Jamie McClelland, Natalie Brenner & Alice Aguilar: Email Deliverability
In our age of rampant spam and artificial intelligence, you need to know how to give your emails the best chance of getting delivered. What are DMARC, DKIM and SPF, and how do they help with deliverability? This 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference panel is Jamie McClelland, Natalie Brenner and Alice Aguilar, all from Progressive Technology Project.
Patty Breech & Elizabeth Sellers: Email Welcome Journeys\
What happens after your emails are delivered and folks want to support your cause? How do you bring them into your family so they’re engaged and stay with you. Also from 24NTC, this panel is Patty Breech at The Purpose Collective and Elizabeth Sellers with Humanity & Inclusion.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with Eisenmenger syndrome if you broke my heart because you missed this week’s show. Our associate producer, Kate is sick and lost her voice. Of course, I wish her a speedy recovery to good health. But then a question comes to mind. Do we need an associate producer? Let’s see how it goes this week, email deliverability in our age of rampant spam and artificial intelligence. You need to know how to give your emails the best chance of getting delivered. What are D mark D Kim and SPF? And how do they help with deliverability? This 2024 nonprofit technology conference panel is Jamie mcclelland, Natalie Brenner and Alice Aguilar, all from progressive technology project and email. Welcome journeys. What happens after your emails are delivered and folks want to support your cause? How do you bring them into your family? So they’re engaged and stay with you. Also from 24 NTC. This panel is Patty Breach at the purpose collective and Elizabeth Sellers with Humanity and Inclusion. I’m Tony take too. I love the wise. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org. This is getting exhausting here is email deliverability. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC. It’s the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. Of course, we’re in Portland, Oregon. You know that you’ve heard this already. Our continuing coverage is sponsored by Heller consulting here at 24 NTC. Heller does technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me now is Jamie mcclelland Technology Systems Director at Progressive Technology Project, also Natalie Brenner, Director of Resource mobilization at Progressive Technology Project, and Alice Aguilar, the leader, the executive director at Progressive Technology Project. Jamie Natalie Alice. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us, Tony. Thank you all. Uh Your session topic is email deliverability in the era of spam and artificial intelligence. Um Alice, let’s start with you. What could you just kick us off? We have plenty of time together but general strokes. What, what could we be doing better? What are we ignoring? Why do we need this session on email ability? This session is really, really important for nonprofits and, and grassroots organizing groups, you know, um in PTPS 25 years, we know that email has been really critical to organizations and, and organizing. Um It’s a critical communication vehicle, um, to get the word out quickly to groups so that they can, and their community so that they can take action. Right. There’s no stamps. Right. It’s pretty instant. As long as somebody on the other side is watching. Right. And, and you know, the thing about email, it’s also the place where we control our own messages. Uh, we control our own lists, you know. So it’s, it’s democracy at work. we control the timing, the timing of it, right? Um So there’s nobody there, you know, like, you know, to like to look at our content. At least that’s how it has been, you know, email is Federated. You know, anybody could be an email service provider and send out your email. But now here’s the thing that we’re seeing, right? There’s this concentration of ownership around technology and you’re seeing this in email. So when organizations are sending out email, about half are going to gmail Yahoo or Outlook Microsoft, right? So, um if you think about that, it’s like now with this most recent changes, if you had seen there’s changes in, in uh Google and Yahoo had changed the rules about what emails are gonna be sent. So there’s a concentration and the rules are changing by the, the companies that control 50% of and so they’re controlling the deliverability, correct, you know, and, and like email is supposed to be different than platforms like Facebook or, you know, X you know where they’re monitoring your contact and the algorithms. Email is your, that’s your words, your story being told. And so, you know, it’s, it’s really critical for our groups to get their messages out. Right. And so now because of these rules and these changes and, and eventually they could just totally, they’re gonna make all sorts of decisions about what email is gonna go. Um We have to, we as organizations have to jump some hoops and take responsibility now to make sure that our emails are delivered and it’s really hard for folks to keep up with this. And that’s why our session is, you know, PTP is gonna help uh groups figure out how do we at least get our messages through these corporate gatekeepers, right? To be able to get that out. So that’s the, that’s the purpose of the session, Natalie. Um Who uh can you expose us to some of these rules or, or one of the rules that’s changed? We have plenty of time together, but Alice mentioned all these rules changing. What, what, what the hell is going on? Thanks, Tony. I knew you were going to ask me the technical question. Are you the person? I’m the accidental techie of the. However. Yeah, absolutely. Does that mean Jamie is the technician is I should say he surely is. Yeah, absolutely. So as Alice was saying, you know, email is kind of kind of the dinosaur of the technology world at the moment, but it’s also so critical still like Alice was saying, even after our 25 years, we’re seeing groups still relying and counting on it. And now they have all these acronyms to work through D Mark D Kim SPF. And what in the hell do those mean? Most of the groups we work with don’t know, I don’t know what the hell they mean. And so our session is going to expose that for folks and tell them how to work through all that Mark Net non profit radio. We have jargon jail. You just transgressed terribly like you are in it to bail you out. Obviously. D Mark D Kim and I am in jargon jail and I totally accept that will get you out. Pf to me is some protection factor because I live on and I probably even said the wrong jargon. We don’t even know, but I live on a beach in North Carolina. So to me, that’s my 50 at least help us just before we get into the technical details. Just what are these rules about, right? The, the main goal of the rules is to stop fraud. Um You’ve probably received an email that was sent from Tony Martignetti and it wasn’t you? Yeah. Yes, I have. It’s another guy out there and there are other folks I think I might have just called you Mark. By the way, it’s Jamie because we have another, it’s not D Jamie. It’s D mark is the acronym and Jamie is the, that’s where it came from. Thank you. That’s very gracious of you to bail me out. It was my fault. It’s mine. I made the right Jamie. So the main idea is fraud because Google and Yahoo, in this case, at least they’re trying to impose new limits for a noble cause which is they want to stop people from being able to send messages that claim to be from your domain name, but they aren’t. And your domain name is the part after the at sign in your email address. And you don’t want, I don’t want to get a message from Alice at progressive tech.org that says, hey, Jamie, your payroll didn’t go through click here in order to make sure it’s proper, that’s what we’re trying to stop. Have there been problems with Mark’s payroll payroll? No, I get it from Natalie asking me to like, hey, I forgot the login for our bank account. I need to get these checks. Can you please just click here and just give me you hover over the email address and it’s like that’s not Alex dot ru when you hover over. So they’re doing it for a noble cause they’re doing it for a noble cause. And you might, you know, 10 years ago you got these also, but they were full of typos and they were so obviously not from Natalie or not from Alice, but now with artificial intelligence. It’s possible for anyone you don’t even like, you can be anywhere with any kind of language skills and you can have a perfectly written email that’s very convincing. And, and they’ve also cut down on the, uh, the estates, you know, a $45 million estate greetings of the day, you know, from one of the African countries, you cannot, they are smarter, they are smarter and they’re closer to the real thing, close to the real thing. And so, you know, if you hover over and it says.ru it’s easy. But what if you hover over? And it says Alice at Progressive tech.org which it can you just to make clear.ru is a domain, a Russia, it’s a country level domain name. It’s owned by Russia and it could be anything. Tony dot Ma Ma is Morocco, it’s country of America. So every year I think I pay 75 or 100 and $75 or something to the, to the to the my domain provider. Of course, but they’re paying the country of Morocco for my dot Ma U so.ru is Russia, which means it’s very likely spam. I’m sorry, Jamie. That’s great. So the deep dark secret is that from the beginning of the internet, you could send an email that was from progressive tech.org and you still can send an email, you can put whatever from address you want in the email protocol. It allows it, you can put whatever you want in the from address and it really will be whatever domain name you want it to be. So these new rules and regulations are intended to stop that. And there’s two main rules that are used to test and the test, one of them is called SPF for Sender policy framework, policy framework. And that one says I can, I love the energy between the three of you, Natalie and Alice are giggling while, while Jamie is talking, I love the energy we’ve been working. Plus there’s this guy Mark who’s presence is hovering over us. We’re channeling Mark even though he’s 3000 miles away. Are you, are you based in New York or a Texas, Texas? Paul Minnesota. I’m in New York is somewhere. We’ve worked together for over a decade and he’s only five 100 miles but his presence is felt we’re channeling. So SPF again, SPF is center policy framework and this allows us as progressive tech.org to publish to the internet to say if you get an email that claims to be from progressive tech.org, it has to be sent from one of these 10 servers. And if it wasn’t sent from one of these 10 servers, you should consider it fraudulent because there’s only 10 servers that legitimately send our email. Those are the email servers of our internet service provider. So that center policy framework, if Google or Yahoo or proton mail or may 1st mail, whatever, that’s an email that claims to be from progressive tech.org. That email provider can look up our SPF record check to see if it was sent from the right server and if it wasn’t sent from the right server, it fails the SPF test. D mark. Let me do D mark last DKIM. Let’s work on Kim. There’s no, no job description. Your name must be Kim. We’ll accept middle name, first name preferred. We’ll keep an open mind. Kim is a signature. It’s a digital signature. When we tell us what the acronym stands for, can I on the domain key identified? Male? Yes, there’s math involved. There’s math involved. There’s some very cool math involved. So he said cool math what I was saying? I thought it was redundant. So dkim, when a message is sent by us, we insert a digital signature into the header part of the email, the header is usually hidden from most people. So you can’t see it, but a digital signature is sent with the email message. So when the receiving server gets the message, the receiving server sees the signature and then it has to look up your DKIM record to see if it’s a valid signature and if it is a valid signature, then you pass the DKIM test. So two tests every does every email have to pass all three of these tests that we’re talking? Right? So that’s where Mark comes in. This is the rule. Oh jeez, don’t ask me what that one stands for the D mark is when you make those two tests and then the receiving service says, well, what do I do if it fails? And a dar policy can be, none says, don’t do anything. It’s OK. You can be fraudulent and two is reject and three is quarantine, which are in practice mostly the same. So in other words, you can set your SPF and your DKIM so that the receiving server can tell whether it’s valid. And then you can say this is what you should do if it fails either one of those two. So if the rule is you only have to pass one, so you can fail SPF. But if you pass DKIM, you pass, you can fail DKIM. But if you pass the SPF and the reason is because there’s actual legitimate reasons why you might fail one or the other, it’s still valid and you could fail one or the other. So you just need one. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers responsive. Fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact virtuous.org. Now, back to email deliverability. This really is getting exhausting now. All right. So we’re acquainted with what the rules are rules, these are new rules. So this is, this is, I mean, if you consider relative to the internet, this is ancient history. These rules have been around for over 10 years, but the way rules become adopted is very slow. So what Yahoo and Gmail have done is they’re trying to speed adoption of these rules by saying we’re going to reject your email if you don’t have these three things in place. And it’s kind of interesting because D Mark is supposed to say no, you’re supposed to accept it if the policy is none, but Gmail is breaking that protocol and say no, we’re going to reject it. If you don’t, if you don’t have one of SPF or Din, we’re going to reject it regardless of D Mark. If you send more than 5000 messages a day, we’re really going to make sure you have at least one of these two and you have to have ad mark policy, even if the D MARK policy says none, you still have to have that D Mark policy if you’re a bulk sender and we’re gonna stop you. We’re gonna, we’re gonna break away from the technology part of it. I wanna talk. No, no, we’re not abandoning. I mean, it’s important, but we’re gonna move to leadership Alice. What, what is a nonprofit leader’s role in ensuring email deliverability? Well, you’re the executive director. What, what do you feel you take on in, in, you know, in your role obviously as your role as executive director, what do you think is your responsibility around email deliverability? Our responsibilities are responsible to our help our groups because that’s what we do. We support community organizing groups, that’s our niche. Um really think about like, you know, because we care about their work and we care that they get the communications out. It’s our responsibility as our team to understand these rules to be on top of this stuff, which is really hard. I mean, we’re a team of three plus mark out there. Don’t forget I can’t, you know, and so we have to like sift through and keep up with these rules because our groups don’t have time for that. We work with small to medium sized organizations that don’t have a tech arm. They don’t have a techie, they have accidental techies like Natalie, um which we make Natalie do a lot of things, right? They make me do a lot of, you know, so, so that’s our responsibility to move. We were there to really help groups navigate this world and also help them understand the role of technology in their organizing work and the impacts um that technology has in society and for social change. And this email stuff is critical because there’s so much dependence, we call it dependence on the master’s tools. You know, Audrey Lord, uh the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. You know. So for us, it’s like having we, we throw in a lot of political education around the role of technology. Email is like the one that everybody understands, but they don’t realize that as organizations that their emails are not getting sent. And they’re wondering like, why can’t we move our folks just because they’re not receiving an email. And so our responsibility is to help them get that word out. And so we deconstruct this stuff, figure it out. Jamie memorizes these acronyms and we hold trainings, we actually hold trainings, we help them navigate, help them get things set up. That’s our, that’s our role. My role is to work to move our team to make sure that this is we’re doing the best we can. We work with almost 100 and 50 organizations, nonprofit, uh grassroots organizations. It’s, it’s our job to make sure that we’re on it and in a timely way and we keep up with it and also translate, right? We got to translate this stuff for the groups that don’t have a technologist. They don’t have the benefit of a Jamie, right. And also the, the understanding is not, it’s, it’s again, understanding that role because we sort of like use whatever is easy. But to do this stuff is actually takes a little bit of, you have to dig in a little bit and that’s our job to help dig in and we’re gonna get to what to do very, very, very shortly. But this is why this is perfect for our listeners because most of our listeners small and mid-sized nonprofits, they don’t have the benefit of a full time or even maybe even an outsource technologist, like you’ve got Jamie. Alright, Natalie, how do you, how do you fit into this? So, um I have been with progressive technology project for 11 years and I started in an administrative role um and in a small organization that doesn’t take a whole lot of time. Um And so I started to learn how to do technical support and started working on the programming aspect of things. Um started training alongside my colleagues. Um We provide several trainings a year online and we’re going to do our first in person since COVID this year, probably this fall. Um And so I do a little bit of everything and it’s wonderful. Can you so can you help us start to get into the topic of how to design your own emails so that they, so that they meet, meet the criteria? Don’t suffer the uh the consequences of, of D mark. I got these acronyms down. Now, you got to do one of the two SPF or D Kim and D Mark will evaluate, will instruct the internet. Well, the email provider, what to do if, if one of those two tests is not passed, I’m, you’re like your name. I didn’t say hirable. You don’t want me as an employee. I’d be a terrible employee. You wouldn’t want me as an employee. But yeah, there’s a lot of things you can do to help before you get to the acronyms. There’s a lot of things that you can do on the front end to help your emails get delivered. And that has to do with setting up your template, not including weird characters or you know, animated GS like the word free can sometimes be, don’t use the word invoice or free in your subject line in your subject line. Don’t send an email to 20,000 people and include an attachment, things like that. And so we do train on things like that as well. And then on the technical end of things, you’ve got all the acronyms to work through and there’s lots of ways that you can get help addressing those if you don’t have a technologist at your organization or if you’re not with a social justice partner, like progressive technology project, um where we provide uh really awesome support to help you through that. So I want to go into a little more detail about the structure of emails, the planning of emails. So that uh Jamie, you want, I mean, I don’t know, Natalie, should we stay with you? I, I’m just, I’m still concerned about the subject line. Leave out free, leave out invoice free at if you’re sending to thousands of people that don’t do attachment. What else just about? Yeah. So, you know, there’s a lot going around these days from different consulting firms or organizations talking about how to craft a subject line that will gain attention. And that’s really important. But you also have to just be careful about the buzzwords that you’re using to avoid the pitfalls. And it’s not that hard if you’re talking about a subject line. Do you guys have anything to add? I think everything Natalie said is straight on some of it. It is common sense. You receive lots of spam messages and you don’t want your email to sound like that and look like that. And some of it can be obvious the no free act. Now there’s a lot of exclamation points, things like that sometimes get picked up. But I think that’s important. It’s becoming less important as these new rules and regulations are happening because it’s getting bigger, the data’s getting much bigger. And I feel like the big providers are really getting a little bit better at differentiating between the spam and the non spam. So I think that really important is following these rules and getting your domain names properly set up. Um, the only other things I would add are just, there might be personal preferences. Like a lot of people have the subject line newsletter number three, number 12. And it’s like, no, it’s the same thing I find too. I think most personally and this is very, like, there’s a matter of taste. I’m not a big fan of the newsletter that has 12 different stories in it because I see a subject line and I decide whether I’m going to open that message based on what’s in the subject line. You can’t put 12 things in a subject line. Yeah, but then whatever is not in the subject line is buried and it’s difficult. I’m a bigger fan of sending out more frequent emails with um that are shorter that like you, you see in the subject line, what it is and then you’re going to open it and you’re going to read it as opposed to a long newsletter. Now, do things like frequency. Does that impact your deliverability? Frequency? So too many, too much. No. In fact, it’s the opposite quantity and volume help you because a lot of these are percentile rankings where the providers are going to say, oh, wow, we received 1000 messages that were successfully sent and not complained about and you got two complaints. That’s a, you know, very tiny percentage. If you send 10 messages and you get two complaints, it’s, you know, it’s like a complaint can sink you more. So they’re tracking, there are, aren’t, aren’t the providers also able to track what people do with your message, whether they, whether they, whether they, whether they put it, whether they market junk, do, are they able to track that you’re doing in your inbox? They’re 100% able to track it. And it’s a black box as to what the algorithm is as to what they’re doing. And this is one of the, when you’re talking about, I think what leadership as a nonprofit sector, a lot of that has to do with paying attention to the power we’re giving these corporations. You’re familiar as a media person in the nineties, we were really fighting hard against the concentration of media ownership. It was a huge threat and it’s still a massive, massive threat. The same thing is happening with email, there’s a concentration in owner within the internet in general and with email in particular with Google Yahoo and Outlook. And we think, you know, Google is free and it’s not, it is like it comes with a price cash. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Surrender, privacy, surrender. Yes. What did you say? Free as kittens? Ac RM kind of thing. Free. Yes, exactly. So, but that’s where this black box comes in is that we’re giving the power to a very small number of corporations to decide based on our actions and based on who knows what, whether the message should arrive in the inbox. Now, these new regulations, I think they are in the public interest. I’m very glad that Google and Yahoo have decided that they’re going to cut down on fraudulent email. I applaud that, I think that’s good, but they’re doing it for their own reasons. And that means next time they might have other changes that they want. And I’m not at all comfortable with us as a sector saying sure, we’ll give three corporations the ability to dictate what messages land in the inbox, especially during these really crazy political times, it’s un predictable what could happen. And I prefer for us as a movement for us as a nonprofit sector to diversify. I really encourage people to look at other providers. Don’t just go to Outlook or Google because your a technologist says, oh, this is a simple thing that everyone’s doing. It’s really important to diversify to go to other providers. And I just want to say like, you know, we can make a choice, we make a choice to voluntarily give up our, you know, work, go to gmail because it’s oh, it’s so easy and, and it does all these things, but we can make changes now, right? I mean, I think that’s what PTP, what we stand for is we believe in people controlled technology for social change because then we can control, right, our data, our messages, how we wanna get things delivered. And so and, and also design it the way we need it right? To design it, the way organizations and organizing, really need to do the work and in our language, right? So this is where we can make choices. But it’s, um, it’s usually most folks get directed, right? Because of whether it’s consulting or sometimes it’s foundations. I hate to say it. But, you know, because you’ll get free money if you just like, everybody get on 365 Microsoft. right? It’s like without thinking and it’s like, but meanwhile, here they are doing work, you know, and that’s anti corporate work or something, you know, and so be conscious about your choices, especially how it may, may uh coincide with your own cause you were going to say something. I am in total agreement with all of that. And I just wanted to go back to a little bit about email deliverability on the recipient’s end. A shout out to all email recipients out there. I know the spam button looks very inviting for every single email that you don’t want to see in your inbox. However, if it’s not real spam, if it’s from an organization where you went to their gala maybe and you decide you don’t want their email, try to click unsubscribe because when you click spam, you know that goes in to mark against that organization and maybe that’s not what you intended. The user actions that do get collected aggregated. I was gonna ask you too, Natalie about Alright. So as a recipient, be thoughtful. Not real spam and we get it. You don’t want our stuff. That’s totally cool. You get to make that choice but just like unsubscribe instead of a spam. What about cleaning up your list? I mean, isn’t there in, in having a smaller list that’s not gonna mark your spam that’s more engaged with your emails and having a bigger list and, and lower quality receipt actions. That’s such a good point. And uh with power base, the database for community organizers through our support, we do a ton of work with um the groups we work with on duping, making sure you have valid and correct email addresses, you know, having a sign up sheet at your gala or your event is great. Um However, if those people are clicking unsubscribe, make sure they’re actually getting unsubscribed in your database. Um You can even go so far as to if you want to keep them in your database, remove their email address, just you brought up such a good point. Make sure you’re not sending it’s, you know, quality over quantity. Definitely you don’t need to send to the world, you know, do some searches in your database for who is the most engaged and send them a particular email segmenting your list can be very helpful for that. Yeah. Did you have more to add? No, I was just saying it’s like, it’s sort of interesting because the idea of unsubscribing, people should know that they’re only unsubscribing from that one list. And organizations are great at like, creating multiple lists for multiple different things and just like, I have 1625 30 different communications lists and like, people are wondering why am I getting all these emails? Because, well, you only subscribe from the one list, you know, so what that email list was on and sometimes you may not know what list you’re on so organizations can do that too. I mean, if you think it’s good to have 25 communication lists, maybe you should pair it down to 10, maybe like limit. I have another technical question. Mark Jamie. I want to ask you to myself. Don’t be so harsh if I was a DJ DJ. Got it. Alright. Um You mentioned setting your domain name up properly. What did you mean by that, please? So with Dkim Dar and SPF these all are referred to stop laughing at the, stop laughing at the acronyms are bona fide. He got you out of jargon jail. Some gratitude. I would, I would charge you interest on the bail payment. I just made quite an acronym. Yeah. Jeez. So how do you do? How do you put up with this? This is a virtual organization. I was glad you’re not all based on the laugh at your technology. So your domain name, she’s I know she’s going to apologize for that. I know she feels bad already. I can say she’s blushing. I’m putting, I’m putting her on the spot. Does she feel she feel bad? I do. I sorry, deeply sorry, apology accepted. I know they really care about setting up your domain name. So if you own your own domain name, then you have a company that’s called the Registrar, which is where you pay an annual fee. Usually about $20 a year for the right to have this domain name. Domain 10 one is a big one. Hover name.com, gandhi.net registrar.com. There’s a number of different ones. The company you’re paying for your annual registration exactly. Now, that often is different than the company you’re paying to host your domain name. Now, these are really subtle and nuanced differences but they are important differences. The company that you pay to host your domain name is usually the same company you pay to host your website or your email or something like that that’s usually packaged together. Now, the company that’s hosting your domain name is where you can set what your domain name records point to. So that’s what you say DNR S domain name records. Yeah. Well, DNR, I don’t know if I haven’t heard that accurate. That makes me think of testing Department of Natural Resources. We can name them. All right. Look, I have the board here. I can shut your mic down. Not supposed to make fun of the host that consolidation of power. You’re damn right. This is not progressive technology project. Nonprofit Radio. This is Tony Martignetti, Nonprofit Radio. You’re damn right. The middle aged white guy is taking over explicitly. At least I do it explicitly. I acknowledge the power so I’ll shut you down. All right. So no domain name record if we spell it, DNR do. So that’s what you’d say. This domain name points to this IP address. If you want to send an email to this domain name, it should go to this mail server. Those are the historic ways that domain names have been used and they’re being added to and order to support the SPF, DKIM and D Mark records. So SPF is a kind of a domain name record called the text record. And DKIM is also used as the text record. So you say for progressive tech.org, show me the text record and it will say SPF policy is this or you say, OK, and you look it up just the same way you’d say for this domain name. That’s the IP address. How do we make sure we’re set up correctly? You know, I would love technical help with this. I would love to explain to you how to do that. That would take a diagram in 45 minutes. It’s painful. I’m embarrassed as a technologist, how complicated it is to do this. The best I can say is first ask your consultant, staff or volunteer if you’re lucky enough to have one, if you’re not then ask your web host and if your web host can’t do it and you have a database, maybe you have power base or maybe you have um sales force or maybe you have networks nation or any of the other corporate places. Ask them because they’re the place you’re sending your bulk email, they have a responsibility to help you and they should be able to help you solve this problem. That’s valuable. Natalie, I’m going to choose you to bookend us. So the Accidental Techie, which a lot of a lot of people find themselves in that position. Uh You know, just take us out with uh with final thoughts. Yeah. Um Well, we really appreciate this opportunity this time. It’s been a while since we’ve done a radio show and progressive technology project is growing. Um We’re a social justice nonprofit organization that believes in transparent and democratic technology. Um like Jamie said to get help with this stuff, your database provider should be helping you, your technology providers should be helping you with this, so seek their support. Um And then, yeah, we’d love to hear from anyone out there who’s interested in learning more progressive. Tech.org is our website. Ok. Thank you. And just to set the record straight, it’s a podcast. It’s, it’s called Tony Martin TI Nonprofit Radio, but we’re, we’re a podcast, weekly, weekly podcast. Alright. So they are Jamie mcclelland, uh at Progressive Technology Project, Natalie Brenner with progressive technology project. And Alice Aguilar, the leader, the executive director, progressive technology project, Jamie Natalie Ellis. Thank you very much Tony and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC, the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are graciously sponsored by Heller consulting our booth partners, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. It’s time for Tony take two. I’m at the National Association of Y MC A Development Officers Conference, the National Association of all the Y MC A s in uh Mexico, Canada and the US. We’re in Denver, Colorado and I have to admire the w for just all their camaraderie, you know, their support for each other. Um I saw it today at uh two round table conversations that I hosted the desire to help each other. Um These were all small and mid size wise and the sharing of ideas, you know, the, just the, the getting along the collegiality. Uh It’s really delightful to see. Uh There are about 1800 people at this uh North American Y MC, a conference and I’m delivering uh a session on planned giving, not surprising, planned giving 101. I haven’t done that session yet, but from everything I’ve seen the two days I’ve been here, the WS really do support each other throughout North America and it’s uh it’s, it’s inspiring, it’s really, it’s, it’s uplifting to, to see everyone just desiring to help each other so much. Uh sharing ideas, you know, and just laughing and understanding. Yes, understanding, empathizing, even if there isn’t a solution or a suggestion, but, you know, just the empathy. So my, my hats off to the Y MC A s of North America. It’s a real pleasure and a privilege to be at their conference. And that is Tony’s take two ordinarily I would say Kate, but she’s not with us. Uh uh III I think she’ll be back. Uh I think we’ve got Buku but loads more time here is email. Welcome journeys. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are in Portland, Oregon at the Convention Center and where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now are Patty Breach and Elizabeth Sellers. Patty is founder and CEO of the purpose collective. Elizabeth is us, Director of Communications and Development at Humanity and Inclusion. Patty Elizabeth. Welcome. Thanks for having us. Good to be here. Pleasure, Patty for you. Welcome back. I think this is your third spot on nonprofit radio at NTC. You’re a perennial. It’s great to be back. I’m glad, glad. Thank you and Elizabeth. Welcome. Welcome. First time we’re talking about the secret to loyal donors. Email, welcome journeys. Um Elizabeth, why don’t you start us off with how important because we’ve heard from Patty on this subject in the past. Uh I believe it was two years ago, but it, that was two years ago. Uh start us off motivation. Why is the email? Welcome journey so important? Sure. So we’re all nonprofits. We all rely on donors to do our work and have impact. So we’re welcoming donors into our organizations every day. Um But so often we’re not nurturing them in a way to share the impact they’re having and share other opportunities for them to get involved. So welcome journeys, really provide an opportunity for us to introduce people to the organization, to our work and to ways that they can take part in our work with us. Um And of course, whenever you’re able to automate a welcome journey, it helps small teams like ours at Humanity and inclusion to welcome those donors out as much capacity or or resource of a manual welcome series. So for us, the initial need for a welcome journey that kind of pushed us over the edge was two years ago when the Ukraine conflict started, we work in situations of conflict and disaster mostly with people with disabilities. And we saw an influx of thousands of new donors who really didn’t know much about our work. And we’ve caught ourselves with the problem of how do we tell them who we are, why we’re managing this emergency situation. And the answer to that was the email welcome journey. And we’ve now added more of those to our repertoire to bring new donors into our space. And and Patty, we can do this with, with uh automation, but also, as Elizabeth said, also nurturing we can, we can automate and nurture together. Yeah, absolutely. Um I think the primary goal of any welcome journey is gratitude. Um We want to thank the supporter for whatever their most recent action was, whether it was a gift or joining an email list or signing a petition. We really want to validate that decision and say um you know, we really appreciate you and we’re so glad you’re here. Um Patty, I gotta ask you a question from previous years. Are, are you the person who told me that you, you, you go on dates and they google your name and they find your nonprofit radio appearances was that you, it wasn’t you? I thought it was, you know, well somebody did tell me I thought it was you. Uh no, you’re not, you’re not seeing that. Ok? No, you would remember all. I’m just sorry I I remembered the wrong person but uh it is happening. I I can’t say that there are any uh marriages have spawned from nonprofit radio appearances. Not yet, but I’ve only been at it 14 years. So I’m still working to get to reach that marriage threshold. Somebody did tell me that their dates were, were mentioning their appearances. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So it could happen in your future, you know, I don’t know if you’re dating or not but let’s talk about uh is this, I mean, there’s a series, you have a, you have a kind of a, this is a series of like four or five emails properly timed. Ok. Now, let me ask, uh Elizabeth, are you working with the purpose collective in your email? Welcome journeys. We presume we’re here, we’re here together. Ok. Um So Patty, you’re the expert here. Uh How do we, how do we get our plan started? We got to think about the timing, the messaging, right? Like isn’t the first one supposed to be within, within 24 hours, 20 four hours? Ok. Describe what that first message should look like. Yeah, so that one is just a simple. Thank you. Um We usually recommend that it comes from someone recognizable within the organization. So like the executive director or anyone who has name recognition with your supporters. Um and the email can be really simple. It can even be plain text. And the goal is just to say I saw your donation come in and I wanted to tell you how much we appreciate your gift. Ok. So really simple. It doesn’t have to be formatted. Like plain text is great. It’s like like the digital equivalent of a quick handwrit note. I saw this come and it moved me and I want to thank you. Of course, you’ll hear from us, you know, you’ll get something more formal maybe or something. Yeah, that’s a great way to describe it. OK? Ok. And that within 24 hours, I mean, with automation, I mean, should we do this within 15 minutes or 30 seconds? Yeah, it depends on the system you’re using. Sometimes there’s like an overnight sink that it happens between like your, your database, your donation platform and your email program. I’m also thinking timing wise, if you want it to look authentic, if it comes within 15 seconds, it’s unlikely that your CEO could have, would have typed that and now you’re giving away the authenticity of it, the authenticity. Yeah, so that’s, that’s actually why wait until the next day, we usually wait at least a couple of hours if it’s a more automatic sync. But if you have an overnight sync that can, that can work in your favor because it looks like the executive director saw your donation come in first thing the next morning and wanted to send you a note. Ok. Alright, Elizabeth, what kind of responses have you seen? You? You’re getting emails back. Like people believe that the executive director really did take the time. Yeah, we do sometimes get emails back. Um just thanking us for the work that we’re doing asking if there are other ways that they can get involved. Um So yeah, we do see some people who reach out on those um on those emails and, and the best thing about those emails is they’re when someone is super warm to your organization. So our open rates are are much, much higher. So we’re automatically seeing more engagement from those folks. After that first email. Are you adhering to the patty breach purpose collective best practice of doing it within 24 hours that first? So yeah, so our donors, they actually do get an immediate thank you receipt if they’re donating online. Um So they get that immediately and then that first email from our executive director lands within 24 hours. And what’s what’s the next step in the in the journey? The next step is story of impact. Um So for us to her validation, for nonverbal validation, story of impact, gratitude and validation happening with our glances at each other. So yeah, have you done your session yet or no? It’s coming up. Oh, good. Let’s have some fun prep. Ok. Alright. So next uh story of validation. No, no validation is of impact is what you get from your consultant of impact. What does this one look like? What’s the timing, story of impact? Um We’re letting the donor know the difference that they’re making with the gift that they’ve sent. Um So for us, we typically will feature someone who’s directly impacted by our services. So our most, I guess most used donor welcome journey features the story of a little boy who was injured by a landmine and actually lost his leg to that explosion and went through our rehabilitation services and was fitted with a brand new artificial leg. So he’s, there’s a photo of him happily running through the streets and just the story of his recovery and, and the life that he’s living now thanks to our donors and I’ll let Patty answer the exact timing of that timing. Well, what is the format? What does it look like it? Now, this is, this woman has pictures and or maybe video or something. This is not the not akin to the first one, right? This is not plain text. We want people to actually be able to visualize the impact that they’re having. So um your typical kind of designed email with, with photos with text, maybe bolding certain um certain pieces that you want to stand out. Um That’s what it’s gonna look like. And what’s our timing? Timing is 2 to 3 days after the first email, we have data behind these uh these timing the flow. I mean, like if it comes too soon or if it, if it’s a week, it it it diminishes the uh the engagement with it. Yeah, exactly. We found that if you wait too long to send these emails, um people kind of forget about the donation that they just gave you and the email feels like it’s coming out of the blue and they’re like, why are you, what is this? So we definitely have clients who are nervous about. They’re like you want to send two emails within the first week that feels like a lot. Um How do you reassure them? We reassure them with the data behind it so we can show them that the open rates, the click rates are really high, usually double or triple their usual email newsletters. So that shows that people want to get these messages and they’re happy to receive it. And we really are striking while the iron is hot and we’re not annoying people with too many messages. And Elizabeth, you haven’t seen push back that, you know why? Two messages after I made my first gift or something. I mean, it seems it’s, it doesn’t seem likely. I mean, II I just made you a gift. I mean, I actually appreciate the attention and knowing now from the second one, what, what my gift is doing but, and just validate, you’re not, you’re not seeing no push back on that. People are opening them, people are engaging with them. I think the important thing on that second email is that we’re not making any sort of ask. We’re just providing them information on the impact they’re having no follow up. You know, if you want to do more for you, it’s too soon. Let’s talk 2 to 3 days much, too soon. Patty, what’s uh what’s our third? How many, how many are there in the The Journey Series? How many emails? Yeah, for a donor welcome series, we recommend five. Ok. Um and we’re about to do number three. And what are the other types of series you folks might have um you could have one for new subscribers. So whenever anyone joins your list, you could send them a welcome series. Um You could also get more specific about your donor welcome series. Like you could have one series for people who give a one time gift and a different series for people who sign up to give monthly. And then depending on your organization, um like Elizabeth’s organization has petitions that people can sign. And so we have journeys tied to those. So if you add your name to a certain cause we can send you a personalized series of emails about that, that cause. Um but yeah, if you also, if you’re recruiting volunteers, that’s a great time to send a welcome series. If someone signs up to volunteer or maybe after they do their first volunteer experience, they spent their first half a day or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Alright. So bring us back to number three, the third one in our journey. What’s our? So the first one was 2 to 3 days after the first email, which was within 24 hours. When should this third email be timed? This is one week after email number two and this is an invitation to become more involved. And so the key here is that this is also not a donation ask, but we’re asking them to take some sort of action with the organization. Um That could be anything from, you know, will you, will you become a volunteer with us? Will you follow us on social media? Um In the case of humanity inclusion, it’s, will you take a survey because we want to get to know you better? Um And the goal is basically saying like, we appreciate you so much. We want, we want to invite you into our inner circle. We want to get to know you. We wanna, we wanna have more interaction with you, Elizabeth. What does that survey look like in this third email? Sure. So we really wanna get to know our donors, so who they are, what motivates them um and what it is about our work that matters most to them, which then of course, helps us tailor our communications to them in the future to really make sure that we’re nurturing them and nurturing their interest moving forward. It takes like two minutes. It’s three questions um very, very easy to complete. So at this point, you’re not asking how, how do you like to hear from us or how often or anything like that? You’re saying it’s only three questions we’re not asking much on um on preferences of that nature, but really just what, what areas of our work they want to know more and and why so you can segment your future communications. OK? Anything else on email? Number three? Either of you that it is important for us to know we wanna do this journey correctly. Now, we don’t wanna, we don’t wanna uh we don’t want to uh walk off the path to follow the path correctly. All right. So we’re OK. Don’t message number three. Yeah. The only other thing I would add is that you can test this out for your organization, you can try a survey and if you’re not getting a lot of responses, you can try something else. OK. How about number four, kick us off with that one. Number four is another story of impact. So we as human beings interpret the world through story, we love stories. So I don’t think that there’s such a thing as too much storytelling. Um And this is just another opportunity to say um Here’s how you’re changing the world, here’s the impact that you’re having and again, that gratitude message, we really appreciate that you’re helping with this work. And again, no, no, no. And what’s the timing for number 41 week after the previous email? Ok. So we’re about two weeks after the right? Aren’t we about two weeks and 2.5 weeks or so after the action that began the journey another week? OK, Elizabeth, what are you doing? And number four? Sure. So number four clients. So we actually, we do have a story of impact, but it’s a little bit interesting because this email actually comes from one of our staff members on the ground in Columbia who works as a Dinor. So, clearing weapons contamination from communities and she’s actually clearing contamination from community, the community that she grew up in where she actually herself as a child stepped on a land mine that fortunately did not explode. Um And she opted to become a de miner and later went back and cleared that same area where she had had that interaction as a, as a kid. So, yeah, so it’s a really, it’s a really nice like behind the scenes stories getting to know both the impact of our work. But it’s another opportunity for us to showcase the boots on the ground that we have as an international organization. And that um you know, the staff that we’re working with are local and are working to improve their communities and they’re doing that. Thanks to our donors, anything you wanna add about? Uh your email number four feedback. Are you still? Uh So it’s through the journey, we’re doing five messages. Are you getting feedback? Uh like through you said when you get the first one from the executive director, you do get some messages there. Do you find much response to 23 and four? Yeah. So sometimes we, yeah, sometimes we get responses. Sometimes we don’t, I think the important thing on these journeys is to recognize that it’s really about keeping your audience warm and informed and familiar with who you are. Um So that whenever it it it’s right for them to take the next action, they know what they can do and why it’s important that they do it. Um So we do sometimes hear back from people. Um But for us, I think the most important thing is just knowing that people are reading those emails and they’re seeing about our work and the impact that they’re having. Um, so that we know that they’re gonna continue to engage with us and that goes to Patty’s point that some folks will forget that they even made the gift of you said, if Patty, if the second email comes too late, folks will wonder why you’re writing to me. You know, they don’t even remember. So you’re trying to keep them warm and engaged as you’re saying, Elizabeth. OK. And how about your, your fifth email, Elizabeth? What is that the the fifth email is the ask? So we’re looking for validation in that one. Yes, we’re asking. So um in that fifth email, um we are typically asking and encouraging those one time donors to now take another step forward and become a monthly donor and join our monthly giving community. Um What if they, what if they were monthly donors to begin with, if they are monthly donors to begin with? So we do have a separate, we have a separate journey for monthly donors. And so in that one, we’re asking them to upgrade their monthly gift so they can give extra and that’s actually a really good point. There’s a filter before this email. So in case anyone signed up to give monthly in the meantime, um they’ll be excluded from this message. The last thing we want to do is ask someone to give monthly who is already giving monthly. It makes it seem like we’re not paying attention a little bit, just a little. Ok. Ok. And what’s the timing patty for this fifth male? We want ideally be a month after the gift. So it should be about two weeks after email number, right? Ok. And so, and you feel comfortable Elizabeth that asking for do more within a month after about a month, right? Yeah, I think, I think that can initially be scary to folks. How is this, you know, are we going to offend anyone? And if we’ve offended anyone, they haven’t told us that we’ve offended them. Um So you got that right? No, we haven’t gotten that feedback. And in fact, we’ve seen people who have either made a second one time gift or people who have decided to start um that monthly gift or maybe they don’t take an action immediately after that email, but two months from now when we continue nurturing them and showing the impact that they’re having, maybe they make that gift, you know, two or three or six months down the road. Um But yeah, we haven’t had any, any negative feedback. I think the important thing is that, you know, donors choose their philanthropy and they choose when to give and how to give and where to give. And so for us, you know, I think Patty and I were talking about this earlier, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. And so, you know, we’re just asking, we don’t expect anyone to do anything that they can or don’t want to do, but we’re giving them that opportunity to make another gift and broaden their impact. If that’s, you know, if that’s on the table for them. And at this point, they’ve learned how important that gift can be and the, the life changing um actions that it can, can fund Elizabeth if it, if it was a petition, that was the first action that began the embarkation on the journey. But I love this journey. So I’m sticking with this journey metaphor. You have the path and it’s a cruise, maybe it’s a cruise ship or um if, if so, if they were uh they signed, they signed a petition, then I assume your ask in email five is for a gift. And how do you decide how much to ask for? Um We actually don’t, we don’t include amounts. Um So, you know, that’s something really up to the donor. We actually um I will give a plug to fundraise up, which is our donation platform and we actually use their machine learning um which A I is, I’m sure gonna be a focus of some of your other interviews. Um but we use their machine learning and they actually will suggest gift amounts. That makes sense to the person who is, you know, coming to our site and opening that donation form. Um But yeah, if they, if they sign a petition that last ask is just to make any gift, whatever the amount um to fund our work. Ok. Ok. Patty gift number, email number five. You haven’t said anything about this one yet? What do you want to add? Um Yeah, I would just add that. I really recommend acknowledging the donor’s previous gift um explicitly in this email. So saying like we remember that you donated to us a month ago, we’re still thinking about how great you are over here. Um We’re still really grateful for that and we wanted to invite you to become a part of this monthly giving program because we think it would be a good fit for you because we know that you’re passionate about this cause it’s because you gave us a donation a month ago that we’re now asking you to do this. So again, we want, we want to make it seem like we’re paying attention. We remember you, we see you um and we’re not just blindly sending out donation requests. I appreciate that. It’s because of your first action that we’re we’re asking this. Alright, we still have some time together. Is there more that you’re gonna share with NTC attendees? That you have not yet shared with nonprofit radio listeners. I mean, I don’t, I don’t appreciate you holding back on uh on our listeners. Is there, is there more that uh we haven’t talked about yet? Um Yeah, I mean, one thing that we’re going to mention in our presentation is that if creating a five part welcome series, feels daunting to you, you can always start smaller, you could start with 123 emails in the series. And as time allows, you could add more emails to them or not like the petition series at Humanity Inclusion. It’s a three part series and that’s it just three emails. Um So we believe having something is better than having nothing even if the something isn’t like the full recommended journey link. But you can set these up as automations in probably any decent email provider, right? I would think contact mailchimp sales force. All the big ones have automated series features. And Elizabeth, is that just a capacity issue for now? I thought you said, I thought you have four and five on the donor Impact Journey. We do have on the on the donor welcome journey. We have five, the subscriber series. We have five, our petitions, we only have the three. So we have two petitions that we ask people to sign. So um so on that one, the j it’s a thank you for adding your name. And then the second one is again that story of impact. And then the third one is that one time ask. Um So I think it depends on to the action that someone is taking. What makes the most sense and what kind of that final ask how it compares to the one before. So if someone’s already given you money, I think nurturing them a little bit more before you ask them for more money is important where if someone is, has taken an action like adding their name to a petition, then for me, it feels a little bit more comfortable to more quickly ask them to, to make a gift. So they get the shorter journey. The three messages makes intuitive sense and you’re seeing good results. Yeah. Another thing I want to mention is that we really recommend segmenting anybody who’s on a journey, segmenting them out of your general newsletter list until they finish the journey. So, ok, your regular list. So like we don’t want someone to get email number two in this journey and then six hours later get your monthly newsletter that might feel like email overload for someone. And um we also feel like it’s the point of this is to nurture someone to the point where now they’re ready after the five emails, now they’re ready to be added to the general list. But for that first month, let’s really make sure we’re just talking to them about their donation and their donation only. Ok. Yeah, it seems disruptive to the, to the, to the whole cause of the whole purpose of the journey to, to have other communications in there. There might, there might be an asking that you might be asking that a newsletter, right? I mean, there probably is and now it seems incongruous like what? But I, I thought you were. Yeah, II I thought I just gave especially if it comes too close to the gift to the initial gift that started the journey, I could see. All right. That makes sense. It’s confusion. It’s disruptive. Ok. Ok. Ok. This is exclusive for the first month. They are exclusive communications. Ok. Is there anything else I I would just say for nonprofits, especially smaller teams, it can feel daunting to set these up at the start, but it’s really worth the time and investment to do that because you, you are now having these personal tailored touches to every donor that’s coming through or every subscriber that’s coming through and there’s a little bit of work on the front end. But really these journeys, once they’re, once they’re set, you can kind of set and forget, you know, maybe do a refresh every 6 to 12 months to make sure that the is still relevant to make sure that, you know, maybe you have a new story of impact that’s more recent that you wanna change out. Um But once you get these going, um they make your job as a fundraiser as a communicator as a marketer, a lot easier um to, to meet these donors where they are. That’s a perfect place to end. Thank you. That’s Elizabeth Sellers, us, Director of Communications and Development at Humanity and Inclusion. And with her is Patty Breach founder and CEO of the purpose collective, Patty Elizabeth. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Next week, the generational divide. That’s not a joke. You’ll see, you’ll see it’s coming. It’s next week. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org. I think this went pretty well. Uh It’s, it is exhausting. Uh um And I’m a little tired of hearing my voice. Uh But you know, I’m the 1st 600 40 shows were all me and I didn’t get tired of hearing myself for those 13 years. So we’ll see, we’ll see the, the jury is out still about uh whether we need an associate producer on nonprofit radio. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The show’s associate producer for now is Kate Martignetti. Our social media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that information, Scotty. You with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
