we’re seeing some of that take place. Every time we do a trends report, we can see MAWR, especially in the open ended questions where people can really talk in their own words, about the changes that are going on on. We’re continuing to see that, and I think the pandemic was a great test of that. The organizations that are doing the calm, the collaborative, agile, logical, methodical are able toe whether even this horrible pandemic on. So I think I find that encouraging and hopeful. If they could get through this, they could do anything. Just imagine the possibilities.

[00:53:21.78] spk_1:
The empathetic Give You Lulu Miller non profit marketing guide at non profit marketing guy dot com and at I’ll Say It one more time. N P M K T G D. On Kivi is at key BLM at TVL M. Well, I’ll be talking to you before you and the girls go toe, but I’ll say I hope you have a wonderful trip thio to Belize, but I’ll be talking to you before then. Thank you very much, Kevin.

[00:53:27.83] spk_0:
Thanks for sharing

[00:54:20.75] spk_1:
my pleasure next week. I just can’t say at this point, But have I ever let you down? If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo and by dot drives Prospect to donor Simplified tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant demo and a free Month Ah, creative producer is kiddies. Friend Claire Meyerhoff shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty, you’re with me next week for non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.