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Nonprofit Radio for May 1, 2015: Multichannel Storytelling & Your DR Plan

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Opportunity Collaboration: This working meeting on poverty reduction is unlike any other event you have attended. No plenary speeches, no panels, no PowerPoints. I was there last year and I’m going this year. It will ruin you for every other conference! October 11-16, Ixtapa, Mexico.

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My Guests:

Jereme Bivens and Megan AnhaltMultichannel Storytelling

Once you have the best stories, make the most of them across the web, social media and email. Jereme Bivins is digital media manager for The Rockefeller Foundation and Megan Anhalt is strategy director at Purpose. We talked at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.

 

 

Dar Veverka: Your DR Plan

Disaster recovery: Ignore it at your own peril. What belongs in your DR plan? Dar Veverka is vice president of technology for LIFT. This is also from NTC.

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with ataxia telly inject asia if i inherited the mere notion that you missed today’s show multi-channel storytelling once you have the best stories, make the most of them across the web, social media and e mail. Jeremy bivens is digital media manager for the rockefeller foundation and meghan anhalt is strategy director at purpose. We talked at the non-profit technology conference and your d our plan disaster recovery. Ignore it at your own peril. What belongs in your d our plan darva barca is vice president of technology for lift that is also from on tony’s take two thank you, responsive by opportunity collaboration with working meeting on poverty reduction that will ruin you for every other conference. Here’s our first ntcdinosaur today’s show on multi-channel storytelling welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc twenty fifteen, the non-profit technology conference we are in austin, texas, at the austin convention center and my guests are jeremy bivens and meghan and halt they’re seminar topic is multi-channel storytelling for social impact, jeremy is the digital media manager for the rockefeller foundation, and megan and halt is strategy director purpose. Jeremy meghan, welcome. Thank you, let’s. Start with start with jeremy bivens. Why is storytelling so important? Storytelling is important because we have a lot of social sector organizations that are out in the field collecting stories from their impact working with communities around the world and storytelling helps catalyze people to action, to donate money, to volunteer, to help communities so it’s really important that we capture those stories, that we share them to maximize impact. And why your storytelling so much better than some other forms of content that we have a story telling storytelling interacts this in a different way. You had trouble with storytelling, interactive storytelling interacts with with us in a different way, it kind of tugs at the heartstrings and and inspires us to take action. It educates us, but it it really it motivates us to do more than just doing. Ah report let’s say an eighty page report full of statistics and fax is great, but if it doesn’t, if it doesnt make action that it’s not doing its job and stories can help help bridge that gap. Emotion. Yeah, you want anything? I mean, i think, like, what is really incredible powerful about stories is they do have that human connection they are able to cut through, you know, different very complicated con content or other types of content that are really hard to really connect with on be able to really tie into that emotional human connection. So being able to have that authentic experience where it really motivates you and inspires you to want to do something and that’s where for the work that we do around really driving impact and driving action, it could be a really powerful motivator. Call megan, remember to stay close to the mic when you’re when you’re talking ok? Yeah, no problem. All right, thank you, megan. How do we find the people to tell the stories that we recruit the right ones? Yeah. I mean, i think it goes down, teo really being clear and defining what your goals are for the impact that you want to have in the world and then identifying the people that can be really powerful storytellers for that, that goal. So an example, i talked about in our session yesterday is on this organization called the syria campaign identified this brilliant group of men on the ground in syria who were first responders in the syria crisis. Ah, and they called the white helmets, and they were really powerful story teller because they were sort of be able to bring this like, hopeful element to the work that was happening on the ground, and so it allows people to not feel overwhelmed or sad or feel like there’s, not a hope in what can you can accomplish, and so they’re become really strong advocates for the work that they’re doing so that you can really inspire people to want to take action and not feel like there’s nothing that can happen, teo, be able to have that impact, okay, but within our organization’s jeremy, how do we how do we find the right people? How do you find the right people? Tell story. All the stories you know, storytelling is really a collaborative effort. It’s not just the responsibility for the marketing of the communications team it’s, about everybody working together to define what those stories are. So people that are out in the field collecting photos, collecting quotes, it’s about bringing back things that tell a greater story arc the greater narrative of what your organization is trying to accomplish. So that’s really a joint effort? What if somebody’s good? You believe they have great stuff to share stories to share, but they’re they’re reluctant. I don’t want to be in front of a mike even if it’s audio only i certainly don’t want to do a camera. How do we get started to cajole them? Teo, help us out. So when it comes to storytelling, especially our reluctant storytellers a lot of times a laying that fear is maybe just in baby steps it’s working with them to produce blawg posts instead of going right on camera it’s working with them in media training, it’s working with them in speech development. But oftentimes those daunting task is sitting down and saying, share a story with me because it doesn’t give anybody charlie that place that’s not too helpful, right? Tell me a story exactly. About what? Why who’s listening, right? So instead, really the best way to go about it. Say you’re going to the field today? Can you bring back one quote? From one of the teachers that was helping a student in your in your tutoring center. Can you bring back one photo of the well that we helped dig in sub saharan africa? Something like that. So it really sets the stage say, oh, of course i could bring back one photo. Yeah, one quote, i can definitely get on board with that, and it helps ease them into the process of great stories, and then maybe they’ll be willing to provide some narrative for contacts to that photo or that quote, right once you bring them into the process and they feel like they’re a part of it, they feel like they’re owning it will get more comfortable sharing stories. Okay? Bacon you got any ideas for? Ah, people who are reluctant, uh, we’re reluctant contributors. Yeah, i mean, i think, like, really, as jeremy was saying, starting first by getting them to just ride out the different things that they think that are relevant to the work that you’re doing on being able to sort of break that down for them in a way. That’s really simple s o that they don’t necessarily have to go on camera. Or be sort of the actual microphone for the story itself. But as jamie was saying, being able to, like, break that down through photos to be able to tell the story, sort of on their behalf, okay, okay, how about, uh, once we’re in in production, whether it’s you handed them a iphone or you’re in a studio, maybe more formally, what advice do you have there? In what way? Buy-in coaching them in getting them? Well, presumably there already over there, their reluctance, but maybe now that maybe they stage fright, they were they were willing coming a driving in, they were fine and walking in the door, but now there’s a mike in front of them? Yeah, or in, you know, in coaching, yeah, how do we help them out? I think like one of the key element there is just staying authentic and being true to who you are in your own experience and not feeling sort of like that you have to be over coached or over polished because what we’ve seen in the work that we’ve done, purposes that people really connect with that authentic experience in that raw moment of being able to sort of share in your own voice, that experience that you’ve had, what what do you think is a good story? Maybe i should ask you that first we’ll get around, i get around the good questions. What, what? What? What makes a good story? I think, well, we’ve seen a lot of different elements that really drive really powerful stories, particularly ones that are really share a bowl and connect with a lot of people, so one of those elements is people really like to be surprised they like to hear something that they haven’t heard before. They also really like having that human connection. So as i said, that, like authentic, raw, human, honest moment could be really powerful, with people also being a little bit of paying attention to the right place and the right time, and i don’t mean that sort of by luck only, but also paying attention to what is happening in the news cycle, what people are already talking about events that are happening and sort of what’s already getting attention and being able tio leverage those moments as well, toe add a new element to it, that sort of hook news hook. Something talking about jeremy got more advice, anything you want, teo, that hits the nail on the head, being contextual and being relevant, somebody can identify with your story, they’re going to be more willing to share it. They’re going to be more willing to understand and they’re going to be more willing to take action. Okay, okay, and we’re going to move on because i don’t want to overlap too much with storytelling, storytelling, conversation i had with someone a panel on an earlier earlier spot, but you have some you have resource is that people can use sites non-profits can use to help make them better storyteller so maybe we could spend a good amount of time. We’re not near the end. I’m not i’m not trying to wrap up. We’re nowhere near the end, but i like to focus on something that you have to add to the previous conversation so we don’t do to that of the same let’s. Spend some time on these resource is sites aps whatever let’s get started. Yeah, so the rockefeller foundation has invested some time and resources into this and partnership with our lead grantee, hataway communications and plenty of other people who have provided us input and we wanted to know what what was the real challenge for organizations to telling great stories. And so we had done two things. The first thing we did was we created a report that just kind of let you analyze the landscape of the field what’s available out there for resource is what’s available out there for tools. What are people saying? What our organizations saying that there were issues are what they’re really succeeding? Well, with and from that report and from all of that feedback wave created a platform called hatch for good and hatch for good identifies those five those five areas strategy capacity, content platforms and evaluation, and it helps organizations go through each of those pieces step by step so you can identify what your strategy is. You can go through your audiences with sort of content you should be producing, how you measure that what platforms are out there and available to you, plus that it incorporates thought pieces from thought leaders in the in the space that are sharing excellent stories, how they answer those questions, the types of campaigns that they’re running things like that so it gives you some inspiration, and also a framework to go by is, uh, for the number four it’s fo r hatch fo r good dot or ge. Okay, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Dahna that report that you mentioned that looked at what makes what keeps non-profits from being good storytellers, what lessons were there? Well, that was that was really focusing on those five pillows, and people were saying, you know, we don’t have the strategy behind it or we’re collecting a lot of stories, we’re sharing them, but we’re not getting a lot of feedback on them, so it was it was that mix of strategy capacity we don’t have enough people on staff, we don’t have the buy-in from our gdpr board, we don’t have the right content, that kind of thing, i say. All right, meghan another you have another resource that you can share? Well, i actually recently was involved in a purpose, the organization that i work for drafting a guide to digital to crafting digital stories, particularly with a lens for young people who are interested in sort of telling your story. You’re starting their own non-profits being able to bring sort of new perspectives to that on dh. That resource, which is an analog actually printed out guide that you can download it’s open source. You confined it purpose dot com okay. And what is going? To share a little more detail, what we’ll, what we’ll find there? Yeah, i mean it’s broken up into two parts, so the first part is really about identifying sort of the way to tell your story, really breaking down and thinking about the different elements of the story, which are very much in line with the resources that jeremy was talking about as well. S o thinking about things like goals, we talk a lot about a crisis, unity profess, which is really identifying a crisis that’s happening, but instead of sort of feeling overwhelmed and that you can’t there’s no hope coming out of that crisis, really turning that into an opportunity on being able to provide that hope in that story. So really thinking through that, and then it also talks about different platforms that you can use and how you can build those stories because a lot of times people think of stories justice being sort of full written out story. So blog’s are articles or sort of long form posts on, and we really think of stories as every little piece could be a story. So a facebook image that you post online with you know one sentence of content can be in a story and of its sound. Yeah, what are what are we talking about? His other platforms for storytelling before we get now, are there more resource is besides those two? Or there are there will be those of the crux, the resources you confined other other other places out there for block post that go through great detail. We were talking about this yesterday purpose has some fantastic campaigns to look at. Causevox has been doing some great stuff in storytelling big duck also has some resource is but a lot of what we’re doing now is taking what we see is the best of the best, and we’re trying to to get off their permission to put it up on hatch for good dot org’s so people can come and find one place where they confined all these great resources from all their best organizations that are doing the best storytelling. Let’s, let’s talk then, about some of the use of platforms. I mean, interesting that we can conceive of a picture in a sentence or two as storytelling nothing. Most people are thinking that way, so clearly is there? More that we should be thinking about more broadly on let’s just on facebook, let’s start there, is there? Yeah, i mean, i think there’s so many different ways you can tell a story on facebook these days. I mean, particularly with, like, you know, the native in beds of video now is getting really prioritized on facebook, so being able to create those videos, obviously there’s your stories now, you see a lot of those videos without the audio playing, so i think there’s a real opportunity there, as well as your people are scrolling through their news feed to be able to get that story without having the audio itself. But also, i mean, you see this a lot through images on facebook and there’s so many different types of images you can create that tell a story. I mean, a lot of people do like this or that, which is, you know, before and after cause and effect type of image, you also get really, like, thought provoking images, so people, images that really require people to think about an issue in a new way in one thing that you i’ve seen a lot particularly lately of on facebook is really just a photo or a snapshot of an individual on then really going behind the scenes to tell that person story. So it’s like here’s joe, who is an iraq war veteran, and then going into something related to the issue of veterans affairs. Ah, and so i think that is one element that could be really powerful was story time, okay? Anything else you want to add? Facebook? Jeremy, before we move off that platform, not not specifically to facebook? No, okay, we would like to go next. Well, i’m just thinking in terms of content like megan was saying photos and videos and different statistics and things like that a lot of times we received one piece or one piece of long form, like a publication or an essay or something like that has a whole bunch of different assets that are already too tied to it. So it’s about taking that piece of content and breaking it up so people have twenty ways into it instead of just posting your block post to facebook it’s about grabbing that photo and taking like a quote and saying, this is the quote, this is the photo and letting your audience engaged that that way, maybe there’s a link back to the block, maybe there’s a statistic that you khun tweet out with that video underneath it they’re different ways you can package that content that they comptel individual stories over the same narrative, the same longer narrative. Very interesting, alright repurpose ing dividing up helps helps increase your capacity, but it also helps give your story cem cem length, and it also makes sure that more people are consuming it. Then just package again into one giant report also also makes the storytelling craft less daunting. Yeah, you’ve got a couple of good stories that can be divided up. You could have you could end up with thirty or forty components across all the different channel. Exactly. Okay, excellent. Excellent. Should we wait? Talk specifically about twitter? You mean you know we’ve hit it sort of tangentially we haven’t named it but certainly could do what you just described on twitter anything mohr there’s now video on twitter anything mohr anyone add? Besides what has already been suggested twitter specific? Yeah, i mean, i think another thing twitter has done recently as well as images. So images are definitely king in the twitter feed these days, and so not just relying on that hundred forty characters but also being able to incorporate an image much like what worked really well on facebook. So being able to have these graphics that can have quotes or have the sort of bite-sized element that people can retweet and share, i think really thinking about like, what is that bite-sized element that could be easily consumable because we do that naturally, anyway, i mean, even if we’re scanning a long form content, we’re looking at the headlines were looking in the margins for sort of the key takeaways on twitter really allows you to pull out those key elements on and create bite-sized terrible content that’s, easily consumable and allows people to sort of share one keep perspective and on building on that, you could also you could also ask questions that on twitter and then build blackbaud post based on that feedback it’s a really quick way to the longer form content using short snippets or maybe a link to a survey if you want to ask more than just one question, yeah, if you could do a storify we actually recently the beginning of the year, we ask people with the what their big idea was for twenty fifteen what was the big social impact idea of twenty, fifteen? And so a handful of our staff leading up to it just tweeted our responses to that question, and then we embedded it into the blood post and people could comment back and say, this is my idea for twenty fifteen or they would respond over twitter and they would put that up there, and then we shared it on facebook and they would add it to the comments so they would reply directly back to twitter again on the comments on the block it takes again that one concept of an ideal what’s your big idea for twenty fifteen and it turns it into something that’s cross platform. Okay, well, we still have a few more minutes left together. What we could talk about some more platforms. We haven’t touched on instagram wherever you want to go, but what else will she got? I mean, in terms of the platforms, the platforms are you know, wherever your audience is, maybe if you’re dealing with youth, you don’t. Want to be on facebook anymore? Maybe you’re looking at snapchat how you, how you actually use that? Maybe there’s an entire generation of baby boomers that are now embracing facebook, so a lot of organizations that might do service baby boomers should be thinking about what’s our facebook strategy for our content. So the platform is really against whatever you set your goals to be again on your stories. Now, do you want to be talking to you? Let’s say little about snapchat? We don’t talk about that too much on show how much you use that for, for storytelling and again, this is this is for people or organizations that want to be talking to teenagers basically right? But if if that’s your objective, how could you be using snapchat wisely for stories? Yeah, you mean in snapchat? Because of the nature of the the disappearing nature of their work? It’s a great way to share things that might be kind of taboo i could see it being used for planned parenthood let’s say i could see them using it to great effect, convert convening ideas to a younger audience that maybe they would be too embarrassed to. Be looking up online themselves or to be looking at content that would stay on their phones. They have this is ah, it’d better information that you can see that disappears or a meeting date or time, things like that you can communicate directly out to your audience that’s temporary doesn’t have to be there for him. Okay, one example of an organization that i think used snapchat incredibly well, eyes do something dot or ge, they’ve been on it for quite some time now and do some really interesting things. So if anyone out there is really interested in seeing how you could engage teens in that in that snapchat way, they’re great organization to check out and you’re not the first guest in these two days to recommend recommend do something for talking, teo, i think they’re they’re targets like fifteen to twenty five thirteen to twenty five some like that when they do great work. Yeah, yeah, i’ve had aria finger on the show talking about do something and i’m also talking about t m i, uh, theo of their consulting spinoff? Yeah, i could do something about it also neo-sage let’s. See? Okay, we got still got a couple minutes where where would like to go with this? You you talked for ninety minutes on storytelling, so i know that i haven’t covered everything. What else more is more than a share. I mean, what else more is there to share about storytelling? I you know, i think a lot of organizations don’t think their storytelling organizations i think that a lot of people would probably listen to this and they would say, well, that’s, great, but that’s not for me, i don’t do that kind of work, and i think that that’s probably ninety nine percent of the time not even remotely true, that it just takes it takes a moment to step back and consider how your work is affecting people. So even if you’re not doing direct service, it’s, the work that you’re doing, how how, how you’re helping those organizations access it right? So it’s either on an individual level or an organizational level. How are you making people’s lives easier? How are you changing things for the better? And if you take a step back and identify what that is and start mapping out what that framework looks like, you’re going to find a place you can tell a story, you know, meghan, in your work, have you seen organizations that felt it wasn’t for them? It’s just they didn’t have anything t tell. Yeah, well, i think a lot of times people think that they don’t necessarily have they’re not, you know, maybe doing direct work on the ground or feel like they don’t have access to those stories that they traditionally think of as the ones that are incredibly powerful. But i mean, in the work that we do and particularly when you’re an organization seeking to have impact, one of the most powerful ways to show impact is through the stories of the impact that you’re having on, and that doesn’t always have to be work on the ground. I mean, it could be working with the siri’s of organizations, but i also have a social purpose and being able to help those organizations, maybe it’s, a young entrepreneur who just started a new organization, change the world coming out of school, being able to tell that story of how you were able to help that individual can also be really powerful. I mean, you see a lot. Of times who we do, you know, an annual reports are report backs for donors and that’s a storytelling i’m being able to find the right way, tio sure, that message can be key. So i think all of this applies for that that as well, yeah, ok, so do cement prospection. I mean, you’re a charity, you’re you have a charitable mission by design and definition. Who were you? Were you impacting? You got to be helping somebody and those somebody’s i can talk to you. Okay? Absolutely. I’m going to say it again myself. A couple more minutes share some more about whether we’ve even if we we’ve covered it, but maybe we didn’t cover enough detail here’s some more about stories. One of the points we went over in the session was this idea of the forty sixty rule that i borrowed from garth more from the one campaign and that’s about spending only forty percent of your time producing content and sixty percent of your time marketing it. So when you’re making that block post, no perfect is the enemy of good making sure that it’s good enough to go out, but thinking about who should see this block post who should see it and what do i want them to dio and then going to those places with, you know, whatever that content might be, because spending more time finding the right people that should be consuming it and should be sharing it and should be adding to it is ultimately more fruitful when you’re looking at your your analytics and your feedback. So you’re not just sending a story out into the wind and hoping that it catches on, you know, it’s got no value, then back in the morning it had anything to that? Yeah, i mean, i would say a lot of times, people sort of sometimes have quotas for certain number stories or start number of videos that they want to get out each year, and i think at the end of the day, the most important thing with any story they’re trying to tell is the story itself and that it’s compelling and that its strategic on and you’re creating that story for a reason and not just creating a video for videos sake on dh that’s really what’s going to drive the success of that piece of content in connecting with people is really having something powerful that people can connect with first on then thinking about sort of how you can use that to achieve your goals that you have for your organization on be able to build that impact. And then, as jeremy was saying earlier, be able to break that down into pieces and being able to use that story in a lot of different ways across different platforms to achieve your goals. Can we measure the r o i of storytelling? Absolutely. But you have to start with the strategy first, because maybe the roo i’ve storytelling is we want to raise more money, and we want our donors to being more involved. We want our board to be more involved. We need more volunteers. So, starting with your strategy and thinking about what your goals would be, why are we doing? Why are we still telling story exactly what i mean? What were we trying to do with these? Yeah. Okay. And then and then measure from there. Okay. Yeah. Purpose. We talk a lot about signaling and confirming that tricks. So a lot of times, people would be like, oh, great, this video got a million views? That was what that is, what we would consider a signaling metrics, so it shows the sort of a way of attention being brought to an issue, but it isn’t necessarily proving that doesn’t mean i can’t exactly uses worthless yeah, so you keep that in the category of could we keep that the category of, say, signaling metrics? But then you still have to pay attention to the broader change that you’re trying to have in the world and a million views on a video might be one thing, but a year from then, you might see some real impact on an issue that you’re sort of pushing through legislatively, and that video is all about that. And so that’s, where you’re able to sort of confirm that impact, ultimately it doesn’t happen right away. I mean, a lot of times when you’re tracking impact four stories, it takes a lot of time that speaks to a swell looking at the long form are the long tail of storytelling and that you don’t just want to produce that video, send it out there and hope open the best they need to start thinking about what’s. The game plan for this how we’re going to get this in front of the right people? Yeah, i mean, a classic example of this, of course, is in the marriage equality shift that has happened in the us over the past, you know, decades really on really that started with the power of stories. I mean, being able to connect with people on these universal issues of love, inequality on overtime, being able to sort of really connect with people on that issue and be ableto ultimately move the needle. All right? We’re gonna leave it there. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All right. Jeremy bivens, digital media media manager for the rockefeller foundation and meghan and halt strategy director for purpose. My pleasure. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of and t c twenty fifteen the non-profit technology conference. Thank you so much for being with us. Tony’s. Take two and your d are planned coming up first opportunity collaboration. It’s a week long unconference in x top of mexico around poverty reduction throughout the world. This really is an amazing experience. There are no keynotes, there’s, no power points you’re always sitting in. Circles there’s lots of free time for making valuable friends let lasting connections new friends that can help you reduce eliminate poverty in whatever form you’re working it’s in october i was there last year. I’m going again this year if your work is at all related to poverty reduction, check it out. Opportunity collaboration, dot net, thank you for making it a double honor. I was honored last thursday, the twenty third at the hermandad gala and to make it a double honor. You were with me and i’m very grateful non-profit radio fans really stepped up and together we raised nearly five thousand dollars to save lives with water projects in rural dominican republic. The whole event raised over twenty five thousand dollars and i thank you. Thank you very much for being with me. My video thanks. Is that tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two for friday, first of may seventeenth show of the year here’s our next ntcdinosaur view on your disaster recovery plan with dar veverka welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc twenty fifteen the non-profit technology conference we’re in day two we’re in austin, texas, at the convention. Center and my guest is dar vivir ca she’s vice president of technology for lift a lefty, and her workshop topic is avoiding disaster, a practical guide for backup systems and disaster recovery planning. Dar welcome, thank you very much. Good to be here. It’s. A pleasure to have you this day two, we’re highlighting one swag item at and ntc per for interview and, uh, i have a double chip biscotti from a sputnik moment. The hashtag is hashtag is sputnik smiles and i’m told that the glasses go with the biscotti. So this is essential. This is this interview’s swag moment. Thank you very much. Sputnik smiles and it goes into the goes into the swag collection. There it is. Okay, door. Um, we need to know some ah, little basic turn. Well, you know what? Before we even get into why is disaster recovery and the related and included back-up so, um, i don’t know if it’s just for gotten ignored, not done. Well, what inspired the session is a organization i used to work for. We were required by auditors to do a disaster recovery plans. So when it came time for the annual audit, i got out the current disaster recovery plan. It went all right, i’m going to go ahead and update this, and when i discovered want to read the plan was there were servers that were eight years gone for last eight years server and reading the planet was very clear that what the previous person had done was simply changed the date and update the plan for auditors. And as i thought about it and talk to other people, i found that that actually happens a lot people. It’s d r is sort of that thing they don’t have time for because no one ever thinks it’ll happen to them, so you push it off and you push it off, and you either just download the template, you know, a template off the internet, and you slap a date on it and basically fill it out just for the auditors. But a lot of organizations never actually think through their disaster recovery, they don’t get into the details, they don’t worry about it, and then when a disaster actually happens to them, they’re sort of stuck. You don’t have a plan that i don’t have a functioning crush on, and they’ve never tried it out, so that was what inspired the session, and as we dug into it, we we tried to give the thirty thousand foot view because disaster it cover, you know, there’s an entire industry, the deals with technology, disaster recovery. You can spend days on this topic, and obviously we didn’t have days. We had a ninety minute session, so we tried to give the thirty thousand foot view of the practical items you need to pay attention to if you’re not confident in your organisation’s d our plan, if you don’t have a d r plan or if you do and you really don’t, you know, you think it really needs an overhaul that sort of the top ten of items of what you should really be looking at when you’re dealing with disaster recovering backups. And we tried to give some several practical examples myself and the other speaker and andrew, who could not make it this morning of disasters we’ve had to deal with as well as other well known ones. Yeah, okay. Do we need some basic language? All right. Before we get into the d r disaster recovery topic short jr is one of them disaster recovers, often referred to his d r it’s often spoken about in terms of business continuity or bc, which is sort of the larger plan for the entire organisation. Should’ve disaster strike there’s. You know, there’s very d are specific things such as our poet recovery point objective that we could talk about your rto, which is recovery time objective, there’s very specific language like that or disasters it’s usually just referred to d ours. So whenever we say d arts disaster recovery okay, we’ll see if we get into those eyes and i could explain this week. Okay, um, all right. So clearly we should have a disaster recovery written, just recovery plan. Even if we’re an organization that small enough that doesn’t have an annual audit. We still should have something in place. Yes. Okay. What belongs in our day? Our plan top ten things. You need a contact list for your team. So if you have a top ten of the d r i do. Of what should your plan d our plan. You know, it could be anything from a five page outline that just covers the basics and in in our sessions slides, which i’ve posted in the ntc library, gives it some good resource is for doing a d our plan or it could be a you know, a huge hundred page document covers absolutely every aspect of business continuity or something in between it’s going very by organization, and the reality is, if you’re a small organisation with a small team, you might only be able to do the five page outline but that’s better than nothing that’s better than no d our plan or a d r plan that realistically hasn’t been updated in the last ten years, but i would say, you know, the top ten you really should have in your day. Our plan is number one, a contact list for your team members. What is the contact for your team, folks, your business continuity folks, if you normally would get that out of your email and you’re in a disastrous situation, you know you can’t get to your email or, you know, like we’re ever going through, and i want listeners to know that she’s doing this without notes, i it seems very confident that she’s got hopefully i’ve ever altum in-kind get seven out. Of seven or eight of ten will be ecstatic, but so continue. Oh, but i want to say, yeah, as we’re going through, consider two organizations that may not have someone devoted to it correctly is our listeners are small and midsize non-profits right? They very, very well just all be outsourced or it falls on the executive director’s desk. Excellent point. Would you cover that in the session? So to finish at the top ten contact list, three team members contact list for your vendors, a call tree and some sort of communications. How do you tell your organization and your members that you’ve had a disaster? Either your servers have gone down, your pipes of burst and your communications are underwater? How do you do that? What is your network look like? So network diagram process? Outline how you’re actually going to do your disaster recovery a timeline? How long do you expect these activities to take before you? Khun b live again, a list of systems and applications that you’re going to recover if you’re a large enough or gore you can afford a hot site was called a hot or warm site where you can immediately. Switch over two other equipment. You know information about that. You’d need that to start your recovery. And then also information about your backups. You know, who’s got your back ups. What system are you using? How do you, you know? Get those back. So those air sort of like the top ten things or d our plan should have. Alright, let’s dive into the the process. Okay? A bit is that intrigues me, bond. Hopefully listeners? I think so. I think i have a fare beat on what’s. Interesting. I hope i do. Um, yeah. What? How do we start to think about what our dear process should be? First, you have to think about what all could be a disaster for your organization. A lot of people think about things, you know, earthquakes, hurricane, sandy, hurricane katrina. But it could also be water pipes bursting in your building. That is one of the most common thing if your server is not properly protected. Which a lot of a lot of stuck in closets. Ah, dripping pipe water. We call those water events. And that seems to be the most common thing. Departments encounter is leaking pipes in the building or some sort of a flooding situation. But it could also be an elektronik disaster. Such, i’ve worked at an organization that underwent what’s called a ddos attack, which is a distributed denial of service. It took out our entire web presence because malicious hacker hacker went after that’s where there’s millions of right network and they just flood your network seconds you’re overloaded and yeah, and that’s a disaster situation. So one why would they attack like that? Why wasn’t non-profit attack malicious? The cp dot organ are attacked out with avon marchenese travon martin decision. Folks attacked our petition site way. We were able to get it back online, but for a couple of hours. Yeah, we were off line. And that could be considered a disaster situation. For sure. Yeah. How do you help us think through what potential disasters are not even identify them all i think about what could affect your or what you wear. You vulnerable? Some of the things we talked about in the session and we’ll think about it. How would you get back online if the’s various things happen to you are your are your services sort of in the cloud do you have servers on site and start there when thinking about your process is, what would you have to recover if these various scenarios affected you or with these various scenarios? Scenarios affect you if your website is completely outsourced to a vendor that has de dos protection. Okay, that’s not a scenario you have to worry about so kind of analyze it and every organs going to be different. You know, if you live on the west coast, you’re probably concerned more about earthquakes than other regions. So it’s it’s going to vary for each organization, what sort of disaster you’re going to be worried about? And then you start getting down into the practical nuts and bolts in terms of who are your disaster recovery people, who’s your team, if you’re really small lorry, that might just be you or as you mentioned before, if you’re using outsourced, manage service provider and your vendors responsible for that, make sure your vendor has a d our plan for you. Ah lot of folks just assume your vendors taking care of that, but when it comes right down to it, do they actually have d our experience can they recover your items actually sit down and have that conversation because so many of the small org’s, as you pointed out, do youse outsourced thes days and there’s there’s a lot of manage service providers that specialized in non-profit, but you need to have that conversation. Don’t wait till you’re under a disaster scenario to discover that groups they don’t actually have that experience have that conversation ahead of time. What else belongs in our process? Outlined in your process? Latto outline if you’ve got a another site either a cold, a warmer hot site or if your stuff is based in the cloud, where would you recover to the outside is some place you go to a different drink, cold water or hot? Sure cold site would be where you’ve got another location. Let’s say you have a dozen sir servers at your location, and in the case of, you know, your building being inaccessible or underwater. A cold site would be where you’ve got another location you could go to, but you don’t really have any equipment stage there, but it is another location you can begin operations out if that’s a cold sight there’s nothing ready. To go, but you’ve got a sight ah, warm site would be where you sort of have a skeletal equipment there, it’s far less capacity than you’re currently at, but you’ve got something there it’s not live, but you got stuff ready to go that you can restore to and get going. And a hot site is where you can flip over immediately. Your live replicating to somewhere else, it’s ready to go? It might not be full capacity, so it might not have, you know, full blown data line size that you’re used to might not have your full range of service, but it is live and you could switch over near instantaneously. That’s a hot site, ok, eso you’d want that in your process and you’re going to want to think about what are you restoring and that’s where we get into the backups? What comes first and that’s, where you start getting into terms such as recovery point objective and recovery time objective those air to very common d our terms recovery time is how far back are you recovering too? And what does that mean for each system? So if it’s your donorsearch system that’s probably fairly critical. You want a recent restore of that? If it’s a system that doesn’t change very much, maybe a week ago restores okay for that sorry that’s recovery point objective recovery time objective is how long does it take you to get back online after a disaster? You know, ifyou’ve got to download your data from an external source. Has anyone thought about how long that’s going to take you to get the data back? Is it going to take you fifteen hours or three days? So it’s in a lot of folks don’t think about that ahead of time, they just go. Oh, you know, we’ll we’ll pull it back down if we have a disaster, but they don’t think about instead of their nice normal data communications, they’re going to be on a tiny d s l line trying to pull down one hundred fifty gigs of information and it’s going to take a week to get it back down. I have to say you’re very good about explaining terms and thank you, proper radio. We have jargon jail? Yes, we try not teo transcend. You haven’t transgressed cause your immediate about explaining exactly what recovery point. River and recovery time objectives are it could be very confusing. You know, if you don’t understand the terms in tech, you can be confusing what folks are talking about, and that was one of the focuses of our station session is making it less confusing and being very practical, practical about what you can or cannot do. And if folks go and look at our slides, they’ll see on several of the items we did a good better best, and we tried to talk about that all throughout the session because we realized again for a small ork or, you know, even a large order that just doesn’t have the resources to devote to it. You might not be able to do best practice, but you could at least try a good practice that would be better than nothing. And then so we do a good, better best for each each type of thing like what does a good d our plan look like? Versace best day our plan and at least try and get to that good, because at least you’ll have something and it could be a continuum where you try and improve it along the way. But you got to start somewhere. It’s. Better than just ignoring it, which is what happens at a lot of places. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation, top trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m lawrence paige nani, author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. Oppcoll do we need to prioritize what what’s mission critical and, yes, we can work with out for a time? Yes, how do we determine that? Definitely we talk about that in terms of its not just a knight each decision either because we may think that the emails the most critical thing out there but development may see the donor system as the most critical out there program might think that the case management system is the most critical out there, so you finance wants their account, they want their accounting system up. Obviously you’ve got to have an order in which you bring these things up. You’re probably not gonna have enough staff for bandwith or, you know, equipment to bring everything back online, so there needs to be and hopefully your executive team would be involved in deciding for the organization what is most critical in what order are you going to bring those things up? And that needs to be part of your d r plan? Because otherwise, if you’re in a disaster scenario, you’re not going to know where to start and there’s going to be a lot of disagreement of who starts where so you guys need to decide on the order, okay, we solve a few minutes left, but what more? What about d r and related back-up that’s not going to wait till i’m back up because i think we could do a little bit in terms of d r i would say the key points on backups are check them because a lot of time, yes, monthly or quarterly, at least is anyone looking at your back-up back-up work-life one of the scenarios that we talked about that actually happened to my co speaker, andrew, was that their server room flooded and it hit their razor’s edge server, which is their entire c, m, s, c r, e, m and donorsearch system, and they thought it was backing up, but no one had actually check the backups in the last two months, and it was on, and it was not s o in terms of back-up just typical, you know, pay attention to the maintenance. What do you backing up? Has anyone checked it? And again, if you’re using a manage service provider, make sure if they’re responsible for for looking at your backups of managing them, make sure they’re doing that. You know, double check and make sure that they understand that your backups are critical and they can’t just ignore the alerts about your backups. You know, you don’t want to be in the unpleasant situation of three of our servers just got flooded. We need the data and discover nobody was backing it up. It ain’t exactly okay, all right, anything else, you wanna leave people about back-up before we go to the broader d r no, i think that’s good for those were the highlights for it. All right, so back to the disaster recovery. What more can we say about that? There are going to be a lot of watches if you’re in a large d our situation. And so one of things we stress is one getting down into the details of your d. Our plan before disaster hits. Because if you’ve never thought about how you’re actually going to do the restores air, actually, how you’re going to be rebuild those servers. You need two ahead of time. A lot of folks never practiced have a fire drill. I hate fire drill, but and you don’t have a live fire drills in this case, it might be a live fire drill. You don’t want to have that, so you should make some effort to practice, even if it’s just something small, you know, trying to restore one server. I mentioned in this session that i was put in a situation years ago at johns hopkins university, where we were choir, to have verification of live tr practice, so i was put in a room that had a table, a telephone, a server, and we were carrying two laptops and we couldn’t come out of the room, and so we had completely restored our domain. We had a set of backups on the thumb drive and added the second laptop to that domain improve that we had restored the domain, and an independent person that was not connected to our department was monitoring to make sure we had done it, and we had to prove it, and that was an eye opening experience is as experienced as i was doing that i’d never done it live, and it took me three tries to do it so that’s, right? Encourage folks to really try and practice this stuff ahead of time and get down into the you know, the weeds on their on their d our plan and, uh and also to think about it, you weren’t fired because way, john no, no, no. I actually like too much, john soft. No, we we did complete it within the time frame, but we were a little startled when we discovered that we thought we knew how to do it first time. And we kept making little mistakes. There were two of us and they’re doing it. And we were surprised ourselves that we thought, oh, of course we know this. This is not a problem, but no, we were making little mistakes because we didn’t have the documentation down. A specific is it needed to be. And so that was a very eye opening experience. There’s a couple of their d r gotchas we talked about, which is crossed. People don’t think about the cost ahead of time. How much is it gonna cost to get you that data back in the instance of my co presenter who had the damaged drives, they weren’t expecting a near ten thousand dollars cost to recover those drives, but that’s what happened when they didn’t have the backups? They had to take those hard drives to a data recovery place, and the price tag was nearly ten thousand dollars. Dealing with insurance is another big one that people don’t think about having to account for all of the equipment that was lost, and dealing with that insurance morass often gets dumped on the auntie department in a small organization. There’s not, you know, a legal department that’s going to deal with that it’s going to be you so to, you know, kind of talk to your insurance provider ahead of time and see what all you have to deal with in a disaster situation. So you don’t get an unpleasant surprise if you’re ever in one a cz well on the insurance topic, just are you covered? Exactly what i think is your equipment covered. And what do you have to to do with that in terms of accounting for it? If you suffer a disaster, you know the gooch is we get so ah, a couple of minutes, if if oh, for days about consciously trying to think about somebody we don’t hold back on non-profit video, i think some of the other ones that we covered in their thick wit mint again to the cost. How much is it going to cost you? Two gets new equipment and did you account for that when you were doing your d our plan and a time to recover? A lot of folks don’t understand how long it may take them to do a recovery and also deciding what is important and what is not important, not just in terms of what should be restored in what order, but in terms of practical things, do you really need to restore your domain? Er, or could you just start over from scratch? If your domain only contains maybe fifty accounts and doesn’t have any associated servers faster for you to just start over and just recreate the domain immediately? Especially if a lot of your emails in office three, sixty five or google maps, you could reconnect it very quickly. So, you know, thinking about more practical gotsch is like that that you should think about have time, you know, obviously it’s that’s the best. Practice to think of all these details and we realised folks may not be able to, so we provided someone sheets and some samples of them of just quick, yes or no questions and thinking this through and things to think about and where will we that is not notice provoc radio has a professional sound i don’t know about ntcdinosaur ten, but that was a way over there. They’re on their own. They can come to us for expertise if they if they need to, but, um, see, now i messed myself up because i ask you about something, but we were just talking about how much, how long will actually take you to recover things and whether or not you should practically skipped recovering something because it might be faster to rebuild it. Okay, i have a follow up to that it’s my smart ass humor, maybe lose it. All right, so why did you leave us with one take away d, r or back-up the session was a little bit misnamed because technically, you’re not going to avoid a disaster. You really can’t. In many cases, you’re not gonna avoid the, but you’re not going to avoid. The earthquake if you’re in that region so you need to plan on how to deal with it. So it’s more like avoiding avoiding your d are becoming the disaster cause you’re not going to avoid the disaster itself, so you might as well plan for it. Outstanding. Thank you very much. Door. Thank you much. Darby america, vice president of technology for lift. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference two thousand fifteen. Thank you so much for being with us thinking thanks to everybody at and t, c and the non-profit technology network next week. What skills are most desirable in your board members? If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com opportunity collaboration with world convenes for poverty reduction, you know, ruin you for every other conference opportunity collaboration dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez susan chavez dot com on our music is by scott stein i love that yeah, he will be next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or p m so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe. Add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for October 7, 2011: Excel in Email Execution

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

You can subscribe on iTunes and listen anytime, anyplace on the device of your choice.

This is a rebroadcast of Nonprofit Radio from April 8, 2011.

Tony’s Guests:

Dave Poulos, Principal of Granite Partners, will share 5 Elements of Effective Email Marketing and have tips for list hygiene.

  • Are you getting the most out of email?
  • Is your list hygienic and only engaging in safe practices?


 
Claire Meyerhoff is Editorial Director at The Planned Giving Company. She will reveal how to write for email fundraising, so your messages get opened, read and responded to.

 

Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

You’re on the air and on target as I delve into the big issues facing your nonprofit—and your career.

If you have big dreams but an average budget, tune in to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

I interview the best in the business on every topic from board relations, fundraising, social media and compliance, to technology, accounting, volunteer management, finance, marketing and beyond. Always with you in mind.

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Here is a link to the podcast: 062: Excel In Email Execution.
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Durney welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host last week on the april fool’s edition, it was ask awareness for small shops that was with amy eisenstein. She’s, the author of fifty, asks in fifty weeks, and she shared lots of valuable insights for opening up relationships, identifying prospects, cultivating and soliciting all for small development shops. In fact, one of our listeners posted to the facebook page that it was the best hour she spent all week last week. I appreciate that this week we excel in email execution, it’s going to be dave pulis davis principle of granite partners and he’s going to share five elements of effective email marketing and also have other tips about list hygiene. Are you getting the most out of your e mail? How do you develop an email list if you don’t have one? Is your list hygienic and only engaging in safe practises? Also claire meyerhoff claire is editorial director at the plant e-giving company, and she is this show’s creative producer claire’s going to reveal how to write for email fund-raising so that your messages get opened rid. And responded to so we’re all about email in this hour between my guests, it’s tony’s, take two at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour, and this week on tony’s, take two five ways to be a planned e-giving evangelist or an evangelist for whatever it is that you love doing that’s on tony’s, take two. So we’re all about email this week. After this break, i’ll be joined by dave pulis and where we’ll get started with our excel in email execution show. Stay with me. Did the shooting getting ding, ding, ding, ding? You’re listening to the talking, alternate network waiting to get in. Good. Cubine is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police crawl are said to want to nine, six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio were all about email today, and i’m joined now by dave pulis. Dave, how you doing? Good morning. Thanks for having me, it’s my pleasure to have you welcome. Dave is the ceo and chief consultant of granite partners, which you’ll find out granite hyphen, part p a r t dot com he has been creating successful marketing programs for clients, mostly in the washington d c metro area for over twenty five years, and i’m very glad that his work and his expertise in email marketing specifically bring him to the show. Welcome again, dave, thank you, david. What does somebody do if they don’t have an email list to get started with him as well? Talk about building the list before we talk about what to do with it. Uh, there are a number of approaches that depends on what situation you’re in. If you’re looking for consumers, there are off a lot of ways to build a consumer list. Um, one of the more prominent and more recently evolved is the social media. You can use social media to evolve yourself into an e mail list based on friendster, facebook twitter followers linked in connections those kind of things can all be gathered and uses a colonel for a personal sort of networking list that you can use to promote whatever business you’re in. Okay, we’re non-profits fundraisers, it’s a little more complicated. Okay, well, that’s let’s deal with complicated cause. Our audience is small and midsize non-profit so that’s that’s where we want to be how should they go about it if they have a list of people who have been supporting them? Maybe just for a couple of years, maybe for many years, but they don’t have email lists. Uh, probably the first thing to do is make sure you have permission to communicate with their members are builders. They say something. Do you have a least an address for them? Send him a postcard asked him to send you back their email address. In response, you’ll give them some sort of data special report or a copy of research or something the value to them in response in return for them giving up their email. Okay, so use their their physical address to get their email address or okay on your website if the organization has a website. And you simply ask visitor’s log in before they can access certain pieces of it or certain information that they need include a lot to give them your e mail address. In that way, you can collect it and use it for later. Okay, so maybe not to get to your home page, but to get to some deeper content on your site. You mean then then there’s ah, little there’s an access that requires email address that’s one good way to do it. Because you’re making sure that it’s not just a casual visitor, you’re having themselves collect by their level of interest. Okay, okay. What’s, what you would end up doing if you if you put it on the front of the home page, you’re going to get every tom, dick and harry that entered that in the search. They wanted to see the front page and make sure they got to the right spot. See if there’s anything of interest there at all, you make them register, you get their email address, you send out e mails. You wasted all that time, money and effort to maintain the list. And they have no interest in on what you’re offering right? Ok? Or you might even just turn people off who might have an interest, but they said just to see the home page, i have to sign in, right? Right, you’re going to get some abandonment issues, they’re for your for your web page as well, and there are people that have a legitimate reason to see your front page and can use the information, but that you don’t want to write. I love how you call it abandonment. I’m not going to put you in jargon jail for that way have jog in jail here on tony martignetti non-profit but i already know you. I said it and then you called it abandonment. I just love the you know everybody every every business has its has its language. So abandonment issues. Yes, of your plus, if you know if you having spouse problems, that could be an abandonment issue. But we’re not going that deep again. That’s a different show that’s ahold of yes that’s a whole different person. Um, abandon ministers? Yes. Alright. What about what about events? And if you’re hosting an event, maybe just put post cards on the table at the events or something like that. Anytime you’re gathering an environment where you have potential donors or potential participants, you want to make sure you’re gathering, collecting email addresses, okay, people importing them on their business cards. It’s a good way to start raffles contest, even offering as i do on my website content in exchange for the information we talked about it buying, offering by mail some sort of special report i offer electronically a report on my website and i forced people to give me their email address, so i consented to them. Okay, electronically and it’s, a much fairer trade and people who are looking for something to read like to receive free reading material and return. It makes a lot of that now. Will people see that example on the site that i gave the girl to granite hyphen p a r t dot com they will there’s a new report there on how engaged customers on the left hand column. If you click there, you’ll be able to download on a free pdf of a report guard through some research. We did a little while ago about how to engage customers. Also have tto log in. To give me your email address, i can send it to you, you’ll get a response back that tells you yes, we received your order, and if you like anything else, please let us know, and you’ll also get a confirmation of the fact that you received the order and a questionnaire about whether you like it or not. Okay, so i assume those are all the best practices because you’re doing them for your business, it’s all automatic. I don’t have to do a dog gone thing, and it makes people connected to me much better and gives them a lot more opportunity to give me feedback on the information. And unless they collect their name without creating too much of a problem with their identity and something you alluded to in that description of the way you’re recommending things go about o r non-profits go about building this list is having permission. What? What is what is permission? Marketing and how do we get permission? Permission marketing is a critical step in producing effective push down marketing. What you’re essentially doing is letting people to give you their permission to market to them. And that does two things. One engages their level of interest and let them self select what they want to receive. Two it also tell you how they want to receive it by medium, he opted in is a way of gathering permission marketing. If you send out an e mail to all your members, say ifyou’re non-profit membership organization and say, we’re updating our record, we’d like to give you would like you to give us your email address so we can communicate with you that way. Check the following boxes about what’s appropriate what the best address to use is if we have this information correct listed below. Check that and we’ll keep that. And also, if you do not like to receive anything from us, check the box below to opt out, so opt in permission has sort of past it if you give them an opt out option it’s a little less over on a lot of people to sort of ignore it, which gives you sort of tacit permission to market to them. But the trick is they’ve given you the information and are allowing you to market to them directly without being directly at fort alright, and then you as the e mailer as the non-profit have a responsibility to honor all those selections that the person has made. Absolutely. And if you don’t honor them, your reputation with that person and in general, gets tarnished to the point where it’s almost unusable, and we’ll go into that a little further with, with the a little later on. Ok, we’re going to take a break right now. My guest is dave polish. We’re talking about excellence in email, execution, stay with us, talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. 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Well, cleanly is one that functions and deliver your message precisely where you wanted to go every time. And there are a couple of things that you need to start with. You’ve built a list that you think is right. The first thing is to make sure that what you start with is good, that we all know about computers, garbage in, garbage out. You have to make sure that you all the addresses fit and conformed to the format for proper email address. Okay. Typos, bat fingering the addresses, getting things backwards, transposing characters. Email addresses are far, far higher accuracy level than postal address. Write the e mail. I just has to be exact, right has to be perfect, another perfect every time or it will not go. I know what you have to do is check it bilich manually and electronically to make sure that all conforms and you, khun, send every piece of mail on their towards both to go ok is the simplest way to do that. To send a test email to someone to verify that on dh, then get their permission in the way you described is that is that a decent way to do it? Uh, you’re better off eyeballing a list firsthand mechanical and then going through optically and and making sure you haven’t missed anything. Because if you get things wrong, you may get stuck or trapped in filters and create problems. And what that’s going to do is block you when you get the right of duitz okay, you want to clean it up visually? First, as best you can make sure that all the symbols are right before the domain name it’s not a exclamation point instead because i’m gonna get the wrong key. Happens a lot. You can do search and replace doing this. It takes very little time. To do it electronically and then go through and i bought a list they just have to three people looking over, make sure there’s no glaring errors. You want to make sure that all the domain names that have the letters spam in them are taken out those traps put in there by the sometimes when you rent list more often than not, but occasionally somebody’ll flip one in there. When they’re registering, they’ll give you a bogus address that doesn’t really exist. You want to pull out the ones that have a domain name that’s sort of suspicious looking, you’ll learn about it after a while to make sure you’re getting exactly what you think you’re getting, okay, so to get behind to get into the content, let’s say so this wouldn’t thiss wouldn’t be people filling out cards at an event, probably or mailing back in response, it’s when registering so people might give bogus address you know i don’t have such a good hearted person, i don’t even think of e don’t even think of people cheating on something so simple is that really learned over time that it’s ok, you fill out a form somebody’s going to send you back something, and often those lists are sold over and over and over again, and by the time the third generation sale is over, you have no relevance to the list of all right, and you’re getting stuff that you really don’t want it clogging up your e mail box, and you don’t want that, so they either make up a fake address to give you so that bill passed through the filters as a legitimate address initially, or they’ll give you one that they never open, which isn’t gonna do you any good. Anyway, a lot of those gmail accounts or a well accounts that are free people will just have one of those strictly as they used to fill out all that junk drops into there. I see you don’t want to be in that list. You want to see a legitimate lift with a legitimate carrier, verizon or comcast, or or one of those for home and the businesses typically you want them to reflect the domain of the business there. Part of that tells you a legitimate what gmail but gmail dahna all those could be legitimate accounts, you couldn’t you couldn’t screen all those out? No, you can’t, but you can see one that looks, uh two, far from their real given name. If you have that to compare it to, uh, nobody’s registering, you know, as nerd sixty five jool and they’re not giving you a scientific address or their name is fred spelled backwards or something. You start to look at the bogus ones and figure it out. Okay? And since you did mention something that we hadn’t talked about in developing the list, let’s, talk a little about purchasing a list. What is that valuable for the small or midsize non-profit purchasing a list rental and compiled lists can be of value. You have to be very careful about the source if you go through a legitimate list broker and you’re looking for a very legitimate piece of a database that concerns especially business addresses. Yes, you can gain a lot out of that because those things have been double opt in check they’ve been verified on a monthly basis that they do exist and they are really and that they do fit the profile that you’ve selected when you rented the list. Now you have to keep in mind that those are usually for one time use only, and you cannot reuse them unless you have a special agreement from the renter compile lists are another story, those of those public things that you could buy that say have been scraped off of websites or have been captured out of the air from from email conversations and that kind of thing. Hackers will market these things to bring an extra bucks. They’re not very useful, they’re not very male herbal, and you’re getting into some serious spamming trouble by even attempting to use most of them because they’re loaded with with the monitors and traps and keys in their little tell people that you’re ok, then you want to be working with a legitimate company that you can verify you mentioned scraping off female what’s your trading closely to jorgen jail has, and it sort of has a a suggestion of what it is, but but i don’t want you to even be anywhere near drug in jail. So what? What is scraping somebody’s? It sounds like unsavory practice. It isn’t unsavory practice in its connotation, and it is information what you want to avoid. There are people out there, who will go to a business website and literally capture copy paste electronically scrape off every email address that’s buried in there. Your entire staff listing all your if you’re going to a law firm, they’ve got every lawyer listed on there with a love with a separate email address for them, they’re going to scrape all those off of there and compile them all into a big list. Listen, this may be legitimate, but they don’t know who they belong to or what they go to what level of persons is they have no information that goes with it, it’s just a list of addresses, as if people would really want to communicate with a bunch of lawyers or anything. There could be no manufacturing firm or, you know, the post office website or anything. They just gathered a bunch of e mail addresses from a bunch of list. Sometimes they’ll use. They’ll sort of piggyback on someone else’s, the internet activity as well, and their going from site to site start scraping through that. Okay, it gets very, very tedious and very touchy when you start doing stuff like that because you have privacy issues, you have legal issues? Uh, spam laws have teeth in them. Ladies and gentlemen, they can sue you for spamming. So you want to be careful what addresses you’re using and who you’re sending? Okay? And i didn’t want to suggest that. Buying a list from from verifiable source would be a good way of trying to get donors. I mean, as a fund-raising consultant, i didn’t mean to suggest that this is a way to acquire new donors, but maybe to acquaint someone with your with your non-profit but you’d have to be very precise in the type of list you bought in terms of the interests of the people. Is that is that possible, dave, to drill into get a list of people who are interested in, i don’t know environmental activism, and but maybe in the pacific northwest, i mean, do the lists from vera from from stable and appropriate cos come with that level of detail, some do, and some do not, uh, they’re further a head for business than they are for kapin consumer availability, drilling that deeply. Okay, if you drill down into segments that deeply on consumer list, chances are good you’re gonna have to pay a pretty penny for it. A good place to start with that if you have a specific interest, they look bilich environmental, you would want to try going to print publication that deal with that concept sierra club or audubon society or any of those that deal in environmental issues routinely subscriber list from them could be segmented by geography. And you could also rent additionally, email addresses that go with those mailing address him that way. Excellent idea. Okay, because that, yes, you know, the publications targeted. Okay, great. All right, so we need to get around that trying to pull that out of a compiled list is virtually impossible. Okay. Okay, good. Thank you. So we’ve developed our list. We understand how to get it clean and make sure it stays clean. Has to be maintained another thing, because now thing out, once you’re going to get some activity coming back from it, not only response is that you want, but response is you don’t want your going to get people that ask you to take them off. You’re going to get because you missed the target. It wasn’t who you thought it was not interested. And they don’t want you to lock up their box for the next six months with stuff they don’t need. That’s a good thing. You like getting those out of there? Because that saves you time and money. Yes, too. You’re gonna have people that were out of the office that day and i just bounced back and told you they may get hurt or they may not. Three you’re going to have bounced back for another reason, theis, and that part of the country was a little slow that day and missed something. There was a glitch in in a certain segment of the internet that went down for a moment your mail got trapped in it could be any number of other things. There’s a whole series of bounce back code that the internet service provider will give you that helps you interpret those bounce back unless you separate them out and decide whether to keep that address that is a temporary thing or whether it’s permanent it’ll tell you if you got the address wrong, if that person’s not at that address anymore. If that business is not there, that remains not active. Whatever they’ll tell you. What the problem woobox with it, when you learn how to read the code, we got to get those out of there. Once you’ve sent the first one, you’re gonna have to be prepared with how to deal with all those. Things that bounce back and those happen fairly quickly, usually within the first hour or so after you send it. Okay, so that’s that’s really list maintenance and that that’s going to be happening every time you send to your list sounds like there will be a certain level of activity depending on how little that down to practically nothing. Yeah, alright, depending on how many people you’re mailing to if it’s just a few hundred, you’ll have fewer of those which is get you in fewer because you’re making good decisions based upon those code taking the bad ones that are going to be permanently bad out. All right, you’re not re mailing, right? Okay. So, uh, well, let me just remind people that my guest is dave polish he’s, the principal of granite partners. And we’re talking about ex selling in your email execution. So then, dave, we have developed our list and it’s clean, and we’ve gotten the appropriate permissions and we know how to maintain the list over time. You have some elements of effective messaging, actually. What to say? What? What? What’s. Your first bit of advice on what the content of the message should. Be, uh, some of it is what to say, and so that is how to say it. Okay, um, the first thing you’re going to notice is that with the new influx of mobile customers that are out there that have their email come to a mobile device, you have far less real estate with which to impress the recipients you have basically a from a dress and a single subject line that’s all they’re going to see on a mobile device there’s no preview function. So what you have to do is make sure that a the address you’re sending from is from a brand they will recognize or at least understand. So whatever service you are using to send these out, if its outlook, you have to set up a box that sort of carrie’s co-branded makes sense for the outgoing mail or if it’s a service, you want to make sure that they’ve gotten you on outgoing address that reflects your brand so that they know who this thing is from and they recognize. But wouldn’t wouldn’t the service just be using your own? You’re you’re non-profit domain name, sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t they have what’s called rotating? Yeah, what’s. A rotating what’s, a rotating. Why would they understand? Why would they rotate for the same non-profit why would they use different domain names to send from? They’ll mask them behind an existing name, so the recipient will only see your name, but they’re using ten or twelve different outgoing addresses because they could shove more down the data pipe. That way they can spread your list out, get it out the door faster, but if you’re a non-profit you want it to come from your domain, absolutely time your domain is that the physical space that your domain inhabits doesn’t allow enough passed through dahna you can’t shove enough email through it fast enough because you just don’t have enough bandwidth, you didn’t run enough stone, so what happens is they’ll spread it out and they’ll mask it. They’ll refer to your domain name. The recipient only sees your domain, which is good, but they’re using ten twelve different ones with sam filters will pick up on the sub and block things out on who’s, the who’s the day that we’re talking about is this a company like constant contact? Is that o r who’s today you’re referring to there are service providers after that do nothing but deliver both female. They are, they’re registered there, certified they’re they’re very, very compliant with the service providers that give you internet access and then actually deliver and carry the mail. This is a middleman that you would go to as a non-profit if you have a list of of ten or twenty thousand potential donors that you’re going to be sending to routinely, you’re not gonna be able to shelve twenty thousand addresses through your outlook account and with any kind of accuracy or time limit. Okay, so what you’re gonna do is anything over about two hundred names you’re gonna want to goto what provider that sends out both female for a living that’s all they do and is constant contact an example of what you’re talking about male chimp? Is that an example? Or there are eyes that i am i in the wrong line, the wrong space, you’re in a similar space in a different scale gostin contact and male chimp and those kind of things arm or of the do-it-yourself version of that, their sort of big versions of outlook, they’re attached to larger relation all databases that lets you get mail out in larger volumes by yourself from your workstation, ok, here, but if you’re sending ten and twenty thousand, even though we’re gonna have a problem, they’re going to start to bog down and go very slowly, and they’re going to use up a lot of bandwidth, okay, but for our audience of small and midsize non-profits the ones i mentioned, what might be suitable absolutely after they’re a great way to get started. If you’re looking at that between two and five thousand names of any kind. Yeah, constant contact, be a very good bargain, ok, dave, we have just a little less than a minute left. Why don’t you tell us what you think is coming next? What’s the what’s, the next generation of email going to look like email’s going to get a lot more robust in the next six months to a year, you can bet on the fact that you’ll be able to embed photographs and video in your outgoing e mail and have it be interactive and reacted currently, if you put an image in an email, you run the risk of having it be screened out by spam filters or by network. Firewall because they don’t allow images, they scan for them and they remove the as being too large, and they cut down on the volume of data traffic so they get rid of them. So if you’re putting an image in there, one of the things we tell people who don’t let the image tell the entire story, have some text that tells the story because the image probably going to make it and you see video coming in email, absolutely video will be able to be embedded in outgoing email beyond the capability we have today where it’s, just a lincoln it’s, actually resident somewhere else. We’re going to be able to actually carry video imagery on before too long. All right, we have to leave it there. Dave pulis principle of granite partners, which you’ll find at granite hyphen part piela dot com dave, thank you very much for being a guest. Thank you for your excellent ideas. Pleasure. Enjoy it. Thank you very much. After this break, it’s tony’s, take two. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Geever oh, this is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy contact them today. Admission one one media dot com hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business, why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back. It is roughly thirty two minutes after the hour, which means it’s time for tony’s take two, and after that, i’ll be joined by claire meyerhoff and we’ll continue talking about ex selling in email execution five four tonys take two five ways to be a plant e-giving evangelist something i blogged about this week, it actually could apply to anything that you that you do that you love doing, and i hope you really love the work that you do so much so that you want to evangelize about it. I chose planned giving as the subject of my evangelism on this week’s blawg, and i’ll just share a couple of the things that i think go into being an evangelist for what you do. Yeah, i love it, you know, in my example, you gotta love plant e-giving you gotta recognize that it has value for non-profits and for donors and for their families, and recognize the good that it khun do for society as you’re helping charitable missions. So whatever it is that you want to evangelize about, you really have to love it and be unashamed about your love of it don’t talk you know sort of humbly or shyly about whatever it is you want to evangelize about, you got you need to be out in the open, you need to be enthusiastic, which should be easy because you love what it is you’re talking about, so carry that enthusiasm don’t don’t don’t talk, you know, sort of humbly about your your love of the subject you want to evangelize about lear, love of your work and and and as you’re being unashamed, spread that word, spread it to people that you work with, people who are in your network that you don’t work with, um, when the topic comes up, you know, what do you do? What do you love doing? You want to be unashamed about sharing it, and you want to use the opportunities that you have to spread the word. And so those are three of the ways that i think you could be a plant e-giving evangelist or an evangelist about whatever it is you love to do, and you can see my blogging m p g a d v dot com for more on those ways and a couple of additional ways as well, and also always the reminder that we are on itunes you can subscribe at itunes, listen and get automatic downloads of the show and listen at your leisure on the device of your choice, whether that’s, tablet or phone or desktop or laptop and that is always at non-profit radio dot net that is tony’s take two for friday, april eighth. I’m joined now my guest is claire meyerhoff. Claire, how are you doing, tony, right, how are you? Pleasure to have you back. I’m well, thank you very much. Claire meyerhoff is editorial director at the plant e-giving company, and she is the creative producer of this show. We’re going to talk about howto write for email fund-raising so that your messages get opened, read and respond to do so. Continuing the topic of excel ing in email execution claire so dave paulus sort of left us with write a perfect point, i think, talking about the header of the email he talked about where it’s from what’s your advice about the subject line of the email? Well, the subject line is really important because if you think about your own email use, what do you do? You’re on your iphone slip. Through it. So the subject find is very important and what you want to do, it make really some buddy. So so whatever you are promising them, you need to deliver it on the inside. All right, clara, i’ll tell you what were you sure need to repeat? Actually, what you said about the subject line because you were you’re breaking up. You’re on a landline, right? I am on a landline, and i’m hearing some feedback. Okay? I know the feedback is a little challenging. Try toe, i guess. Talk through the feedback and or maybe not listen so much, but just just talk on dh when you’re done talking, then put the earpiece back to your ear. But could you tell us again what your advice is for the subject line? I’ll do that. Ok, ok, my advice for the subject line is the subject line is going to be the thing that the person will either open it for. They will delete it so your subject line needs to be something that is really, truly news. What? What is it that you are going to be telling people or you want them to do or you want them to hear about most? So put that in there and basically only about thirty characters or so because they don’t even see the rest of us. Put your good stuff up front. Yeah, you sort of have to write that like headline, right, it’s, it’s, a lot like a headline and think about the news business and think about why you pick up a newspaper and read it it’s because of the headlines and any new yorker knows that york post the daily news, they’ve had a long history of really pretty interesting headlines that really grabs your attention. So think about the same thing with your non-profit what is your non-profits headline? And what is the headline for this newsletter that for sending people something generic, like may newsletter june newsletter? Okay, yeah, i have to. Yeah, the new york times are the sari, the daily news and the new york post. My favorite. Well, one of my favorites there’s a whole book about new york post headlines, which is it’s called topless body in head headless body in topless bar. Aunt, i have a copy of that, but it’s a headless body in topless bar from a murder. But one of my favorites was when jack cousteau’s ship crashed and the headline was calypso collapse. So isn’t that genius? I just have to show you right now, it’s go on and you’re like a save the whales organization. You’re not gonna have that to live so collapse. So are anything like that? So i think that’s pretty cool, it’s. Hard to be that clever. But those clever and you know what? If you were that clever, someone would probably open up your email. Certainly. What do you have any other advice for? The for that header information. Uh, maybe the from la who should be from or or any other advice there. Well, unless everybody knows that lisa is the head of your organization, it shouldn’t be from one person instead, make it from your organization and have it the name something that is sort of more of an action. Kind of a word. Like not information, but news. Maybe, you know, news at habitat for humanity, dot com or something like that. So give it give it a name that is a little newsy sounding might get someone’s attention better than, say, info at or or you know, something really generic and, you know, keep again, keep it really, really short. And you put the key words right up front and whatever some buzz words are that air right now in your field. So if sustainability or something is a good buzz word, that and so definitely just put the key words right up front that the main thing, okay? And you mean in the from line, so maybe sustainability at the domain is that is that what you’re suggesting? I’m talking about the subject line, so okay, you have your nature organization, and you’re always talking about sustainability, and the name of your newsletter is something with sustainability. Perhaps that could be your email address. I hadn’t thought of that, but it could be whatever, whatever you want. So that it’s recognizable and again it’s all about the brand and it’s recognizable and always be thinking about who your audience is. And i like to think of your email recipients, the people that will open the email and those are the ones we care about, the most people that actually open it, and then the few that follow through, right? Who were those people? Those are your most boyle people just like implant e-giving who were the best plan giving donors your boil donors, people, that e-giving for a long time with the people that are actually opening and reading. Your email, those who you’re really boils followers those year loyal supporters? Yes. Oh, so you’re you want you’re saying you want to have them in mind as you’re crafting your message? Exactly. Keep them in mind. What? What do they care about? So think about a few people that you know, supporters of your organizations have names and faces and think about what are they interested in? What is kathy interested in? What is robert interested in and crafted that way? Ok, on, daz were crafting our message. What’s your advice about how long it should be the subject line. Oh, no, the length of the body of the message. The body of the entire email newsletter should be chunked. So if you have, you know, one big article, you know, trumped that up into different articles. But faras length, you know, there’s. No specific lengths to into an e newsletter. It could be his long or short. As as you like. Think about the ones that you read and pattern yourself after that. If you’re bored after a certain amount of time, then your readers our board, pretty sure. Okay. What other advice have you got to share? I’ve been sort of, you know, suggesting topics, but you tell us tell me what? Your your advices. Well, here is some duitz do plan ahead. A newsletter done that’s on the fly usually looks like it’s been done on the fly. So plan your news letter ahead of time and that means preparing an editorial calendar. Maybe for the whole year. How often are you going to send these out? If you feel like you can send out one a month that’s great. And then think about what you might be doing in those months. Like, if you know, your annual report is coming out and you’re gonna have a lot of new information, then you know that khun, your main news letter might be packed with a lot of great, um, like statistical information, all kinds of cool stuff that you know about in may, but of course in december of the holidays, so you know that you can do holiday related things, so come up with an editorial calendar, so if you’re going to do it once a month, pick a day that you think is a good day to send it out when your readers are most likely to read it and then plan ahead, say well in in february and do this in march. We’re going to do that and have a couple of things knowing full well, what what’s going on if it’s september back to school and that’s important for your organization. Well, then that’s your back to school newsletter and you know you’re going tohave information about that and also decide on a goal before you do your newsletter what’s. The goal of the newsletter is the goal just oh, well, we want to tell people a bunch of stuff that’s going on. Well, that’s not a goal. What’s your real specific goal. Are you entering into a campaign? Are you announcing something? And you want everybody to know about it? Are you trying to raise money? Are you trying to get people to come to an event to sign up for a walkathon? What is the goal of the newsletter and then work backwards from what your goal is. Okay, claire, we just have about thirty seconds before the break. You mentioned planning ahead. And maybe as much as a year as you’re developing your email marketing plan. You want that? To be dovetailed with your other marketing activities, right, you might be sending print pieces as well around your events, things like that, right, absolutely. And marketing is a huge challenge for most small non-profits. The person doing marketing is also doing fifty other things, so the more planned you khun b, the easier it makes your job, so have a little marketing plan for the year, even if it’s one page and it’s a calendar, we’re going to do this in january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august and it’s all about when you send postcards. When you send email, when you send a regular newsletter and other mailing, okay, we’re going to take a break. My guest is clear meyerhoff editorial director at the plant e-giving company were ex selling an email execution stay with us talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Durney i really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness can help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com upleaf do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing for mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is, we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com. Talking dot com. Dahna hello and welcome back. I’m talking to claire meyerhoff and were ex selling in your email execution. Claire, you had a list of do’s that you wanted, teo continue sharing with us. Well, some other dues are due. Motivate your reader. You are sending this email to them, and you want them to do something and you need to motivate them to do it. And the easiest way to keep them unmotivated is too forthem, boring and dull. And the best way to do to motivate them is to tell them about something great that’s going on. That really would matter to them. So, do you have a really great event coming up? Do you have something really cool that you and your organization to tell people about it’s is? And news means it’s, usually something you what’s going on in your organization. That’s important to your reader? Not just what’s important to you? Yeah. You just finished your quarterly report, or or you have a new, you know, drink machine in the break room that might be important to you. But it’s not important to your readers. So think about the things that you are. Reader will think. Okay? And that’s consistent with your advice earlier just have a few people in mind and think about what’s interesting to them and write to that audience and think about what’s interesting to them also do the cocktail party saying or the or the coffee shop thing where if you ran into someone at starbucks and they said, hey, what’s new in your organization will help. Yeah, excellent, right? If you just had a couple of minutes, right? Excellent. Another any other dues? Uh, you might want to tell people why this is important now, which is usually through for fund-raising so what is going on right now? Why this is important. So if you’re an environmental organization and there’s some sort of threat that’s what you want to tell people about right now, we need to do this now you need to sign the petition. Now you need to send the money now we’re trying to fight it now your call to action it’s the call to action and make sure your call to action really is a call to action and that you’re writing matches the urgency of it. What i see a lot of times in email that i get from a lot of different non-profits is, you know, it’s sort of the henny penny email the sky is falling, they’re taking our rights away and they’re going to ruin the environment and they’re really bad, and i don’t really want to see that i want to see the action i want to see, like what you were doing, like, you know, we’ve got a bus on its way to this place full of volunteers, and they’re all going, and we need some gas money, like, i want to know what the thing is right now, the action that you’re doing that you need my help, why are you writing to may? Why is that news? So tell me that okay, before we get to your don’ts, which i’m sure you have, how do you make sure that you’re emails are consistent with your general identity for the organization? So they look like the rest of what you send out, whether it’s emails or website or or print well, that goes back to your marketing plan if you have one in some places, don’t you don’t have one it’s pretty common. So think about a couple of simple things that you always do and include that in your newsletter. So if you always have a pet of the month because you’re the animal adoption agency and you always have a pet of the month and you have a cute little name for it used that, make sure you use that in your in your identity, so use those identifiable things that you’ve already created, and if you don’t have some it’s time to create them, okay, so that’s excellent that’s the substance? What about just the appearance of the messages? How do you mean by the appear? What? What artwork? You might include the photos or our identity elements that you have for your non-profit well, i was listening todavia earlier about sending photos and e mails and how a lot of those get filtered out. So i’m definitely thinking about the photo thing because if people aren’t getting them that maybe not a great fool. I love photos if you can use photos, photos are the best and frankly, a lot of times your most loyal donors are also on facebook, and they’re a friend of your organization on facebook and as long as you’re not putting up things like ten times a day, they’re interested in being what you have there not gonna block you. Okay, so think about your facebook think about your email newsletter in conjunction with each other and how they can play off each other. So if you have a great, great photographic like the best photograph that tells the story of your mission like no other photograph, use that photograph a lot of times, repurpose it so you might want to send it in your e news letter and have it on your facebook and in your e newsletter say there are more photos like this on the facebook or on our web sights and people through the website where there are more of these great photographs and then take that really great that one great photographs and put it in your print newsletter used it on a postcard for fund-raising let’s say, you’re doing a little plan giving postcard campaign. Put that one great photo on that postcard so we use the good stuff that you have. Good, we have just about two minutes left. What are some of the don’ts that you want to share? Well, it’s funny that you say that because i try to be positive these days. So i wrote a big list. Do you have all dues and no don’t so i thought for sure. Ok, right around. Okay, well, so okay. Don’t don’t be not creative. Be creative, be creative use of environmental organization. And you just did a survey about ice source in your community. What are the top three? See, that would really get attention. So be creative with stuff. The good stuff that you have that’s interesting that your organization really had a handle on. So let’s say you are an environmental organization. You just did a big survey, and out of that survey results came the, you know, little thing that wasn’t the main focus, but in it was, you know, people complain the most about the certain areas in your county that we’re the biggest eyesores. Well, that’s a new story for you where you can say, what are the top three ugliest eyesores, the whole county. And you can do a lot with that that’s really interesting people will open up that email is your town, you know? Is this eyesore in your neighborhood? Why don’t you leave? Us with one more of your dues or however you want to phrase it dues or don’ts duse or don’t? Well, i like to talk about, you know, writing and words and storytelling, so just do tell really good stories that are about someone that affect other people don’t talk about yourself and how how great you are, talk about the people that you’re serving and how you’re solving prop emblems for people. I’ll give you this one. This is my one last tip i give everybody these days, you can’t think of a story, look at the money, find out a recent gift that you’ve got and how did you use that money? And then find the person that’s benefiting from the money that you’re using. So, for instance, if you just got a gift and you build a handicap ramp, who is benefiting from that handicapped wrapped rampant your facility to find that person and do a story about them and that’s where you find your story stories, they’re everywhere to follow the money, certainly because charities are doing good work so people who are people are benefiting those stories should be very common, right? Where’s the money. Going find, find someone benefiting from it and focus on them. And where would their life be without this organization? And where would their life be without specifically this money that just came in and how it was used? You had a big campaign. Everybody gave money, you raised thousands and thousands of dollars. Where did it go? Thank you very much. Thank you very much, claire. My guest has been clear meyerhoff editorial director at the plan giving company and creative producer for tony martignetti non-profit radio next week we’re going to be all about auctions if if we bring that a little further, may weaken do advertising and awareness advancements in auctions in america. But well, for right now will just stop with all about auctions silent, loud or online. What’s it all about auction’s. My guest is going to be roger divine of divine assistance and he’s going to explain what auctions are all about. I hope you’ll be part of that conversation on we’ll have a group sing at the end. Maybe also scott koegler, our tech guru, and he’s, our regular contributor. Of course, you know that he’s, the editor of non-profit technology news and he’s going to share what’s newest in technology for your non-profit keep up with what’s coming up on tony martignetti non-profit radio. Sign up for our email alerts on the facebook page at facebook dot com and then the name of this show. And while you’re there, like us, become a fan on itunes, as i talked about earlier, that is always found at non-profit radio dot net subscribed. Listen, any time on the device of your choice, as i said, a few times are creative producer is claire meyerhoff, our line producer and the owner of talking alternative broadcasting is sam liebowitz, and our social media is by regina walton of organic social media. Booker t and the mgs composed our theme music. Thank you very much, guys. I hope you’ll join me next friday, one p m eastern for tony martignetti non-profit radio, as always on talking alternative broadcasting found at talking alternative dot com. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get you thinking. Dahna cubine are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing time? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed, i and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com you’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fit. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two eight six five nine two nine. Zero or visit w w w died. Mind over matter. Y si dot com. Durney talking. Hyre

Nonprofit Radio for May 13, 2011: Event Sponsorships & Email Security

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

You can subscribe on iTunes and listen anytime, anyplace on the device of your choice.

Tony’s Guests:

Karen Perry

Karen Perry, president of EventJournal, shares her ideas about how to cultivate, solicit and steward corporate sponsors to raise big money for your events.

 

I have a couple of questions for this segment. You can answer them here or on the show’s Facebook page.

Q1: Who solicits companies for your event sponsorships?

  • Staff
  • Committee volunteer
  • Board member
  • A combination of those above

Q2: In your largest event, what percentage of revenue is from corporate sponsorships?

  • 0-25
  • 26-50
  • 51-75
  • 76-100
Definitely NOT Howard Globus

Howard Globus, president of IT On Demand and guest contributor on this blog, reveals his strategies to keep your email safe and sound and away from snoopers.

 

He’s got some great nonprofit discount sites for major league security!

Here is a question for this segment.

Q3: Do you feel you have strong security protecting your sensitive donor data?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Not sure

Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

You’re on the air and on target as I delve into the big issues facing your nonprofit—and your career.

If you have big dreams but an average budget, tune in to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

I interview the best in the business on every topic from board relations, fundraising, social media and compliance, to technology, accounting, volunteer management, finance, marketing and beyond. Always with you in mind.

When and where: Talking Alternative Radio, Fridays, 1-2PM Eastern

Sign-up for show alerts!

“Like” the show’s Facebook page.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show’s podcast on iTunes. Download and listen whenever and wherever you want.

Here is a link to the podcast: 041: Event Sponsorships and Email Security.
View Full Transcript

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No. Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. I hope you were with me last week when i had a conversation with craig newmark, and we also talked about everlasting endowment. The founder of craigslist joined me hey has created craigconnects dot or ge for non-profits and those who support them, and we talked about the site and its areas of support. Craig is an inspiration to non-profits i’m thinking about this the past week, the way he works outside of his comfort zone to inaugurate craigconnects when he knows it’s a good idea, but he doesn’t really know how it’s going to turn out. So i hope you listen to that. I hope you were with me for that show and of course, it’s always on itunes, and also last week i had the co author of foundation and endowment investing, kathleen rittereiser joined me, she revealed strategies used by big endowment managers that you can take home to keep your endowment safe and invested, right? That was a segment that your cfo and you’re bored should hear this week event sponsorships and email security. Karen perry, the president of eventjournal, shares her ideas on how to cultivate, solicit and steward corporate sponsors so that you can raise big money for your events. And howard globus, president of i t on demand. Howard’s gonna have strategies to keep your email safe and sound and away from snoopers. He’s got some great non-profit discount sites for major league email and data security. So today i’m joined by two presidents in the studio on tony’s. Take two. In between, my guests remind you that we are media sponsors for fund-raising day in june, it’s, a big fund-raising day here in new york city, and i’ll talk a little about that. That is, at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour on tony’s, take two. So all that is, after this break, and right after the break, i’ll be joined by karen perry, will talk about event sponsorships, so stay with me. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Latto are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call us ed to one, two, nine, six, four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one, two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Hey, are you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Metoo welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio, always talking about big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. With me in the studio now is karen perry. She has been helping non-profits raise more money from their galas and other major special events. For more than ten years, karen has worked at several of new york’s top advertising agencies on fortune one hundred accounts and has also worked in the non-profit arena in a variety of advocacy development, casework and outreach positions. She has her master’s in social work. In two thousand two, she founded event journal, the first web based alternative to printed ad journals and program books. Karen is here to share her ideas about event sponsorships. Karen, welcome to the show. Thank you, tony. What have you, um, what’s a sponsorship? A sponsorship is an opportunity. That’s packaged where a third party or a second party organization can get some derive some benefit from supporting another endeavor and were generally talking about corporate sponsorships today. Is that correct? This fall into the same sort of pattern of fund-raising that we see with individuals in that it’s cultivation solicitation stewardship? Well, there’s a general pattern. Yes, but there’s a different motivation in general for corporate sponsors, your individual donors, but we see the same sort of general flow i mean, you’re cultivating, soliciting and starting exactly okay, we’ll talk about each of those, you know, talk major those faces. What? What types of events are appropriate for sponsorship? Fund-raising well, there’s generally a distinction between fund-raising events and cultivation or stewardship events, although fund-raising events requires some stewardship as well, to maintain the sponsors, but basically a sponsored event can be anything from a dinner gala to a golf outing to a five k run. Anything where there’s exposure to the public on behalf of the charity or non-profit, where the sponsor would derive some value from being publicly associated with it? And what what are some of those sponsor motivations? Wired wire companies doing this well, probably the most, the one that most charities would assume is for the philanthropic value of it. Ah, usually you know, corp corporate entities are run by people, and people have different experiences in life. So if the nonprofit organization is doing work that touches on the pulse or the heart strings of thie president or vice president or other other key people in the company they miss may wish to get behind it. If there’s ah employees in the company who have been touched by particular disease or helped by an organization, then they may want to rally behind that organization. But that’s, just a piece of it is the philanthropic aspect. There’s also the what’s in it for me. And i think that in this day and age, there’s a big buzz going on right now about corporate social responsibility caused marketing. And so it really behooves the organization to take a look att tthe e exposure and recognition opportunities that they’re offering too, the sponsors when they support an event. Now we have drug in jail on tony martignetti non-profit radio, and i don’t want you to have very long stint in jargon jail you mentioned caused marketing. What does that mean? Cause marketing is when a when a the opportunity basically for a company to aa or for a non-profit to offer value to a company in association with its mission. And how would somebody figure out whether the company has that kind of affinity for for their mission? So how would a charity sort of sort that out. Well, it always goes back to the people who are in the company because cos they’re not faceless. They have people behind them. So if there’s a a company president who has a brother who was developmentally disabled, perhaps that would be a hot button for such an agency. Um, but i think it’s also a matter of ah on the less philanthropic end is, you know what? Exposure to the public, what goodwill are they conveying to the community when the organization offers thie sponsor an opportunity for exposure? Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, i’m sort of combining two areas amused, definitely talking about the mission related interest that the company may have, and then also the what a positive association interest that they would have blang allied with the being seen with the charity name. So the organization used to do its homework to know who’s being touched by which type of condition and whether or not their mission speaks to a responsible person within the company, but very often that’s, not something that they can identify. So then i think the best opportunity for most non-profits is to put together compelling packages and traditionally for non-profit events, a dinner gala might have three hundred guests or a golf outing. Might have one hundred forty four golfers at best. That’s. Not a very big audience to be noticing the sponsorship support of a company. So in this day and age, there are so many digital opportunities and media opportunities to get the recognition factor out, that the organizations need to understand, and we’re about to take a break. But when we come back from the break, we’ll talk more about some of these marketing materials that you’re recommending that non-profits need to put together to make this compelling case. Teo cos. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio stay with us. E-giving didn’t think the building getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternate network to get you thinking. Things. Cubine are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed, i and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com duitz looking to meet mr and mrs wright, but still haven’t found the one. Want to make your current relationship as fulfilling as possible? Then please join us, starting monday, may second at ten am for love in the morning with morning alison as a professional matchmaker, i’ve seen it all. Please tune in and call as we discuss dating relationship and more. Start your week off with love in the morning with marnie alison on talking alternative dot com. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Duitz welcome back to the show i’m with karen perry, the president of event journal, which you’ll find at event journal dot com and we’re talking about event sponsorships. So, karen, before the break, we were talking a little about the marketing materials that are appropriate for a charity to put together. What do those look like? In-kind trying to cultivate the corporate sponsorships? Okay, well, traditionally thie formula that’s been used for the ages has been that initially, to promote an event there’s a save the date card goes out about six months before the event, then there’s typically a sponsorship letter that the charity writes that engages attempts to engage thie company in ah, connection to the mission connection to perhaps an event honore connection, teo recognition exposure that they’re going to be offering. And a typical sponsorship package combines tickets or tables at the event, along with certain, um, benefits of recognition and association with the organization. So then, of course, the invitation pack it comes out in which if there’s someone who has committed early, sometimes their logo will be featured. And so, you know, the the media met message for the event starts churning and then sponsorship is usually inclusive of some kind of recognition in association with the continuation of that. So if they have an advertisement in the newspaper logos for sponsors, khun b identified email marketing, which is a newer component logo czar identified for sponsors and then at the event they’ll typically have some sort of banners or some sort of aa journal book where the sponsors and supporters are acknowledged by having an ad and that’ll be in us and in combination with tickets and the it’s sort of sounding like there has to be, you know, a lot of recognition, but couldn’t this could this work also for smaller organizations, are more locally based, but but maybe they would just be reaching out to local companies? Sure, you know, even a small organization, if they’re having a five k run, they have t shirts where people khun can have ah, you know, logos for companies or take and i’ve seen dog walks where when you get there next to the water station, there sign ege where the sponsors are being recognized, but for the larger events, probably the single biggest recognition opportunity traditionally has been the printed ad journal and ah, that’s something that at this point is become somewhat passe because the books are our passive piece, one of the opportunities that’s out there right now for non-profits is to use digital media in various forms to offer recognition and sponsorship exposure to the companies that underwrite their events. So now there’s websites for events there’s email marketing, where they expand to a much larger audience, digital media is going to reach out to people who may not be in the room the night of the event, but who were still part of the larger database for the organization and community for the organization. So the moran organization can tie into a variety of digital media. It expands from what used to be a printed piece or printed advertisement. Okay, and that’s what? Your work is involved with eventjournal and we’ll get into the recognition. I just want to sort of work our way into that. So there was another we’ve identified you identified two reasons that companies would be interested in some kind of event sponsorship that was analogue i with the mission that they’d be in sympathy with the mission or just ah positive association with a local organization and you mentioned a third, but let’s, let’s investigate that one little bit the honoree relationship. What is that? Well, in the new york metropolitan market, honorees are really tried and proven method for bringing revenue into the event, you know, as you get outside of the new york metro area. Interestingly enough, it’s not done as much really is not so common outside new york, but we’ve learned that it’s it’s sometimes we’re suggesting it to organizations and it’s kind of like an aha for them. But basically what that’s all about is identifying somebody. Who’s either done some incredible work or made contributions to the organization or someone who’s business. They can tie their business to the mission of the event, the organization and or if not just some prominent individual who’s willing to put their name and their support behind the event for particular year. And then they either are asked or were requested are expected to bring in a certain amount of support along with there being recognized, so the honoree themselves generally underwrites the event from their company. To some extent, they’ll usually by a couple of tables, or they’ll invite their colleagues. To buy tables, and then the big opportunity, depending on the prominence of the honore, is to reach out to the vendors and suppliers and clients and colleagues of that particular business person or corporation. And ah, you know, let them know that they should show support for the fact that their colleague is being honored. Yeah, so what’s the receptivity that you find in other parts of the country when you’re having a conversation with eventjournal clients or potential clients to this to this honoree idea that you said is new to them? Well, i think that there is a general sense that, you know, asking people to it there’s a discomfort i found with asking people to not only ah chip in a certain amount of much money for their own company, but then reaching out to the next tier, then and the vendors and kind of putting the arm on them strong, arming them to pony up some money. But i think at the end of the day, one of thie ah, one of the real facts of fund-raising is that its sales? You’ve got to get out there, you’ve got to ask, you’ve gotto give people. Compelling reasons, teo, make their contribution words like stewardship. And where were the other worlds of cultivation? You know you can you can catch those and euthanize them, but basically that’s sort of like prospects, prospecting and following up and doing customer service. It’s all the same thing, it’s, just different verbiage. And you you alluded to that we didn’t call it prospecting earlier. When you’re saying that there may be people in the company or heads of the company that are sympathetic to a mission because of their own family circumstances, that’s the prospecting part of of corporate sponsorships, that’s a piece of it. But i think it’s also just knowing if there’s a company that wants to come out as being a good citizen in the community, and you have an opportunity for them to get their logo and their recognition in front of a thousand people who all share some common bond, where there’s some warm and fuzzy feeling for the fact that they have supported a mission that’s important to the individuals in the organization. That’s important to noto you know, you know what about thie the’s honorees in doing this in other parts of the country are we really anomalous in new york city? I mean, what about other cities? Are they are they doing the honoree strategy? They are there, other cities air doing work with honorees, but a lot of times it’s not as monetarily related. So, you know, they may end up honoring the chairman of the board where they may honor a great volunteer. Who’s. You know, the priest who started the programme or something like that in new york, we’ve kind of got it down to a science where you usually have two or three honorees. One is a business honoree who brings in the money. One might be a cause related, honore and a third might be just a scholarship recipient or somebody has benefited from the program. Okay, but the first of those that business honoree here in new york, i mean, there they are expected teo to put forth their vendor list. Other friends of their company there’s always an agreement. Doctor there’s always an agreement between the charity and the honoree as to what level of involvement they’re goingto have, whether they’re just providing a vendor list, whether they’re sending out a letter teo their supporters. One of the best examples we had recently was an honoree who stepped up personally, and we did a video message from eventjournal we did a video message from that honore that was blasted out on email that went tio a couple of thousand of people that the organization and this particular businessman knew it was a personal appeal from him to support the organization and then the email message click back into the website that eventjournal built for the event where all the event information the honorees byo everything to do with why they should support this charity. And then, of course, because it was an online journal, which is what our company does, it had thie ads of thie supporting vendors where everyone could see who was supporting this gentleman, and if your ad wasn’t there, it was very publicly not there and then, because annie journal is a public recognition opportunity, we also incorporate a shopping courts of people come by the rad’s right then and there and, you know, get their support recognized. And so these expectations are all laid out in advance so that the honoree on the charity know what each is expected to. Do in best practices they are, you know, some some organizations, they’re not. His bold is toe have dollar figures. Some will just ask for support and sharing of lists. Sometimes it depends on who the honoree is and what can reasonably be asked and how strong the relationship is between the charity and that particular honore. If it’s someone they barely know, and they’re just happy to have them lend their name to the organization, they have to tread lightly, expectations will be lower. Sure. S so i don’t know how to interpret the new york city version of galas and honorees, are we? I don’t know if we’re greedy or we’re just ahead of the curve and the rest of the country. Well, we’ll catch up. I think in new york, we know that were after the money. I mean, that’s the whole purpose of a fund raising event, you can have nicey nice events or you could have fund-raising events in new york, i believe we feel it’s about the bottom line, right? I’m with karen perry and she’s, the president of eventjournal we’re talking about excuse me, we’re talking about event sponsorships, karen, who should be out soliciting for the sponsorships now, you know, of course, the audience hears small and midsize non-profit so they may not have the wherewithal to get the high profile sponsorships. But who from the charity should be out soliciting these? Well, i think that it’s it’s a communal effort, there’s, generally a few tears of responsibility. Not every organization has a committee, but some d’oh. So if there’s an event committee, a committee of volunteers you mean generally it’s a committee of volunteers on dh they have some vested interest in the success of the event on behalf of the mission of the organization. So what i think is important for staff people to know is that their committee members aren’t as well versed in why somebody should sponsorship sponsor an event they may not be as comfortable with the ask itself, but they have contacts and friends and colleagues and business connections within the community. So i think that they’re a field that could be mined. I don’t think that they’re the ones who should be making the ask in general, unless you have a very sophisticated committee member on dh, then there’s generally the committee, the gala co chairs. Ok, so wait well, before we go to those let’s, just focus on the volunteer committee, that event committee so are they their role then? If they’re not actually soliciting asking for the for the sponsorship there more just setting it up so that then the staff member actually does they ask? Is that would you know, i think that in an organization that’s very well organized there’s generally a target list of companies, businesses and corporations that they would liketo have sponsor their event. I don’t see that as often as i’d like to. But i think that any time you start out with a target list, you have a much greater chance of actually closing sales or closing donation requests. So i think if you put out a list like that to a committee, you may find out that somebody’s brother in law sister in law is involved in the company and that’s information that you would have overlooked had you not asked for that. You just said, oh, who knows anybody that could sponsor us? Most committee members glaze over. Yeah, but a more specific list on dh then you you have a suggestion to go beyond the event committee itself in terms of who should be out doing this marketing for you. Right? Well, i mean, it’s going to depend on the organizational structure of this particular event. We have clients where all the asks are done by paid staff. We have others where the board members are very involved in reaching out to their contacts. Then there’s generally a gala or an event chairperson sometimes there’s a sponsorship committee, which is more focused than the committee at large. So i think, really. It depends on the structure of the event organization. But in general, what i found is that the actual asked can be started by someone on the committee or the board, but wth e conclusion and what level and what they get for that and how you package the benefits. It’s generally got to be done by a dedicated staff person in general. And in terms of that board board involvement. Is that really just about as far as it should go? I mean, what what do you think is the best practice for the degree to which the board members should be involved in this hole process? Might they also be identifying potential sponsorship opportunities? Absolutely. They might be identifying sponsorship opportunities. I think the board’s primary benefit in this type of endeavor is identifying future honorees. And then once they know someone who they can tap for an honoree for an upcoming event, then it’s their relationship with that person. Perhaps that they can then go and make the ask. And then that ask includes who do you know, mr emma’s honoree that could become sponsors and support your being recognized by organization and there’s. Ah! Number of times that, ah, potential sponsor needs to be asked right or or receive marketing materials before you’re actually gonna get an action action for out of them, isn’t it? Yeah, i think that the fund-raising sector in general is not as up one marketing methodology as i think that they could be. And so typically, with any kind of sales or marketing effort, you need a minimum of four to six times of exposure and recognition of a message for someone to even take action and more like six to twelve times for them to really be compelled to do something about it. So what i described earlier with the save the date card, the sponsor letter, the invitation and maybe a phone call from the organization that’s that’s a bare minimum. And this is two thousand eleven. We have elektronik media and we have social media and we have, you know, you can have a facebook page. You can have ah, email, marketing, web based materials. There’s just so many opportunities to teo get in front of potential sponsors. What’s the revenue expectation for sponsorships around a single event. Can you clarify? Yeah, the i mean how? Much of your revenue from an event do you think should be coming from the sponsorships? Well, i think that depending on whether what the revenue streams are, the percentage is going to vary. If it’s a sit down dinner and there’s tickets sales and then their sponsorships, you know the vast majority of the money should come in from sponsorship packages for any successful event. The ticket sales are generally just the up charge between the out of pocket costs and the ticket price, and so there’s not as much potential, whereas a sponsor dollar if someone’s donating ten thousand dollars a sponsorship and they’re getting a table and that table has ten seats that cost the organization one hundred dollars. So the up charges nine thousand dollars there’s also organisations that have journals. And so the journal is where companies come by an ad and it’s just a matter of all the ad revenue comes together. Sponsors get ads, but then people can also buy ads individually. So the cost of printing or publishing or electronically publishing that journal is taken out of the costs. So if they have tickets and sponsorships, i think it should be at least sixty percent, if not more, of the revenue. If they also have a journal, then you put the journal together with the sponsorships, and then that should be a very large percentage of the revenue. Okay, i pulled our ah, our listeners and people who follow the show on facebook and on twitter no, their replies, there were just a few, but their replies were there. Their sponsorship revenue came in either between twenty six and fifty percent, or it was a combination of anywhere from zero to one hundred might said to me, that’s, that’s a huge opportunity with a do badder than glow. I think that should be you should be vast majority, well, that’s, because i’m think i’m thinking they’re not tapping sponsorship opportunity as best they can just in the minute or so that we have left let’s talk about the recognition because that’s, where your work is the recognition that the corporate sponsor gets what what should that look? Likes a little maybe a lot more detail than you said. Well, there’s on location at the event recognition and then there’s there’s ah at large recognition, so at the event it should be very parent who the supporters are with eventjournal we produce thie e journal online, and then we bring it to the event with a presentation where all of the ads are being shown on big screens and everybody sees who the sponsors are throughout the night. It’s very colorful and robust other times there’s a printed ad book where it says there’s an ad in the on a page in the book, sometimes depending on the nature of the event. If it’s not a very elegant event they might be, they may have a banner for the company or a poster board. They may get recognition from the dais. Sometimes a top sponsor gets to have a few remarks from the dais and then outside of the event there’s all of the event promotional materials like the event website, which can have logos and journal ads and their sponsorship letters and there’s all kinds of materials where they can identify who the supporters are. My guest has been carrying perry and she’s, the president of eventjournal, which you’ll find it eventjournal dot com. Karen, thank you very much for being on the show. You’re quite welcome. It goes fast and a pleasure. We’re going to take a break, and after this break, tony’s, take two. And then i’ll be joined by howard globus, the president of tian demand, and we’ll talk about email security. Stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? 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Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio it’s, time for tony’s, take two at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour. We are media sponsors for the new york city chapter of association of fund-raising professionals fund-raising day, and that is the largest one day fund-raising conference in the world. It’s on friday, june tenth, at the marriott marquis hotel in times square here in new york, and i’ll be interviewing the conferences speakers for this show, so i’ll be interviewing them podcast interviews and then later on they’ll be replayed on the show. You could get information about the conference at www dot a f p and y c dot a f p net dot or ge again a f p and y si dot a f p net dot or ge. I always talk about my blogged for the week, but this week i had a guest blogger. My block is at mpg a dv dot com, and you’ll see that my guest blogger is howard globus this week, and howard is also the guest on this show this week, so that is tony’s take two for friday, may thirteenth and now it’s a pleasure for me to welcome howard globus to the studio. Howard welcome. Get after him. Howard has over fifteen years experience designing, installing and supporting windows server and workstation products in industries where security and reliability are critical. He’s worked with mount sinai and why you health system and the hospital for special surgery? He’s, president of t on demand and here to bring his big non-profit technology ideas to the other ninety five percent. I’m very glad that his work brings him to the studio. Howard, you have some suggestions about email security? Why don’t we start with the most basic that password for email? Okay, good afternoon. As i mentioned in the blogger hyre, your password should not be the same as your luggage tag or your luggage lock. Many people keep a luggage lock of xero xero xero or one, two, three, four and currently the most common password out there happens to be password with a capital p oh, but they but people do put a capital p on it. Yes, but that’s not enough to confound snoopers. Not not enough. And actually, some people put a capital p an a number one at the end. So that zoho very that’s. Very good. We like to say sarcastic things like that. It’s. Not very good. Now you can tell because you know, you know, you know he doesn’t mean that’s very good news. Go ahead. Sorry. Basically, you want to take a look at having as complex a password as you can to maintain security. That means doing simple things, like making sure your password is not in the dictionary. People may choose a word at random in the dictionary, but a very typical hacking attack would be to have a list of dictionary words sometimes one hundred thousand two hundred thousand words. And then programmatically attack your email by just going through the words if you’re so there are programs that can go through the whole dictionary or one hundred one hundred two hundred thousand words, all trying to hit just one one person’s password there. Programs that can actually go through about five million password words in approximately six hours. Also, these gross out there in the world, and it doesn’t not somebody sitting behind a screen one of the time it’s actually an automatic process that just runs. So when somebody uses ah, capital letter on the first word of the word or adds a number one or two at the end. It’s not a very good password. What you want to be looking at is having a complex password. Sometimes about eight or nine characters is usually a good starting point. Having a number or an additional character like a tilde or an asterix in the password somewhere. Commonly, people replaced the letter e with the number three. Um so what about those replacements, like e three for e and at signed for for for a name? What’s that oh, for a that’s, right? Right. Those work, they do work, but again, those air common replacements. So you want to try and and switch it up a little bit instead of having on eight or xero for for the letter o, you might want to take a look at a seven or something like that. Something that’s not common. The most important thing to understand is given enough time and enough computing power. Any password can be cracked. So you really want to make it as complex as possible and, frankly, not worth someone’s time to use up the band with trying cracked the password. Okay. I don’t know if people are aware that it’s so easy and that just the automation allows such sort of ah, harsh attacks on on a password in a very systematic way, correct. And i mean typically things like hotmail or gmail, even mac mail, these are things that are susceptible because they are they’re known addresses and there the common. So a lot of people go ahead and attack those female, that kind of thing. Now we’re talking about the email password, but does the same apply for your other password like system? Password? Same same kind of theories apply and depending on where you are and the amount of money and or lists that you have available to you will make you amore attractive were less attractive target. And based on how attractive a target you are, you may be under attack on a fairly regular a constant basis. Yeah, charities have donor xero often they’re preserving date of birth, maybe credit card numbers that might save to make it more convenient for the person for the donor to give, but that means they’re more susceptible, teo attack, because that that’s high value information bank bank routing information bank account information all that stuff is a can be available to ah, to ah, hacker. You know, my interest in this topic started because and i mention this in the block post because i got five e mails from different companies that i do business with all related teo hacking that occurred at a company called absalon, which i’ve never heard of, but apparently they do a lot of email distribution and email management for a lot of big companies because these were all big company names that i got the warning email from but absalon i’ve never heard of absalon is actually one of the biggest companies out there. They manage many list for folks is very disown me bed, bath and beyond paypal to some extent, so i mean, these air, these air companies that absalon works with, and they have hooks into each of these systems, so they’re a perfect target. And when, when a company hires this back end company, what you’re saying is huge, but i don’t think the typical users ever heard of them. It’s not a common name, right? Right? But they’re huge. You’re you’re really you’re relying on the front end. Company to be managing their relationship with the back end company and that’s going to play two non-profits to write if definitely for non-profit is hiring a vendor? What? What do you make sure of your agreement says when you’re hiring somebody else to manage your lists for you. Well, one of the things you definitely want to take a look at when you are using an outside vendor is what kind of arizona emissions insurance they happen to have. That’s ah, that’s. Certainly an after the fact kind of thing, but certainly something that wants that you want to have in place. You want to know that that they’re even thinking about it. If you ask an outside consultant, you know what kind of arizona missions insurance you have or data security insurance you have. And they look atyou blankly. That’s, not a vendor. You want to be talking with very much further. Okay, furthermore, you want to make sure that they have not disclosure agreements in place and that they have some kind of security system that’s audited that you can. Then go ahead and take a look at at least on a quarterly basis. Oh, that that the non-profit can audit the security for how does that work? Usually. Ah, vendor that is working with not-for-profits or for a large firms will have to have their systems audit on a regular basis to be compliant with either hip of requirements or sec requirements or some not-for-profits requirements. And if they are doing an audit on a regular basis, they’ll have a report that they can then go ahead and provide back to the to the customers. Okay, excellent let’s. Talk about attachments, since we are focusing mostly on email but not exclusively. What about those lurking attachments? What’s your advice, there’s a. An increase in what’s known as fishing out in the cyberspace and wanted to spell fishing. So keep you out of jargon jail a h i s h i n g l i just want to make the point that it’s not fishing, throwing a rod, but it starts with p a change. Things go ahead. The concept is, is that an e mail is sent that looks very similar to a a normal email that would come from from your one of your credit card companies or processing company or your bank or what? Have you? And that email will have a logo and we’ll have all the text formatted almost the same as as that emails coming from the actual valid location would be, and they would have a link on it’s saying something like, please update your password, papale had this happened quite a bit about a year and a half ago two years ago, you may also get an email from something someone claiming to be ups saying we have a package that needs to be delivered. Please click on this link to confirm your delivery instructions, and when you click on that link within the email, it will take you to a website, and that website may look very similar to the to the company that you that you’re using the website of the company you thinkyou’re going around exactly, but in fact, it’s ah it’s, a fishing site, and what they’ll do is they’ll ask for information, personal information, sometimes credit card information, and they’re looking to their statement is is they’re looking to confirm that you are who you say you are, but in fact what they’re doing is what’s called social engineering and and asking for information. That normally would provide and you provided fairly freely, and then that’s information that could be used later on teo to extract funds. She’s ok, so what’s your advice, then if you if you get something, how do you tell whether it’s legitimately from ups or or it’s, not in almost no cases will you’re a vendor that you’re working with? Ask you to send, send their information, your information via email or clip through on the website the wayto always check is if you log on to the company’s website directly outside of the e mail attachment, but rather going directly to your browser. Okay, so now you’re in there, you’re ignoring the email you going right to your browser and in the browser address window? Correct? You’re saying typing ups, dot com or paypal dot com and then put your credentials in there if on e mail went out saying you need to update something, it’ll have a notice on that website to say, hey, you need to update something alright, because you’ve logged in so they know that it’s you they would know if they had sent you the e mail, they’re going to know, and they’ll remind you of whatever it is they want to do after you’ve logged in. Okay, okay, why don’t you just we just have a minute before a break. Why don’t you say a little bit about firewalls and were firewall protection? And then we’ll look more added after the drugs. Traditionally, computers come with far walls, whether it’s, a mac, a pc or a linux based operating system that’s, a piece of software that will try to keep your system safe and using that software there’s a degree of of comfort that the end user has. The question is, is that comfort valid and that’s something that really needs to be investigated depending upon where the system is connected to how it’s connected teo to the internet and what of the things you’re doing on the on the machine? Ok, we’ll look more about that. Look more at that in a moment. Take a break right now and then howard globus will stay with us, so i hope you do, too. Talking alternative radio. Twenty four hours. Do you love movies, then join me and share your pains about them on the radio. This is mike, a movie fan like you, starting made tenth. Join me every tuesday night at six pm for my new show movie time on talking alternative dot com. Call me live or email me at movie time radio. At gmail dot com. We’ll talk about all the blockbusters whose the best director and which movies air overrated, among many other topics. Join me for movie time. Tuesdays at six on talking alternative dot com. Looking to meet mr and mrs wright but still haven’t found the one want to make your car relationship as fulfilling as possible? Then please join us starting monday, may second at ten am for love in the morning with morning alison as a professional matchmaker, i’ve seen it all. Please tune in and call as we discuss dating relationship and more. Start your week off with love in the morning with marnie alison on talking alternative dot com oh, this is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. 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No. Kayman i’m with howard globus and he’s, the president of tian demand we’re talking about email security, you’ll find his company at hyphen on hyphen demand dot com before the break. Howard, we’re talking a little bit about firewall, so it’s it’s a degree of protection between the outside world and your your inner network, correct to speak a little bit more about that? Most computers come with a far wall, either preinstalled or something that you can turn on. The problem with principal firewalls on a computer is that they need to be hardened. They need to be ah, lock down a bit, which makes it a little bit mohr ah, less oxygen less user friendly on the computer itself. One of the things we recommend is a firewall that’s protecting your entire network, whether that’s, a home network of one or two pcs or or apples or a corporate network, a device that actually has a moral bust process and really is designed specifically tact is a firewall, as opposed to a far wall and a word processor and a web browser and all the other kind of things that a computer is okay and what kinds of things? Is this wall protecting you from? Well, the wall protects you from a number of different things. For example, some of the some of the password attacks that we were talking about not so much on the email side, but certainly on the server side, the database side things that would be password protected, but internally on the network. Additionally, it protects you from viruses and potential malware or little programs that get downloaded by by folks who is surfing the web or until you could tell how it’s, afraid of jargon, jail this’s, malware or little programs gets that definition right in there. Thank you, little programs to get downloaded when folks open up attachments and emails or are served to certain websites, the firewall, what it does is it actually monitors the traffic that goes from the outside in and from the inside out and that’s a critical piece, because if you have a network of any degree of complexity, which really more than one pc is a degree of complexity, the potential is is that there are programs that get installed on your computer that you may not be aware of and by monitoring the far wall. You can find out what what programs are what we call calling home or sending information from the machines back to some other server so you don’t just set this firewall up and and and then forget about it now, monitoring that would be ideal. Basically, ah, home user might have a firewall that they would really ideally take a look at at least once a week and take a look at the logs. Yeah, what about a small office, maybe three or four computers? Smart, a small office that operates on a typical nine to five business day but leaves their machines on so that way folks can work remotely should have. Ah, an active monitoring system is supposed to be a passive monitoring system. What that means is, is that when a potential violation occurs, it emails or notifies out someone who’s monitoring that far wall on a regular basis so you would do things like patch management and upgrades on a on a monthly basis. Take a look at the far wall logs on a weekly basis, but have active management and act of notification on an hourly or sometimes up to the minute basis, okay, and what types of things are you getting alerts about? Well, there’s a number of different things that the most common alert that we would get is we would have intrusion detection so there would be websites, and you’d have an external website or an external address from somewhere out in, out in the world, that’s attempting to ah to connect in using different protocols, things like ftp, which is a file transfer protocol, or using things over port eighty, which is the web protocol that’s things that people use to get out on internet explorer safari browser, but it also is ah, a whole range of different ports that are open and or potentially open, and if those ports are open, every port is a is a potential access point, and these ports are connections into your computer and thrown out of your computer credit. How does this small non-profit budget for all this, for the software that they need to protect their their network? Well, ideally, you’d be looking at or a small non-profit would be looking at some kind of manage service that has ah, a paper month as opposed to pays you go type of faith, the pay as you go, type of he can get very expensive very quickly. If you have a monitoring program in place and you say okay, we know that that monitoring is going to go on for this month. We’ll give you a report at the end of every week or at the end of every month. And we will go ahead and re mediate any of the types of issues that we see and it’s all included in tow. One service and that’s. That would be ideal. The reason why that’s ideal over as a pay pay as you go is the types of intrusion. Detection varies widely depending upon what your internet service provider is the time of the year it is. And, frankly, how valuable your information is assumed to be from an outside source. Roughly. How much would a small office get? Well, are the fees for that type of service based, i assume on the number of users? Is that right? Are the fees are based on the complexity of the device. That’s actually being used as the firewall more complex environment might only have excuse me. A more complex environment might have multiple firewalls and you’d be looking at something where you have to monitor multiple access points, a small environment. Let’s say five users or five people work in an office would probably only have a single firewall fairly, non complex, far wallet that and really be looking at maybe seventy dollars a month in terms of monitoring fees. Okay, okay. Um and that and that. Ah, that active monitoring you said, should be even hourly for some of the things that some of the dangers that are out there. Okay, i know you brought some resource is with you that where that are specific for non-profits why don’t why don’t you share those for discount something? Okay, well, the top website for discounts for non-profits is tech soup, that’s t ea ch soup dot or ge that’s, a website that actually matches non-profit companies with donor cos specifically software and hardware vendors. So microsoft, adobe, symantec, all the big companies go ahead and provide software if ah, non-profit can show their non profit status and joe need. Okay, so there’s a huge names. Is there another one you have or really tech soup? Texas is the main one fourth non-profits and then there’s. A website sands s es and s dot or ge, which deals with specific security issues and can talk a lot about auditing and keeping things upto up to date. Okay, and this sand’s dot org’s also have discounts or that sand xero is just a resource for for things that are going on in the world. All right, that’s, howard globus and he is the president of t on demand, which you’ll find at i t hyphen on hyphen demand dot com howard, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me pleasure next week, our tech contributor and the editor of non-profit technology news, scott koegler will be with me he’s going to share the latest from his newsletter, and i hope you’ll be with me for that, you can keep up with what’s coming up week to week by signing up for our insider email alerts on the facebook page. While you’re there, click like and become a fan of the page, please, you can listen to the show on itunes at any time on the device of your choice at the time of your choice. That’s at non-profit radio dot net and each show is up, usually by the monday following. I want to thank my guests this week, karen perry and howard globus, the two presidents for coming into the office, coming into the studio and joining me. The creative producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is claire meyerhoff. Our line producer is sam liebowitz he’s, also the owner of talking alternative broadcasting. Our social media is by regina walton of organic social media on tony martignetti, the host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. Always talking about big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I hope you’ll be with me next friday, one p, m eastern here at talking alternative dot com. I think they’re getting him. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get into anything. Good. Duitz are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way look forward to serving you. Do you love movies, then join me and share your pains about them on the radio. This is mike, a movie fan like you, starting may tenth. Join me every tuesday night at six pm for my new show movie time on talking alternative dot com. Call me live or email me at movie time radio. At gmail dot com. We’ll talk about all the blockbusters whose the best director and which movies air overrated, among many other topics. Join me for movie time. Tuesdays at six on talking alternative dot com. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call us ed to one, two, nine, six, four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one, two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Hyre treyz do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing efforts. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is. We do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com you’re listening to talking on their network at www dot talking all dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day.

Is Your Email Safe and Sound?

Information Security Wordle, courtesy of purpleslog on Flickr.

In early April, five companies I do business with informed me that my email address had been compromised by a company named Epsilon. Hilton, Marriott, 1-800-Flowers (thanks, mom) and two financial providers where I have amassed a combined balance approaching equivalence to my office area code, use the company for email marketing for their millions of addresses.

This Epsilon episode provokes me to ask you, “Is your email safe and sound?”

Whether you have hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of addresses, they are a valuable asset. You need to keep them safe. I am not an email security expert, but Howard Globus, president of IT On Demand is. Here are Howard’s suggestions:

– Keep your computers and devices up to date – whether you use a Windows PC, an Apple computer, a Linux-flavored operating system or a smart phone, make sure that the software is up to date. New security holes are found, published and exploited every day, on ALL operating systems. Subscribe to your particular operating system’s alerts and apply updates regularly.

– Add a layer of protection between the public and private world – consider a firewall or security product to act as a buffer between your computer (or computers) and the Public Internet. A firewall, when properly monitored, kept up-to-date and sending regular alerts, will provide an early warning to potential security breaches.

– Your email password is not a luggage-lock. Your password for email (and on your computers and your firewall) should be more complex than “1234”. The most common password in use today is “123456”. Fourth on the list? “Password”. Without feeling too superior, ask yourself if you use a dictionary-based password, can your password be found in a dictionary? Or a dictionary word with a number? Jeremy12? Beach89? The more complex your password, the harder it is to crack. Consider using a password with a combination of alpha-numeric digits and an odd character thrown in. Need help coming up with a strong password? Take a look at this password generator. Remember to change your password periodically!

– Do not open attachments from unknown senders – Just like we were told when we were kids, talking to strangers may be bad. If you get an email from the USPS, UPS, Amazon or your bank with phrases like “There is a package we tried to deliver to you. Please see the attached document on how to claim your package”, pause. Services like PayPal, your credit card company or your bank will NEVER ask you to launch an attachment to put your information in. When in doubt, log on to the service through your web browser directly–not through the email attachment or link–and investigate the authenticity of the request sent.

– Don’t share your user account or password via email. Following up on the last tip, do not email your account or password in response to an email request. The vendors or institutions you are working with don’t need it – they know who you are – and they don’t want your password, as it may breach their internal security policy.

I’m guilty of at least one of these transgressions.  I will mend my ways.

Nonprofit Radio for April 8, 2011: Excel in Email Execution

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

You can subscribe on iTunes and listen anytime, anyplace on the device of your choice.

I’ve posted some questions about this topic on the show’s Facebook page. Click over and give me and my guests some insight and direction on what you need to know regarding email marketing and execution.

Tony’s Guests:

Dave Poulos, Principal of Granite Partners, will share 5 Elements of Effective Email Marketing and have tips for list hygiene.

  • Are you getting the most out of email?
  • Is your list hygienic and only engaging in safe practices?


 
Claire Meyerhoff is Editorial Director at The Planned Giving Company. She will reveal how to write for email fundraising, so your messages get opened, read and responded to.

 

Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

You’re on the air and on target as I delve into the big issues facing your nonprofit—and your career.

If you have big dreams but an average budget, tune in to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

I interview the best in the business on every topic from board relations, fundraising, social media and compliance, to technology, accounting, volunteer management, finance, marketing and beyond. Always with you in mind.

When and where: Talking Alternative Radio, Fridays, 1-2PM Eastern

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Here is a link to the podcast: 036: Excel in Email Execution.
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Durney welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host last week on the april fool’s edition, it was ask awareness for small shops that was with amy eisenstein. She’s, the author of fifty, asks in fifty weeks, and she shared lots of valuable insights for opening up relationships, identifying prospects, cultivating and soliciting all for small development shops. In fact, one of our listeners posted to the facebook page that it was the best hour she spent all week last week. I appreciate that this week we excel in email execution, it’s going to be dave pulis davis principle of granite partners and he’s going to share five elements of effective email marketing and also have other tips about list hygiene. Are you getting the most out of your e mail? How do you develop an email list if you don’t have one? Is your list hygienic and only engaging in safe practises? Also claire meyerhoff claire is editorial director at the plant e-giving company, and she is this show’s creative producer claire’s going to reveal how to write for email fund-raising so that your messages get opened rid. And responded to so we’re all about email in this hour between my guests, it’s tony’s, take two at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour, and this week on tony’s, take two five ways to be a planned e-giving evangelist or an evangelist for whatever it is that you love doing that’s on tony’s, take two. So we’re all about email this week. After this break, i’ll be joined by dave pulis and where we’ll get started with our excel in email execution show. Stay with me. Did the shooting getting ding, ding, ding, ding? You’re listening to the talking, alternate network waiting to get in. Good. Cubine is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police crawl are said to want to nine, six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio were all about email today, and i’m joined now by dave pulis. Dave, how you doing? Good morning. Thanks for having me, it’s my pleasure to have you welcome. Dave is the ceo and chief consultant of granite partners, which you’ll find out granite hyphen, part p a r t dot com he has been creating successful marketing programs for clients, mostly in the washington d c metro area for over twenty five years, and i’m very glad that his work and his expertise in email marketing specifically bring him to the show. Welcome again, dave, thank you, david. What does somebody do if they don’t have an email list to get started with him as well? Talk about building the list before we talk about what to do with it. Uh, there are a number of approaches that depends on what situation you’re in. If you’re looking for consumers, there are off a lot of ways to build a consumer list. Um, one of the more prominent and more recently evolved is the social media. You can use social media to evolve yourself into an e mail list based on friendster, facebook twitter followers linked in connections those kind of things can all be gathered and uses a colonel for a personal sort of networking list that you can use to promote whatever business you’re in. Okay, we’re non-profits fundraisers, it’s a little more complicated. Okay, well, that’s let’s deal with complicated cause. Our audience is small and midsize non-profit so that’s that’s where we want to be how should they go about it if they have a list of people who have been supporting them? Maybe just for a couple of years, maybe for many years, but they don’t have email lists. Uh, probably the first thing to do is make sure you have permission to communicate with their members are builders. They say something. Do you have a least an address for them? Send him a postcard asked him to send you back their email address. In response, you’ll give them some sort of data special report or a copy of research or something the value to them in response in return for them giving up their email. Okay, so use their their physical address to get their email address or okay on your website if the organization has a website. And you simply ask visitor’s log in before they can access certain pieces of it or certain information that they need include a lot to give them your e mail address. In that way, you can collect it and use it for later. Okay, so maybe not to get to your home page, but to get to some deeper content on your site. You mean then then there’s ah, little there’s an access that requires email address that’s one good way to do it. Because you’re making sure that it’s not just a casual visitor, you’re having themselves collect by their level of interest. Okay, okay. What’s, what you would end up doing if you if you put it on the front of the home page, you’re going to get every tom, dick and harry that entered that in the search. They wanted to see the front page and make sure they got to the right spot. See if there’s anything of interest there at all, you make them register, you get their email address, you send out e mails. You wasted all that time, money and effort to maintain the list. And they have no interest in on what you’re offering right? Ok? Or you might even just turn people off who might have an interest, but they said just to see the home page, i have to sign in, right? Right, you’re going to get some abandonment issues, they’re for your for your web page as well, and there are people that have a legitimate reason to see your front page and can use the information, but that you don’t want to write. I love how you call it abandonment. I’m not going to put you in jargon jail for that way have jog in jail here on tony martignetti non-profit but i already know you. I said it and then you called it abandonment. I just love the you know everybody every every business has its has its language. So abandonment issues. Yes, of your plus, if you know if you having spouse problems, that could be an abandonment issue. But we’re not going that deep again. That’s a different show that’s ahold of yes that’s a whole different person. Um, abandon ministers? Yes. Alright. What about what about events? And if you’re hosting an event, maybe just put post cards on the table at the events or something like that. Anytime you’re gathering an environment where you have potential donors or potential participants, you want to make sure you’re gathering, collecting email addresses, okay, people importing them on their business cards. It’s a good way to start raffles contest, even offering as i do on my website content in exchange for the information we talked about it buying, offering by mail some sort of special report i offer electronically a report on my website and i forced people to give me their email address, so i consented to them. Okay, electronically and it’s, a much fairer trade and people who are looking for something to read like to receive free reading material and return. It makes a lot of that now. Will people see that example on the site that i gave the girl to granite hyphen p a r t dot com they will there’s a new report there on how engaged customers on the left hand column. If you click there, you’ll be able to download on a free pdf of a report guard through some research. We did a little while ago about how to engage customers. Also have tto log in. To give me your email address, i can send it to you, you’ll get a response back that tells you yes, we received your order, and if you like anything else, please let us know, and you’ll also get a confirmation of the fact that you received the order and a questionnaire about whether you like it or not. Okay, so i assume those are all the best practices because you’re doing them for your business, it’s all automatic. I don’t have to do a dog gone thing, and it makes people connected to me much better and gives them a lot more opportunity to give me feedback on the information. And unless they collect their name without creating too much of a problem with their identity and something you alluded to in that description of the way you’re recommending things go about o r non-profits go about building this list is having permission. What? What is what is permission? Marketing and how do we get permission? Permission marketing is a critical step in producing effective push down marketing. What you’re essentially doing is letting people to give you their permission to market to them. And that does two things. One engages their level of interest and let them self select what they want to receive. Two it also tell you how they want to receive it by medium, he opted in is a way of gathering permission marketing. If you send out an e mail to all your members, say ifyou’re non-profit membership organization and say, we’re updating our record, we’d like to give you would like you to give us your email address so we can communicate with you that way. Check the following boxes about what’s appropriate what the best address to use is if we have this information correct listed below. Check that and we’ll keep that. And also, if you do not like to receive anything from us, check the box below to opt out, so opt in permission has sort of past it if you give them an opt out option it’s a little less over on a lot of people to sort of ignore it, which gives you sort of tacit permission to market to them. But the trick is they’ve given you the information and are allowing you to market to them directly without being directly at fort alright, and then you as the e mailer as the non-profit have a responsibility to honor all those selections that the person has made. Absolutely. And if you don’t honor them, your reputation with that person and in general, gets tarnished to the point where it’s almost unusable, and we’ll go into that a little further with, with the a little later on. Ok, we’re going to take a break right now. My guest is dave polish. We’re talking about excellence in email, execution, stay with us, talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed on montgomery taylor, and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at our l j media. Dot com. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping hunters. People be better business people. Dahna i really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two, eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com oppcoll dafs you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Dahna hello and welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio we’re live today with dave polish. We’re talking about excel in email execution and since we’re alive, that means we’re taking calls so you can call with a question for dave about female best practices. Frustrations you might be having the number is eight seven seven for a tow for one two oh eight, seven, seven for eight o for one two. Oh, dave, now we’ve developed this list. How do we keep it clean? What’s a clean list? Well, cleanly is one that functions and deliver your message precisely where you wanted to go every time. And there are a couple of things that you need to start with. You’ve built a list that you think is right. The first thing is to make sure that what you start with is good, that we all know about computers, garbage in, garbage out. You have to make sure that you all the addresses fit and conformed to the format for proper email address. Okay. Typos, bat fingering the addresses, getting things backwards, transposing characters. Email addresses are far, far higher accuracy level than postal address. Write the e mail. I just has to be exact, right has to be perfect, another perfect every time or it will not go. I know what you have to do is check it bilich manually and electronically to make sure that all conforms and you, khun, send every piece of mail on their towards both to go ok is the simplest way to do that. To send a test email to someone to verify that on dh, then get their permission in the way you described is that is that a decent way to do it? Uh, you’re better off eyeballing a list firsthand mechanical and then going through optically and and making sure you haven’t missed anything. Because if you get things wrong, you may get stuck or trapped in filters and create problems. And what that’s going to do is block you when you get the right of duitz okay, you want to clean it up visually? First, as best you can make sure that all the symbols are right before the domain name it’s not a exclamation point instead because i’m gonna get the wrong key. Happens a lot. You can do search and replace doing this. It takes very little time. To do it electronically and then go through and i bought a list they just have to three people looking over, make sure there’s no glaring errors. You want to make sure that all the domain names that have the letters spam in them are taken out those traps put in there by the sometimes when you rent list more often than not, but occasionally somebody’ll flip one in there. When they’re registering, they’ll give you a bogus address that doesn’t really exist. You want to pull out the ones that have a domain name that’s sort of suspicious looking, you’ll learn about it after a while to make sure you’re getting exactly what you think you’re getting, okay, so to get behind to get into the content, let’s say so this wouldn’t thiss wouldn’t be people filling out cards at an event, probably or mailing back in response, it’s when registering so people might give bogus address you know i don’t have such a good hearted person, i don’t even think of e don’t even think of people cheating on something so simple is that really learned over time that it’s ok, you fill out a form somebody’s going to send you back something, and often those lists are sold over and over and over again, and by the time the third generation sale is over, you have no relevance to the list of all right, and you’re getting stuff that you really don’t want it clogging up your e mail box, and you don’t want that, so they either make up a fake address to give you so that bill passed through the filters as a legitimate address initially, or they’ll give you one that they never open, which isn’t gonna do you any good. Anyway, a lot of those gmail accounts or a well accounts that are free people will just have one of those strictly as they used to fill out all that junk drops into there. I see you don’t want to be in that list. You want to see a legitimate lift with a legitimate carrier, verizon or comcast, or or one of those for home and the businesses typically you want them to reflect the domain of the business there. Part of that tells you a legitimate what gmail but gmail dahna all those could be legitimate accounts, you couldn’t you couldn’t screen all those out? No, you can’t, but you can see one that looks, uh two, far from their real given name. If you have that to compare it to, uh, nobody’s registering, you know, as nerd sixty five jool and they’re not giving you a scientific address or their name is fred spelled backwards or something. You start to look at the bogus ones and figure it out. Okay? And since you did mention something that we hadn’t talked about in developing the list, let’s, talk a little about purchasing a list. What is that valuable for the small or midsize non-profit purchasing a list rental and compiled lists can be of value. You have to be very careful about the source if you go through a legitimate list broker and you’re looking for a very legitimate piece of a database that concerns especially business addresses. Yes, you can gain a lot out of that because those things have been double opt in check they’ve been verified on a monthly basis that they do exist and they are really and that they do fit the profile that you’ve selected when you rented the list. Now you have to keep in mind that those are usually for one time use only, and you cannot reuse them unless you have a special agreement from the renter compile lists are another story, those of those public things that you could buy that say have been scraped off of websites or have been captured out of the air from from email conversations and that kind of thing. Hackers will market these things to bring an extra bucks. They’re not very useful, they’re not very male herbal, and you’re getting into some serious spamming trouble by even attempting to use most of them because they’re loaded with with the monitors and traps and keys in their little tell people that you’re ok, then you want to be working with a legitimate company that you can verify you mentioned scraping off female what’s your trading closely to jorgen jail has, and it sort of has a a suggestion of what it is, but but i don’t want you to even be anywhere near drug in jail. So what? What is scraping somebody’s? It sounds like unsavory practice. It isn’t unsavory practice in its connotation, and it is information what you want to avoid. There are people out there, who will go to a business website and literally capture copy paste electronically scrape off every email address that’s buried in there. Your entire staff listing all your if you’re going to a law firm, they’ve got every lawyer listed on there with a love with a separate email address for them, they’re going to scrape all those off of there and compile them all into a big list. Listen, this may be legitimate, but they don’t know who they belong to or what they go to what level of persons is they have no information that goes with it, it’s just a list of addresses, as if people would really want to communicate with a bunch of lawyers or anything. There could be no manufacturing firm or, you know, the post office website or anything. They just gathered a bunch of e mail addresses from a bunch of list. Sometimes they’ll use. They’ll sort of piggyback on someone else’s, the internet activity as well, and their going from site to site start scraping through that. Okay, it gets very, very tedious and very touchy when you start doing stuff like that because you have privacy issues, you have legal issues? Uh, spam laws have teeth in them. Ladies and gentlemen, they can sue you for spamming. So you want to be careful what addresses you’re using and who you’re sending? Okay? And i didn’t want to suggest that. Buying a list from from verifiable source would be a good way of trying to get donors. I mean, as a fund-raising consultant, i didn’t mean to suggest that this is a way to acquire new donors, but maybe to acquaint someone with your with your non-profit but you’d have to be very precise in the type of list you bought in terms of the interests of the people. Is that is that possible, dave, to drill into get a list of people who are interested in, i don’t know environmental activism, and but maybe in the pacific northwest, i mean, do the lists from vera from from stable and appropriate cos come with that level of detail, some do, and some do not, uh, they’re further a head for business than they are for kapin consumer availability, drilling that deeply. Okay, if you drill down into segments that deeply on consumer list, chances are good you’re gonna have to pay a pretty penny for it. A good place to start with that if you have a specific interest, they look bilich environmental, you would want to try going to print publication that deal with that concept sierra club or audubon society or any of those that deal in environmental issues routinely subscriber list from them could be segmented by geography. And you could also rent additionally, email addresses that go with those mailing address him that way. Excellent idea. Okay, because that, yes, you know, the publications targeted. Okay, great. All right, so we need to get around that trying to pull that out of a compiled list is virtually impossible. Okay. Okay, good. Thank you. So we’ve developed our list. We understand how to get it clean and make sure it stays clean. Has to be maintained another thing, because now thing out, once you’re going to get some activity coming back from it, not only response is that you want, but response is you don’t want your going to get people that ask you to take them off. You’re going to get because you missed the target. It wasn’t who you thought it was not interested. And they don’t want you to lock up their box for the next six months with stuff they don’t need. That’s a good thing. You like getting those out of there? Because that saves you time and money. Yes, too. You’re gonna have people that were out of the office that day and i just bounced back and told you they may get hurt or they may not. Three you’re going to have bounced back for another reason, theis, and that part of the country was a little slow that day and missed something. There was a glitch in in a certain segment of the internet that went down for a moment your mail got trapped in it could be any number of other things. There’s a whole series of bounce back code that the internet service provider will give you that helps you interpret those bounce back unless you separate them out and decide whether to keep that address that is a temporary thing or whether it’s permanent it’ll tell you if you got the address wrong, if that person’s not at that address anymore. If that business is not there, that remains not active. Whatever they’ll tell you. What the problem woobox with it, when you learn how to read the code, we got to get those out of there. Once you’ve sent the first one, you’re gonna have to be prepared with how to deal with all those. Things that bounce back and those happen fairly quickly, usually within the first hour or so after you send it. Okay, so that’s that’s really list maintenance and that that’s going to be happening every time you send to your list sounds like there will be a certain level of activity depending on how little that down to practically nothing. Yeah, alright, depending on how many people you’re mailing to if it’s just a few hundred, you’ll have fewer of those which is get you in fewer because you’re making good decisions based upon those code taking the bad ones that are going to be permanently bad out. All right, you’re not re mailing, right? Okay. So, uh, well, let me just remind people that my guest is dave polish he’s, the principal of granite partners. And we’re talking about ex selling in your email execution. So then, dave, we have developed our list and it’s clean, and we’ve gotten the appropriate permissions and we know how to maintain the list over time. You have some elements of effective messaging, actually. What to say? What? What? What’s. Your first bit of advice on what the content of the message should. Be, uh, some of it is what to say, and so that is how to say it. Okay, um, the first thing you’re going to notice is that with the new influx of mobile customers that are out there that have their email come to a mobile device, you have far less real estate with which to impress the recipients you have basically a from a dress and a single subject line that’s all they’re going to see on a mobile device there’s no preview function. So what you have to do is make sure that a the address you’re sending from is from a brand they will recognize or at least understand. So whatever service you are using to send these out, if its outlook, you have to set up a box that sort of carrie’s co-branded makes sense for the outgoing mail or if it’s a service, you want to make sure that they’ve gotten you on outgoing address that reflects your brand so that they know who this thing is from and they recognize. But wouldn’t wouldn’t the service just be using your own? You’re you’re non-profit domain name, sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t they have what’s called rotating? Yeah, what’s. A rotating what’s, a rotating. Why would they understand? Why would they rotate for the same non-profit why would they use different domain names to send from? They’ll mask them behind an existing name, so the recipient will only see your name, but they’re using ten or twelve different outgoing addresses because they could shove more down the data pipe. That way they can spread your list out, get it out the door faster, but if you’re a non-profit you want it to come from your domain, absolutely time your domain is that the physical space that your domain inhabits doesn’t allow enough passed through dahna you can’t shove enough email through it fast enough because you just don’t have enough bandwidth, you didn’t run enough stone, so what happens is they’ll spread it out and they’ll mask it. They’ll refer to your domain name. The recipient only sees your domain, which is good, but they’re using ten twelve different ones with sam filters will pick up on the sub and block things out on who’s, the who’s the day that we’re talking about is this a company like constant contact? Is that o r who’s today you’re referring to there are service providers after that do nothing but deliver both female. They are, they’re registered there, certified they’re they’re very, very compliant with the service providers that give you internet access and then actually deliver and carry the mail. This is a middleman that you would go to as a non-profit if you have a list of of ten or twenty thousand potential donors that you’re going to be sending to routinely, you’re not gonna be able to shelve twenty thousand addresses through your outlook account and with any kind of accuracy or time limit. Okay, so what you’re gonna do is anything over about two hundred names you’re gonna want to goto what provider that sends out both female for a living that’s all they do and is constant contact an example of what you’re talking about male chimp? Is that an example? Or there are eyes that i am i in the wrong line, the wrong space, you’re in a similar space in a different scale gostin contact and male chimp and those kind of things arm or of the do-it-yourself version of that, their sort of big versions of outlook, they’re attached to larger relation all databases that lets you get mail out in larger volumes by yourself from your workstation, ok, here, but if you’re sending ten and twenty thousand, even though we’re gonna have a problem, they’re going to start to bog down and go very slowly, and they’re going to use up a lot of bandwidth, okay, but for our audience of small and midsize non-profits the ones i mentioned, what might be suitable absolutely after they’re a great way to get started. If you’re looking at that between two and five thousand names of any kind. Yeah, constant contact, be a very good bargain, ok, dave, we have just a little less than a minute left. Why don’t you tell us what you think is coming next? What’s the what’s, the next generation of email going to look like email’s going to get a lot more robust in the next six months to a year, you can bet on the fact that you’ll be able to embed photographs and video in your outgoing e mail and have it be interactive and reacted currently, if you put an image in an email, you run the risk of having it be screened out by spam filters or by network. Firewall because they don’t allow images, they scan for them and they remove the as being too large, and they cut down on the volume of data traffic so they get rid of them. So if you’re putting an image in there, one of the things we tell people who don’t let the image tell the entire story, have some text that tells the story because the image probably going to make it and you see video coming in email, absolutely video will be able to be embedded in outgoing email beyond the capability we have today where it’s, just a lincoln it’s, actually resident somewhere else. We’re going to be able to actually carry video imagery on before too long. All right, we have to leave it there. Dave pulis principle of granite partners, which you’ll find at granite hyphen part piela dot com dave, thank you very much for being a guest. Thank you for your excellent ideas. Pleasure. Enjoy it. Thank you very much. After this break, it’s tony’s, take two. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Geever oh, this is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy contact them today. Admission one one media dot com hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business, why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back. It is roughly thirty two minutes after the hour, which means it’s time for tony’s take two, and after that, i’ll be joined by claire meyerhoff and we’ll continue talking about ex selling in email execution five four tonys take two five ways to be a plant e-giving evangelist something i blogged about this week, it actually could apply to anything that you that you do that you love doing, and i hope you really love the work that you do so much so that you want to evangelize about it. I chose planned giving as the subject of my evangelism on this week’s blawg, and i’ll just share a couple of the things that i think go into being an evangelist for what you do. Yeah, i love it, you know, in my example, you gotta love plant e-giving you gotta recognize that it has value for non-profits and for donors and for their families, and recognize the good that it khun do for society as you’re helping charitable missions. So whatever it is that you want to evangelize about, you really have to love it and be unashamed about your love of it don’t talk you know sort of humbly or shyly about whatever it is you want to evangelize about, you got you need to be out in the open, you need to be enthusiastic, which should be easy because you love what it is you’re talking about, so carry that enthusiasm don’t don’t don’t talk, you know, sort of humbly about your your love of the subject you want to evangelize about lear, love of your work and and and as you’re being unashamed, spread that word, spread it to people that you work with, people who are in your network that you don’t work with, um, when the topic comes up, you know, what do you do? What do you love doing? You want to be unashamed about sharing it, and you want to use the opportunities that you have to spread the word. And so those are three of the ways that i think you could be a plant e-giving evangelist or an evangelist about whatever it is you love to do, and you can see my blogging m p g a d v dot com for more on those ways and a couple of additional ways as well, and also always the reminder that we are on itunes you can subscribe at itunes, listen and get automatic downloads of the show and listen at your leisure on the device of your choice, whether that’s, tablet or phone or desktop or laptop and that is always at non-profit radio dot net that is tony’s take two for friday, april eighth. I’m joined now my guest is claire meyerhoff. Claire, how are you doing, tony, right, how are you? Pleasure to have you back. I’m well, thank you very much. Claire meyerhoff is editorial director at the plant e-giving company, and she is the creative producer of this show. We’re going to talk about howto write for email fund-raising so that your messages get opened, read and respond to do so. Continuing the topic of excel ing in email execution claire so dave paulus sort of left us with write a perfect point, i think, talking about the header of the email he talked about where it’s from what’s your advice about the subject line of the email? Well, the subject line is really important because if you think about your own email use, what do you do? You’re on your iphone slip. Through it. So the subject find is very important and what you want to do, it make really some buddy. So so whatever you are promising them, you need to deliver it on the inside. All right, clara, i’ll tell you what were you sure need to repeat? Actually, what you said about the subject line because you were you’re breaking up. You’re on a landline, right? I am on a landline, and i’m hearing some feedback. Okay? I know the feedback is a little challenging. Try toe, i guess. Talk through the feedback and or maybe not listen so much, but just just talk on dh when you’re done talking, then put the earpiece back to your ear. But could you tell us again what your advice is for the subject line? I’ll do that. Ok, ok, my advice for the subject line is the subject line is going to be the thing that the person will either open it for. They will delete it so your subject line needs to be something that is really, truly news. What? What is it that you are going to be telling people or you want them to do or you want them to hear about most? So put that in there and basically only about thirty characters or so because they don’t even see the rest of us. Put your good stuff up front. Yeah, you sort of have to write that like headline, right, it’s, it’s, a lot like a headline and think about the news business and think about why you pick up a newspaper and read it it’s because of the headlines and any new yorker knows that york post the daily news, they’ve had a long history of really pretty interesting headlines that really grabs your attention. So think about the same thing with your non-profit what is your non-profits headline? And what is the headline for this newsletter that for sending people something generic, like may newsletter june newsletter? Okay, yeah, i have to. Yeah, the new york times are the sari, the daily news and the new york post. My favorite. Well, one of my favorites there’s a whole book about new york post headlines, which is it’s called topless body in head headless body in topless bar. Aunt, i have a copy of that, but it’s a headless body in topless bar from a murder. But one of my favorites was when jack cousteau’s ship crashed and the headline was calypso collapse. So isn’t that genius? I just have to show you right now, it’s go on and you’re like a save the whales organization. You’re not gonna have that to live so collapse. So are anything like that? So i think that’s pretty cool, it’s. Hard to be that clever. But those clever and you know what? If you were that clever, someone would probably open up your email. Certainly. What do you have any other advice for? The for that header information. Uh, maybe the from la who should be from or or any other advice there. Well, unless everybody knows that lisa is the head of your organization, it shouldn’t be from one person instead, make it from your organization and have it the name something that is sort of more of an action. Kind of a word. Like not information, but news. Maybe, you know, news at habitat for humanity, dot com or something like that. So give it give it a name that is a little newsy sounding might get someone’s attention better than, say, info at or or you know, something really generic and, you know, keep again, keep it really, really short. And you put the key words right up front and whatever some buzz words are that air right now in your field. So if sustainability or something is a good buzz word, that and so definitely just put the key words right up front that the main thing, okay? And you mean in the from line, so maybe sustainability at the domain is that is that what you’re suggesting? I’m talking about the subject line, so okay, you have your nature organization, and you’re always talking about sustainability, and the name of your newsletter is something with sustainability. Perhaps that could be your email address. I hadn’t thought of that, but it could be whatever, whatever you want. So that it’s recognizable and again it’s all about the brand and it’s recognizable and always be thinking about who your audience is. And i like to think of your email recipients, the people that will open the email and those are the ones we care about, the most people that actually open it, and then the few that follow through, right? Who were those people? Those are your most boyle people just like implant e-giving who were the best plan giving donors your boil donors, people, that e-giving for a long time with the people that are actually opening and reading. Your email, those who you’re really boils followers those year loyal supporters? Yes. Oh, so you’re you want you’re saying you want to have them in mind as you’re crafting your message? Exactly. Keep them in mind. What? What do they care about? So think about a few people that you know, supporters of your organizations have names and faces and think about what are they interested in? What is kathy interested in? What is robert interested in and crafted that way? Ok, on, daz were crafting our message. What’s your advice about how long it should be the subject line. Oh, no, the length of the body of the message. The body of the entire email newsletter should be chunked. So if you have, you know, one big article, you know, trumped that up into different articles. But faras length, you know, there’s. No specific lengths to into an e newsletter. It could be his long or short. As as you like. Think about the ones that you read and pattern yourself after that. If you’re bored after a certain amount of time, then your readers our board, pretty sure. Okay. What other advice have you got to share? I’ve been sort of, you know, suggesting topics, but you tell us tell me what? Your your advices. Well, here is some duitz do plan ahead. A newsletter done that’s on the fly usually looks like it’s been done on the fly. So plan your news letter ahead of time and that means preparing an editorial calendar. Maybe for the whole year. How often are you going to send these out? If you feel like you can send out one a month that’s great. And then think about what you might be doing in those months. Like, if you know, your annual report is coming out and you’re gonna have a lot of new information, then you know that khun, your main news letter might be packed with a lot of great, um, like statistical information, all kinds of cool stuff that you know about in may, but of course in december of the holidays, so you know that you can do holiday related things, so come up with an editorial calendar, so if you’re going to do it once a month, pick a day that you think is a good day to send it out when your readers are most likely to read it and then plan ahead, say well in in february and do this in march. We’re going to do that and have a couple of things knowing full well, what what’s going on if it’s september back to school and that’s important for your organization. Well, then that’s your back to school newsletter and you know you’re going tohave information about that and also decide on a goal before you do your newsletter what’s. The goal of the newsletter is the goal just oh, well, we want to tell people a bunch of stuff that’s going on. Well, that’s not a goal. What’s your real specific goal. Are you entering into a campaign? Are you announcing something? And you want everybody to know about it? Are you trying to raise money? Are you trying to get people to come to an event to sign up for a walkathon? What is the goal of the newsletter and then work backwards from what your goal is. Okay, claire, we just have about thirty seconds before the break. You mentioned planning ahead. And maybe as much as a year as you’re developing your email marketing plan. You want that? To be dovetailed with your other marketing activities, right, you might be sending print pieces as well around your events, things like that, right, absolutely. And marketing is a huge challenge for most small non-profits. The person doing marketing is also doing fifty other things, so the more planned you khun b, the easier it makes your job, so have a little marketing plan for the year, even if it’s one page and it’s a calendar, we’re going to do this in january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august and it’s all about when you send postcards. When you send email, when you send a regular newsletter and other mailing, okay, we’re going to take a break. My guest is clear meyerhoff editorial director at the plant e-giving company were ex selling an email execution stay with us talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Durney i really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness can help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com upleaf do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing for mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is, we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com. Talking dot com. Dahna hello and welcome back. I’m talking to claire meyerhoff and were ex selling in your email execution. Claire, you had a list of do’s that you wanted, teo continue sharing with us. Well, some other dues are due. Motivate your reader. You are sending this email to them, and you want them to do something and you need to motivate them to do it. And the easiest way to keep them unmotivated is too forthem, boring and dull. And the best way to do to motivate them is to tell them about something great that’s going on. That really would matter to them. So, do you have a really great event coming up? Do you have something really cool that you and your organization to tell people about it’s is? And news means it’s, usually something you what’s going on in your organization. That’s important to your reader? Not just what’s important to you? Yeah. You just finished your quarterly report, or or you have a new, you know, drink machine in the break room that might be important to you. But it’s not important to your readers. So think about the things that you are. Reader will think. Okay? And that’s consistent with your advice earlier just have a few people in mind and think about what’s interesting to them and write to that audience and think about what’s interesting to them also do the cocktail party saying or the or the coffee shop thing where if you ran into someone at starbucks and they said, hey, what’s new in your organization will help. Yeah, excellent, right? If you just had a couple of minutes, right? Excellent. Another any other dues? Uh, you might want to tell people why this is important now, which is usually through for fund-raising so what is going on right now? Why this is important. So if you’re an environmental organization and there’s some sort of threat that’s what you want to tell people about right now, we need to do this now you need to sign the petition. Now you need to send the money now we’re trying to fight it now your call to action it’s the call to action and make sure your call to action really is a call to action and that you’re writing matches the urgency of it. What i see a lot of times in email that i get from a lot of different non-profits is, you know, it’s sort of the henny penny email the sky is falling, they’re taking our rights away and they’re going to ruin the environment and they’re really bad, and i don’t really want to see that i want to see the action i want to see, like what you were doing, like, you know, we’ve got a bus on its way to this place full of volunteers, and they’re all going, and we need some gas money, like, i want to know what the thing is right now, the action that you’re doing that you need my help, why are you writing to may? Why is that news? So tell me that okay, before we get to your don’ts, which i’m sure you have, how do you make sure that you’re emails are consistent with your general identity for the organization? So they look like the rest of what you send out, whether it’s emails or website or or print well, that goes back to your marketing plan if you have one in some places, don’t you don’t have one it’s pretty common. So think about a couple of simple things that you always do and include that in your newsletter. So if you always have a pet of the month because you’re the animal adoption agency and you always have a pet of the month and you have a cute little name for it used that, make sure you use that in your in your identity, so use those identifiable things that you’ve already created, and if you don’t have some it’s time to create them, okay, so that’s excellent that’s the substance? What about just the appearance of the messages? How do you mean by the appear? What? What artwork? You might include the photos or our identity elements that you have for your non-profit well, i was listening todavia earlier about sending photos and e mails and how a lot of those get filtered out. So i’m definitely thinking about the photo thing because if people aren’t getting them that maybe not a great fool. I love photos if you can use photos, photos are the best and frankly, a lot of times your most loyal donors are also on facebook, and they’re a friend of your organization on facebook and as long as you’re not putting up things like ten times a day, they’re interested in being what you have there not gonna block you. Okay, so think about your facebook think about your email newsletter in conjunction with each other and how they can play off each other. So if you have a great, great photographic like the best photograph that tells the story of your mission like no other photograph, use that photograph a lot of times, repurpose it so you might want to send it in your e news letter and have it on your facebook and in your e newsletter say there are more photos like this on the facebook or on our web sights and people through the website where there are more of these great photographs and then take that really great that one great photographs and put it in your print newsletter used it on a postcard for fund-raising let’s say, you’re doing a little plan giving postcard campaign. Put that one great photo on that postcard so we use the good stuff that you have. Good, we have just about two minutes left. What are some of the don’ts that you want to share? Well, it’s funny that you say that because i try to be positive these days. So i wrote a big list. Do you have all dues and no don’t so i thought for sure. Ok, right around. Okay, well, so okay. Don’t don’t be not creative. Be creative, be creative use of environmental organization. And you just did a survey about ice source in your community. What are the top three? See, that would really get attention. So be creative with stuff. The good stuff that you have that’s interesting that your organization really had a handle on. So let’s say you are an environmental organization. You just did a big survey, and out of that survey results came the, you know, little thing that wasn’t the main focus, but in it was, you know, people complain the most about the certain areas in your county that we’re the biggest eyesores. Well, that’s a new story for you where you can say, what are the top three ugliest eyesores, the whole county. And you can do a lot with that that’s really interesting people will open up that email is your town, you know? Is this eyesore in your neighborhood? Why don’t you leave? Us with one more of your dues or however you want to phrase it dues or don’ts duse or don’t? Well, i like to talk about, you know, writing and words and storytelling, so just do tell really good stories that are about someone that affect other people don’t talk about yourself and how how great you are, talk about the people that you’re serving and how you’re solving prop emblems for people. I’ll give you this one. This is my one last tip i give everybody these days, you can’t think of a story, look at the money, find out a recent gift that you’ve got and how did you use that money? And then find the person that’s benefiting from the money that you’re using. So, for instance, if you just got a gift and you build a handicap ramp, who is benefiting from that handicapped wrapped rampant your facility to find that person and do a story about them and that’s where you find your story stories, they’re everywhere to follow the money, certainly because charities are doing good work so people who are people are benefiting those stories should be very common, right? Where’s the money. Going find, find someone benefiting from it and focus on them. And where would their life be without this organization? And where would their life be without specifically this money that just came in and how it was used? You had a big campaign. Everybody gave money, you raised thousands and thousands of dollars. Where did it go? Thank you very much. Thank you very much, claire. My guest has been clear meyerhoff editorial director at the plan giving company and creative producer for tony martignetti non-profit radio next week we’re going to be all about auctions if if we bring that a little further, may weaken do advertising and awareness advancements in auctions in america. But well, for right now will just stop with all about auctions silent, loud or online. What’s it all about auction’s. My guest is going to be roger divine of divine assistance and he’s going to explain what auctions are all about. I hope you’ll be part of that conversation on we’ll have a group sing at the end. Maybe also scott koegler, our tech guru, and he’s, our regular contributor. Of course, you know that he’s, the editor of non-profit technology news and he’s going to share what’s newest in technology for your non-profit keep up with what’s coming up on tony martignetti non-profit radio. Sign up for our email alerts on the facebook page at facebook dot com and then the name of this show. And while you’re there, like us, become a fan on itunes, as i talked about earlier, that is always found at non-profit radio dot net subscribed. Listen, any time on the device of your choice, as i said, a few times are creative producer is claire meyerhoff, our line producer and the owner of talking alternative broadcasting is sam liebowitz, and our social media is by regina walton of organic social media. Booker t and the mgs composed our theme music. Thank you very much, guys. I hope you’ll join me next friday, one p m eastern for tony martignetti non-profit radio, as always on talking alternative broadcasting found at talking alternative dot com. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get you thinking. Dahna cubine are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? 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