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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 hit with see alaska sis, if you made me stomach the idea that you missed today’s show your little brand that can control your brand respect your brand consistently message your brand recruits strong ambassadors for your brand julia rushes from stone soup, creative and stuart pompel is with pacific crest youth arts organization that originally aired june tenth, twenty sixteen and the future of email email still rules and it will for a long time. Sara driscoll urges you to be multi-channel mobile and rapid responding she’s from two seventy strategies and that’s, also from the june ten twenty sixteen show. I’m tony steak, too promote the rollover, responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant and by wagner cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit appaloosa accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com tell us they’re turning payment processing into passive revenue streams for non-profits tony dahna em a slash tony, tell us, here are julia rice and stuart pompel your little brand that can welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference we’re hosted by n ten the non-profit technology network. We’re in the san jose convention center san jose, california with me now is julia, right, and stuart pompel they’re topic is the little brand that could multi-channel approach for the small non-profit julia is branding consultant at stone super creative and stuart pompel is executive director, pacific crest youth arts organization julia stuart welcome. Thank you. Pleasure. Pleasure to have you both. Julia. Welcome back. Thank you. From lester’s ntc we are highlighting a swag item at each interview. And it’s, i think it’s only appropriate to start with. And ten non-profit technology network score and which i love the reverse side of as zeros and ones. You have your bits and bits and bytes. I believe that. Anyway. Zeros and ones swag item number one goes into the swag pile. There’s more to come. All right, julian stuart let’s. Talk about the little brandraise multi-channel approach. Small non-profit. Tell us about us. About the organization, please. Stuart okay. Pacific crest is a drum and bugle corps, and a drum and bugle corps is an elite marching band and it’s made up of students who audition it’s, a maxes out at one hundred fifty members. And this is a group that performs on field competitions and civic events. But primarily the unique aspect is a tour that our students go on for two months during the summer. Based where so we’re based in something california headquarters in the city of diamond bar. But we have kids from one hundred cities across the state, and we actually have some kids from other countries as well. My, my father was a percussion major, taut drum while taught elementary school music. But his major was percussion. And i, his son, was a failure of the drum. And then i must a clarinet. I tried violin. I practice. So you went from the easiest instrument to the most difficult. I yes. Yeah. My progress showed it. And i was just i was a bad student. I didn’t practice. If you only go to lesson once a week, you’re not gonna learn. I have to practice it’s. Very true. What is your background in? Music. So i was a musician growing up. I didn’t major in music in college, but one of the founders of pacific crest on when i first started, i was percussion instructor. But the group is made up of brass, percussion and dancers, and then a show is created very intricate blend of music and movement. And then we take that show on the road, as i said earlier. Oh, and the unique aspect of it is a two month tour where the kids leave the comfort of their homes and we travel by bus and stay at schools and performed four, five times a week. And just how old are the kids? Sixteen to twenty one. Okay, all right, julia let’s give you a shout. What is? Tell us about stone super creative. Well, i’m a branding consultant and i work mostly with non-profits and hyre ed and i help them to find and communicate their authentic brands to help them maximize mission impact. Okay, very concerned. We need to be multi-channel right? Because our constituents are in all different channels. And of course, we want to meet our constituents where they are, so we need to emphasized multi-channel. Ism is that true? Multi-channel is, um, yes, okay, it’s, like not discrimination, not, we’re not discriminating cross channels. How do we know where which channels we should be focused on? Because there are so many, how do we know where to be and where to place emphasis? Wow, it really depends on the organization. It depends on the organization’s audiences. I’m sorry, we’ll dazzle too broad. How do we know where our organization’s, how do we assess where our organization ought to be? I think that’s a better question for stewart to ask t answer in terms of his organization. Okay, all right, well, all right, where is where is? Where is pacific crest? So way have we have a number of channels, but the website obviously is the first communication place, but on social media, we’re where we limit ourselves to instagram, facebook and twitter and youtube as well we’ve not moved to any others and there’s some philosophical reasons, for example, snapchat is not one that we’re going to move towards of, but we know that the demographics of our organization are trending, you know, in terms of people who are fans and kids who are interested in being a part it’s going to be in that younger age group, and so we know that twitter is becoming more popular with that age group, and so we’re going to do a little bit more there to attract that age group. We also know that facebook is trending mohr a little bit older now, and so there are certain things that we do on facebook that we’re not going to do on twitter. Sorry or vice versa. That’s okay, wait, we have a small set here squeezed into ten by ten so don’t worry if you knock the night a night, not mike’s, okay? And so that’s, how we make some of our decisions, you know, we start with what’s out there a lot of times the kids bring it to us, we should have a snapchat, you know? Or we should have a facebook page, or we should have a facebook page for the trumpet section and a facebook page for them, you know? And so we have to, you know, we had to be mindful of which ones of the official ones which ones of the unofficial ones and how are we using social media to communicate? We may be using the facebook page to communicate to the outside world, but we also use social media to communicate within the organization because students, by and large, do not read email that’s for old people. I’ve been hearing that. Yeah, okay, okay. And so so were communicating to our members. Of course i’m going to send email to them in their parents, but we’re also going to follow-up with did you check your email on facebook? Okay, uh, now, i think it’s important people know that you do not have any full time employees. We do not pay anybody full time, so we have people who work. Ah, lot of ours. Yeah. Say that jokingly, but no, we do not have full time employees. Most of the money goes right back into the program. Okay, back-up what’s the philosophical objection, teo snapchat i think for us, the fact that a picture could be taken and or a comment could be made and then it khun disappear and the fact that it doesn’t necessarily disappear because it can be forwarded on, we lose control over it. And so for us, it’s, not something that we’re comfortable with right now. Snapchat is not a bad thing in and of itself, but when it comes to having kids in the group in the organization, we just felt that we’re not ready to do that at this point. Okay, it’s, time for a break, pursuing they’ll help you bring new donors to your work. They’ve got a new content paper on donor acquisition it’s the art and science of acquisition paper covers strategies that work from successful acquisition campaigns, and this is a campaign plus it’s got the numbers side pursuing you know them data driven as well as technology enabled, so data rise. What metrics should you be paying attention to? How do you know whether your campaign is succeeding? If you’re not looking at the right metrics, you’re not going to know and if you’re not succeeding, you need to pivot all the data that you need to be looking at. They’re going to cover that too. Um, it’s on the exclusive non-profit radio listener landing page that’s where you’ll find this content paper, it is the art and science of acquisition you’ll find it all at tony dahna slash pursuant and i am very grateful to them for their sponsorship. This show was back in june twenty sixteen when it first aired and pursue it was our sole sponsor. They’ve been with us that long. Check them out. Tony dahna slash pursuant capital p now back to your little brand that can julia anything you want to add? Teo building a a fiercely loyal group of supporters. Well, i would just add to what stuart was saying in terms of controlling the brand, you know, that’s something that’s important to consider and something we talked about in our session as one of the differences between the for-profit sector and the nonprofit sector is that we want to take control of our brands so that, you know, we’re in control and people aren’t just making up our brand for us, but at the same time, you know, i think traditionally for-profit sorr yeah, the for-profit sector and, you know, they kind of tightly policed their brands or at least they have, i think that’s changing, but i think with non-profits it’s more there’s, more flexibility built into the brand. So, you know, snapchat i can understand, you know, that’s not gonna work, but it’s not it’s more about, like, guiding your brand across the channels and, you know, there’s more of ah, sense of collaboration, i think inflexibility with with guiding your brand across the channels, there’s more of an interaction with your audience rather than tightly policing it. Okay, yeah, on stuart, especially the age group that you’re dealing with, there has to be a degree of flexibility absolutely right. That’s why? When the kid comes to me with an idea than you know, that’s, we listen to those ideas because especially now they know how they want to communicate, and sometimes where we come in from the management side is that’s great information. Thank you so much, but you need to understand that there’s a larger picture here. So when a kid comes to me and says, i think we should have different facebook pages for different sections, you know, and we should have a brass facebook page and we should have ah, regular facebook page and a percussion facebook page. My question back to that student in this case, a nineteen year old kid just asked me that in who’s, a member of the corps for three years, i said, can you please explain to me in your mind what’s the marketing reason for that? What is the marketing benefit of having so many different channels that essentially say the same? And so then we get a conversation going to help the students understand that while he may be seeing a small piece of this there’s a larger piece to consider who becomes a teachable moment in that way, but it also then opens up the question of well, if you want to communicate that way within sections that’s a great idea, let’s. Go ahead and make those pages. Make sure that i’m an administrator on them so i can see what’s going on. And then that’s and that’s how we kind of grew the internal facebook and the i think it’s the official facebook okay, you knocking mike twice now? That’s enough! I’m going to stop using my there’s just we’re so excited. We’re just just stick yah late ing wildly teo convey their passionate we are. Thank you so much, stuart. Thanks. You also let’s say, julia that’s every file of something something stuart said, not little listening, listening he’s listening to the nineteen year old who want to do something that probably isn’t isn’t in the best interest of organisation, but there’s still a conversation about it listening and all your channels way amplify how that gets done effectively and really, you know, really? Exgagement well, i think it’s about knowing who your audience is, um, you know, you don’t want to just put your brand out tio every single channel in the hopes that it sticks somewhere. You know, i think, it’s what stewart saying is really important he’s listening to his audience, he knows exactly. Who is audience is on and he, you know, he’s he’s lucky in that sense, because it’s kind of a built in audience and he’s able to listen to them closely and know, you know, where they want to learn their information, where they want to get engaged, and i think, you know, ultimately all of this leads to trust and trust in the brand, you know, if they feel like they’re being listened to, they’re going to trust the brand, and once they trust the brand, they’re going to support the brand, become advocates, let’s spend a minute defining the brand way you mentioned a few times. I want people to recognize that it’s more than just logo and mission statement amplify that would you for us that the brand? Sure, well, you know, i present the definition of brandon my session, and it was, you know, generally accepted for for-profit sector definition, which is that it’s your reputation and you know it is your reputation, i agree with that, but it’s your reputation in order to gain a competitive advantage, so that doesn’t really work with non-profits it is about your reputation, it is about your sense of identity. But you’re not really looking for a competitive advantage, per se. I think what you’re trying to do is clarify what your values are, what your mission is in order you fit in the community, right? And then ultimately, i think, it’s about collaboration, you know, that’s where non-profits do the best work and make the most of their impact. Their mission impact is by collaborating, okay. How do you think about you’re the brand? Stuart, a cz you’re dealing with, a lot of young people are exclusively young people well know their parents also how do you how do you think through this that’s? A good question, because we’ve we’ve had to come to terms with that a number of times because especially with the youth group, the thing that you’re doing is not necessarily what you’re doing, okay? So this producing a show and going on the road and performing that is what we’re doing in terms of the actual product. I guess you could say that we’re creating the program we’re putting together for the kids, but when you’re dealing with students or young people in general, you have to go beyond that. You have to go beyond the we say, you got to go beyond the music, you’ve got to go beyond the choreography and the competition. There’s gotta be a larger reason there’s got to be a so what? To this whole thing and for us, it’s the unique aspect of leaving on tour for two months and something really transformative happens to a kid when he is forced to take responsibility. For himself or herself for sixty days of lock down? Yeah, and for us, it’s maturation, maturation requires coping skills, and as adults, we cope with challenges throughout the day wouldn’t even realize it anymore, but there is an issue in this country, and the issue is that students don’t have the coping skills that are past generation tad there’s a variety of reasons for that that i don’t want to get into, but we create that a pacific crest when you go on tour and you’re living on a bus and you’re driving through the night and not getting as much sleep is, maybe you want to and it’s still hot, but you still have to rehearse and we have a show tonight and people are depending on you. The coping skills get developed quite quickly and learning how to cope and learning how to deal with those challenges leads to maturity. Maturation is a forced condition isn’t come from an easy life, and how does your use of multi-channel strategies online contribute to this maturation process? Right? So they don’t necessarily contribute to the maturation process, but when we communicate what we do, it’s always about the life. Changing experience, even we’re recruiting. We’re recruiting kids and we’re saying we want you to do pacific crest or come check us out because this is going to change your life. It’s not about performing in front of the audience is they already know that’s what they do, they already know they’re going to get into that we want to explain to them and their parents. This is why you’re doing this. You could be in the claremont, you symphony you, khun b in your local high school marching band, you can play little league, you go to the beach, you can do any of these things. But if you want an experience where people are going to applaud for you and it’s going to change your life were the place to go. Julia, how do you translate what stuart is saying, too? Latto cem cem strategies for actually achieving this online in the in the network’s. Uh, well, you know, stuart and i met because we were working together. I was helping him with his rebranding a few years ago on dh as part of the process of re branding. You know, there were several questions that i posed. To him, gee, i don’t have those questions in front of me right now, but, you know, it was it was pretty much about, like, you know, who are you? What do you dio and most importantly, why do you do it on also, you know, what is it about what you’re doing is different than what other organizations are doing? What makes you unique, you know, and then ultimately that lead tio three different what i would call brand messages that pacific cross has been able to use in one form or another, you know, across their channels in their promotion of their brand, i don’t know, stuart, do you know the brand messages off the top of your head? And we could maybe give an example of how those have been used, okay, what are they? So the first one and these air paraphrased is to bring together a group of kids who are like minded and and want to be in a very high quality, superior quality performance group that pushes them right, okay, the second brand messages that were here to develop your performance skills, okay, which is an obvious one, but needs to be stated. And the third one is the life skills that i mentioned earlier, where we’re going to create an experience that changes your life because of the unique aspect of the tour. And so we hit those super hard in all the channels and all of our communications. So when you mentioned, how else does this manifest itself in communication, when we’re talking to people about donating to pacific crest? We’re not talking about donating so we could make beautiful music. We’re talking about donating so that they can change a kid’s life through music so that the drum corps becomes the way we change lives, not the thing we do in another cell vehicle, right method rights and it’s about consistency in promoting those brand messages in some form or another, you know, distilled down to their essence. And i think that that is really important when you’re talking about brands. But how do you achieve this? But this consistency multi-channel some channels, very brief messages. How do you how do you do this, julia? Well, we gave several examples of what you have to think about. Like you know what should be in your mind? Well, i think with every type of marketing communications thatyou dio you want to think back to what the brand represents, you know? So, you know, let’s say your values are, you know, integrity and education, you know, when your personality is fun, you know you can think about while is every message that i’m putting out there. Is it fun? Is it promoting this idea of integrity, of educating the child? You know, that’s, those are just examples, but i mean, you can kind of use those as benchmarks, it’s, almost like the brand is your like, your north star pointing the way i’m actually not very good that’s. Excellent metaphor, maybe seen analogy? No, i think. Okay, stuart, who at pacific crest is is producing our managing the channels? Is that all you? No, we have a social media manager. Okay? And what he does is he uses a nap location called duitz sweet to queue up her posts, but he’s also, we also use him as an internal manager. Two that doesn’t make sense. We use them to monitor what the students facebook pages because students might say all kinds of things about the organization and once in a while there might be something that gets said or posted that is not reflective of what we are, who we are, and then i can always count on brandon to send me an email saying, i saw this on the kids site and i’ll i’ll contact the kid and say, we need to have a conversation about this post and that’s, so so we kind of do it both ways. We manage it internally a cz well, as externally, i don’t know if that answers your question completely, but i’m i’m not in every box of the orc char, but when it comes to communication, i’ve got my finger on that pretty, pretty tightly. Julia dahna maybe how can i be a larger organization but not huge? But, you know, just a five person organization and how can they shouldn’t manage this the same way stewart is trying way stewart is doing, but on a you know, smaller scale organisation, how do you sort of manage the integrity and without it being controlling right? That’s a great question eso when i work with clients, i make sure that if we’re going to go into a branding process that there’s a branding team that really represents all levels of the organization and its not just the marketing people or it’s, not just the executive director. I think it needs to be the executive management team, but i also think it needs to be, you know, everybody, not every staff person, but just every level represented, you know, at the organization, you know, the admin person, maybe it’s a programme, people, i think it could even be bored members, beneficiaries of your services, you know, on some level, i think that they need to be involved in that branding process, and then what happens is that the end? You know, everybody has kind of bought into this idea they’ve contributed, they’ve been heard and they become your brand ambassadors. So you’ve got internally, you’ve got people who are being consistent and gauging in conversation in the same way externally, you know, it’s it’s kind of this marriage of internally, the brand identity is matching with the brand image externally, so it’s, you know, it’s, you are who you say you are, you’re walking the walk and people people get that yeah, i’d like to add to that because julia said something that i hadn’t really considered we were even talking in our session today. We have a very dis aggregate. I love that we have a recession idea for a new session. So we have ah, what i call a disaggregated staff of people. So, you know, we have a few full time or sorry for full time focused on admin like myself in our operations person and finance person book keeper, right? But we also have all the people who teach the kids and these folks have to be ambassadors for the brand as well. So when our program director hires a new person to be in charge of all the brass instructors are all the percussion instructors. And we have a team of forty people who work with these kids. So the person in charge of the brass section we call the caption head he and i are gonna have a conversation and we’re going to talk about what the goals are. Pacific crest. And the first thing that he’s going to realize is competition is not part of the goals because it’s not part of the brand. Okay, it’s, it’s. Definitely something we do. But when i talked to him or or her, anybody who’s going to be in charge of the staff? They need to understand what pacific crest is all about, what we’re trying to do and that, yes, i expect you to make helped develop the best brass program that we can have so that the kids have an amazing experience and we can represent ourselves, but there’s a larger reason for that cause i want these kids to learn howto work hard, i want them to learn the coping skills, to mature, to feel responsible for themselves and to each other, those air, the outcomes, you’re exactly not not a prize at the company, right? And then and and i and i have jokingly say that every single person on the staff is part of our retention team, you know, and part of our fund-raising team like as good a job as they do of instilling that brand all the way through the organization through the death of the organization is what helps tell her tell her story. More importantly, if i’m in charge of the brass program and now i’ve been told by the director that this is what we’re looking for now when i go find my trumpet instructor and my french horn instructor and my tuba instructor, i have to make sure that they also believe in that same philosophy. And so the nice part for me is once the caption had buy into it, then i’m pretty confident that the people they hyre are also going to buy into that, and so it flows all the way through the organization. Okay? Yeah, essentially grand ambassadors, yes. Julia and ambassadors, he’s recruiting brand ambassador, random brassieres duitz a new head of of the percussion section or the right. Yeah, because i mean, the way i used to do it is i would go and i would meet with, you know, the executive director or the marketing director or whatever your dork, right? Right? Right. And, you know, and then we would talk and, you know, then i would, you know, go back to my studio and, you know, work my magic behind the curtain and come back and present them with their brand. And guess what? That doesn’t work at all. No, you know, because that it’s you know, either like it or you don’t like it collaborative, right? You haven’t been part of the process. Right. So it’s, harder for you to become an ambassador for it to buy, to get that buy-in right, right? I mean, have the body. Yeah. Now, it’s just really about facilitation, making sure that everybody’s heard and, you know, getting everyone on board so that they can own the brand. When it’s, when we’ve come to the end of the process, okay, that seems like a cool place to wrap it up. Okay? I like the idea of the brand ambassadors. Thank you very much. All right. Julia. Right. Branding consultant with stone soup. Creative on stuart pompel executive director, pacific crest lugthart organization. Julian stuart. Thank you so much for sharing. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen non-profit technology conference? San jose, california. Thanks so much for being with us. The future of email coming up first. Wagner, cpas. They really do go way beyond the numbers for you. Way beyond being cpas. The guides, all these guides that they have there’s a couple of dozen of them on their resource page, each one specifically for non-profits ordered committee versus finance committee. Independent contractor. Versus employee checklist ali versus frazier disaster arika even find ali versus frazier disaster recovery plan church internal audit plan floor plan there’s no floor plan. All right, there’s, no floor plain, but there is a koa cost allocation plan. I’m not even sure what that one is. I went through it, but if you’re allocating costs, then it’ll make sense to you cost allocation plan, but they’re ah, bank statement, bank statement review form your viewing your bank statements all the time. Are you checking for the right things? Ah, wireless device policy. So they’re going way beyond the numbers. Very generous with all these free resource is just browse the list for god’s sake. It takes you a minute toe, look through and see what applies for you. Take a look at everything they have wagner cps dot com click resource is then guides at blow software i think you’ve heard me say this you’re non-profit but you’re using accounting software made for a business. I never thought of this. It was completely outside my ken then apples came along, wandered over, walked through the sponsorship door and i found enlightenment non-profits need accounting software that’s made for non-profits not quick books or terrible cash or microsoft or escape, those are built for corporations for businesses. Appaloosa counting is designed for non-profits built from the ground up for you, for non-profits to make your non-profit accounting easy and affordable. Non-profit wizard dot com now for tony steak too. My latest video it’s still out there, promote the ira rollover this’s a fantabulous gift for you for end of year only applies for those who are seven and a half and over. I explained that you know the details of the advantages last week for donors and for you just amplifying the benefit for you is this is a gift for you now today. So i considered a planned gift because it comes from someone’s ira, their retirement assets. But the cash comes to you today, not at the donor’s death, so that distinguishes it from most planned gift. Very easy to market. You could put a buckslip in the mailings you’re already doing, do a sidebar in an email blast. Maybe the email blast pertains. Teo your annual fund on dh yeah, your annual fund for the end of year appeal put a sidebar in promoting the ira. Charitable roll over, it’s. Really simple. The donors just go to their hyre a custodian and get a very simple form which is usually on the custodians website. They fill in your name, your legal, your legal man, your tax idea, your address boom and it’s yours. So, um, prote the ira roll over my video. Is that tony martignetti dot com? And that is tony. Take two. And here is sara driscoll with the future of email. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc non-profit technology conference. This is also part of ntc conversations. We’re in san jose at the convention center. My guest now is sara driscoll. Sarah is the email director and vice president at two. Seventy strategies. We’re gonna get to sarah in a moment talking about the future of email for the next ten years. First, i have to do our swag item for this interview. And it is some locally sourced cooking. Nothin crackers from crowdster crowdster non-profit radio sponsor. Actually. So crowdster and local crackers. The crowdster cracker. Thank you very much. Crowdster way had these two the swag pile four today. Okay. Sara driscoll. The future of email for the next ten years, twenty sixteen to twenty twenty six you’re pretty confident. You know what this is going to look like? Absolutely. Absolutely. You’re not just pretty calm. You’re absolutely confident. No qualifications. Okay, um how do we know what? Well, how do you know what’s going on what’s gonna happen in ten years? Well, i should say i don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but what we do know is that email isn’t going anywhere. So there’s all debate right now in the tech and non-profit space about, you know, is email still a resource that my organization should be investing in, you know who even check their email anymore? No one reads them everyone’s going way too much of it all the, you know, millennials are on snapchat and twitter what’s the point of, you know, really investing my email list anymore, and the truth is, email is still stronger than ever. I actually just came from another panel where email revenue was up twenty five percent in twenty fifteen the year before, so people are still reading their e mail. They’re still donating it’s still one of the most powerful ways to reach people online. We have to get smarter and more strategic about it. Okay, now maybe there is some age variability, so if your if your constituents he happens to be exclusively sixteen to twenty five year old, maybe email is not the best channel for you. Ah mei is still maybe a channel, but maybe that’s not what your priority should be. That’s ah, great point and something that where we’re definitely looking at in terms of you know, you not only want to just you don’t want to just rely on one tool for everyone multi-channel write. The most important thing is to look at who your supporters are, what your goals are and make sure you’re meeting your people where they are, um and so that’s kind of the biggest piece that we talked about yesterday. I had folks from the sierra club and act blue join me to talk about their current email, listen, what they’re seeing and the number one theme was yes email, still alive and well, but it’s no longer king the most important thing is to make sure you’re going not just with email, but really integrating it with all of your digital tools, so making sure supporters are seeing you, not just on email but also on social media on dh, just using email as one of the tools in your toolbox, not the only one and consistency across these messages, right? Absolutely we actually to seventy. Our digital ads team recently has been ah, playing around with testing facebook ads that correspond with email. So is someone who reads an email, maybe clicks away from it, then goes on facebook and season ad with the same ask, are they more likely to then go back and don’t have that email on dh it’s across the board? We’re definitely seeing lift there. So with so much of all human, so many touchpoint these days and people having such for attention spans, the more you can get in front of them, the more you can get into their brain, the more likely they are to take the actions that you want them tio okay, a lot of lessons came out of the obama campaign four years ago now, so center in a presidential cycle again want to refresh our recollection about how groundbreaking a lot of their work was? Absolutely, yeah, and that’s something that you know, we are three xero everything about this now is, you know, the obama campaign was four years ago, email is absolutely huge then is it as huge now as it was back then? And the answer is yes, you’re seeing it with hillary and bernie raising tons of tons of money on line, and and it was that same back in in twenty twelve, we raised more than half a billion dollars online over email alone, and i think to really key things came away with from that campaign one was that you should not be afraid of sending maury male ah lot of people, you know, probably complain, and when i tell them today that i was on the obama joined brovey multi and they say, oh, god, they were sending you yeah, yeah, and so they say so it was you who sent me all those e mails, but we tested it thoroughly and we saw no, really no effective sending more email, not everyone’s going to read every single one of your e mails that people who are really, really, really upset about it are might unsubscribes but they’re not the people who you want. To reach anyway, they’re not going to be your your top online advocates and supporters if they’re not willing. Tto gett une male and and you didn’t see large rates of unsubscribes onda well, especially in terms of the people who we want to hit those online donors people. We had one group of people that we segmented out and sent maury mail every single day, so we sent him one or two additional messages. So we’re talking now for five, six emails a day those people actually gave more than the other group because again, it’s about, you know, people have so much email in their in box that you want to just make sure you’re getting in front of them. A lot of people won’t even notice how maney you send, and you want to make sure that you’re hitting them with the message is that they’re going to respond, teo but i think more importantly, the reason why are our strategy of sending maury mail worked was because every single email felt really personal and really relevant. So, you know, all this is your other take away, yeah, yeah, yeah so we spent so much time crafting the messaging developing really, really unique center voices that the emails felt like they were coming from the president from the first lady from rufus gifford, the national finance director on dh that’s, the philosophy would take a two, seventy two is making every making email personal, so it doesn’t feel like more email or too much email if the email that you’re reading is really strategically targeted to you and feels really personal and timeline relevant what’s happening in the world, it doesn’t feel like, oh, they’re just sending me another email, it’s oh, they’re sending me an email right now because they need my help to achieve this, and if we if i don’t step up and help right now, there’s going were not i’m not gonna help solve this really urgent problem, and and one really clear indicator of that twenty twelve was when we sent the last email from the national finance director rufus gifford, and he said, you know, it was election day or the day before like, this is going to be the last time here for me on this campaign, you know, it’s been a wild ride sort of thing, twitter actually kind. Of exploded and people were legitimately sad to see rufus go there like we’re going to miss burnam is your proof is i’m gonna miss seeing you in my in box every day, and that was someone who had sent them hundreds of emails, so it just shows that if you take the time to craft really personal messaging that really treats your email subscribers as human beings, they’re most of them will respond really, positively. All right, you gotta tell me what it was like to be just part of the obama campaign and specifically in the in the email team when when you were breaking ground. Yeah, it was freaking like i’m a fourteen year old cause i’m so excited. What was that like? It was incredible is definitely one of the best experiences of my life. How do you get that job? Honestly, i i actually just a applied through ah, an online form. One of my friends sent me listserv inside the job posting was writers and editors for the obama campaign needed, and i were actually fording that to a friend and saying, holly can talk about dream job, i’ll never i’ll never get it. And i didn’t expect to hear back, but i did, and you know, the leadership there, it shows that they really were looking for people who are committed and also just great what they do. It wasn’t about who you knew. They were biggest one to find people from outside the normal realm of politics, and i was working in a really small non-profit at the time, and they saw me and they they liked my rank simple, and here i am today, that’s outstanding, so they didn’t they didn’t want that the established direct mail on email consultants for inside the beltway, they truly wanted really good writers and on dh that’s something that that i talk about all the time now my current job at two seventy, whenever i’m hiring, i always say i want great writers first, whether it’s for email, whether it’s for digital, anywhere because digital is all about storytelling and that’s how you move people to take action is by telling them a story that they were gonna feel andi want teo to respond to. And so it all comes back to the words, even in this tech age around a tech conference, but i’m still you know, the tools and tech is really important too, but it will only take you as far as the words that you write twice. Yesterday it came up in interviews that a logical appeal causes a conclusion, but an emotional appeal causes inaction on the action is volunteer. Sign forward, share give you know, whatever that is, but it’s the emotional appeal that it creates the action that we want absolutely people are goingto take the time out of their busy days. Toh ah, volunteer or, you know, give any their hard earned money unless they really feel and they really believe in it. Okay, all right. So let’s ah, all right, so let’s dive into this now a little more detail. The future um, mobile. Now we already know that email needs to be mobile response is is that i hope they’re way past that stage or people still not providing mobile response of emails right now. We actually said that on the panel yesterday when when we when i introduce the question the panel, it was, you know, whether or not my e mail needs to be mobile optimized shouldn’t be a question anymore. It’s more you know, how can i continue innovating and continue optimizing for mobile something like my julia rosen for mac blues on my panel said that somewhere around forty percent of all donations they processed this last year were from mobile, and they brought in. They just celebrated their billion dollar. So you think about, you know, how i consume email in digital content these days, it’s mostly it’s on the bus when i’m goingto work, you know, it’s when i’m on my couch, watching tv on and it’s almost exclusively on my phone. So it’s not just about making sure it looks pretty on a phone the most important piece now and where where i think especially non-profits can continue to push is making the entire user experience really optimized and really easy, so that goes to saved payment information platforms like act blue and quick donate making sure you’re capturing people’s information so they don’t have to pull out their credit card on the bus and type in their numbers if they’ve given before you should have it and they nowadays people can click, you know, with single click of the button and their donation goes through same thing with the advocacy messages and it’s things like making sure that your, you know, landing page load times are really fast on that they aren’t being slow down with too many forms or too many images. You want people able to hit your donate link on, get there immediately or whatever action you want them to take because you’re gonna lose people if they have to sit there on the, you know, again on the bus forever waiting for your page to load and it’s the more barriers that you can remove, the more likely people are going to follow through. Should we be thinking mobile first, designing the email for mobile first rather than as the as the add on? Absolutely. Jesse thomas, who is at crowd back, was also on our panel yesterday, and he said that he which i thought was brilliant, he now has his designers and developers do their previews on on a phone. So usually when you’re previewing a new website, you know it’s up on a big screen, but that no one is going to be looking at it on a big monitor. So he literally has the developers pull up a phone and say, you know, here’s where we’re at in staging so they can, you know, make edits and go from there. Okay, okay. Okay. Um, mobile acquisition. You have ideas about acquiring donors and or volunteers or whatever constituents, supporters? Absolutely eso from now until twenty twenty six? Yeah, i think it’s just going to get harder and harder. We’re noticing, you know, the quality of of names are going down more and more people want a piece of the pie and i think it’s so it shows just how strong a male is because people are still are trying to grow their less, which they should and the traditional platforms like care too and change it order still great. But again, with mohr and maura organizations rightfully looking to grow their list, we need to start figuring out how else we can get people in the door. So i don’t have the answer. I think this is one of these places that the industry really needs toe latto innovate in. I think that one area that non-profit especially can really ah, invest in maura’s peer-to-peer on dh that also there. People are constant asking me how do we get you gnome or more teens where millennials onboard and just going back to like we’re talking about the emotional appeal. People are much more likely to do something if, if asked, comes from their friend or family member esso, i think the more we can get people to reach out to their own networks and bring people onto email list into the these communities on their own, those people are going to be so much more high quality to than any donor that you, you know, that you buy or any listen let’s build that you do that way. So i’m just gonna ask, is the state of acquisitions still buying or sharing lists with maybe buying from a broker or we’re sharing? Or someone with a similarly situated organization means that still where we are? Yeah, it’s definitely still worth it to invest in list acquisition. I always say you have to spend money to make money, but it also goes backto, you know, quality over quantity. I would never recommend an organization going out just buying swaths of names just to say they have ah, big list. You only want a big leslie you can go to those people, when you need that truly yeah, yeah, i do think one area that the industry has grown a ton lately, and i just really going to continue to is in digital advertising, so in the past used to be that you would never you wouldn’t think that you could acquire donors, you know, through facebook ads or that sort of thing and that you don’t want to ask money over advertising. But in the last year, we’ve really seen that change, and people are really starting to respond more to direct ass over advertising and there’s so much more that we can do there, and in general, the non-profit industry really lags behind corporate marketers, so i think about, you know, my own online experience, and i’m constantly being followed around by that those boots that i wanted to buy, but i didn’t and things like that and the corporate spaces so good at really targeting people with exactly what they want the booty just glanced at exactly, but then they’re there and then suddenly they’re in my head and i’m like, oh, maybe i do want them, and more often than not, i buy them, which i shouldn’t but i think that’s where the organization’s really need to go is really highly targeted, highly personalised messaging that responds tio people’s previous actions are they bun hyre kayman on having been on your site for exactly, you know, the most simple exactly just let people tell you the messaging that they want to receive and the type of types of actions that they’re interested in and yes, you can, and that digital advertising is going is a huge, huge space for that. But, you know, not every non-profit has a butt huge budget, but you can still look at your own data and figure out okay, who are my people who seem to really like social actions or people who are on ly about advocacy petitions and target your messaging that way? Let your own data show you the types of emails you should be sent there. Okay, so you so you have a lot of the intelligence, you just have to mind it. Yeah, you have to know what to look for and you have to take the time which i know having worked a non-profits time is your biggest scarcity, so but it’s so worth it. Really, make sure you’re looking at your data and tailoring your messaging that way got to take a break keller’s credit card and payment processing. How about this passive residual revenue stream pays you each month? That’s what tello’s payment processing is offering when you refer businesses to them, the businesses that sign up will get discounts, and you will get fifty percent of every dollar that tell of urns from the businesses that you refer. And on top of that there’s the two hundred fifty dollars offer, which is on ly for non-profit radio listeners, you refer a business if tello’s decides that they can’t save them any money that this business has such a great credit card processing fee structure that they can’t save them any money, they will give you two hundred fifty dollars so it’s worth it for youto start making referrals to tell us and, you know, same businesses you’ve heard me mention, but i i’m going to drill this home because i need you to think about businesses that you can refer the ones owned by your board members, local merchants in your community, the maybe restaurants, car dealerships, storefronts of any type big. Small. Anybody who accepts credit card your family members do they have a business that accepts credit cards? You can save them money and you can earn half the revenue that tello’s urns from the businesses you refer that sign up with. Tell us. The only place to find this offer on the two hundred fifty dollars is the landing page. Tony dahna slash tony tello’s. Let’s. Get them some referrals. Now back to sara driscoll and the future of email. You have ah, advice around. Rapid response. Yeah, i love rap response so way. Talking about after a donation or, well, after some action has been taken by that we mean no wrappers. One’s mohr is just respond to something that happened out in the world. Ok, yeah. So event that’s. Topical? Absolutely. Yes. So on. And this is a struggle that we had in twenty twelve, and i think every ah lot my clients have in that every organization has is where you spend so much time cal injuring and planning and designing these amazing campaign’s a cz you should. And then, you know, something happens. And every single time i’ll tell people you want to respond to what’s actually happening in the world doesn’t matter how how much you love the campaign you had planned for may be this day people are going to respond much more to what they’re seeing and hearing and feeling rather than what you’re, you know that if your community trying to crack for them from you, so and i think there’s ways that organizations can set themselves up for success with rapid response so first is just having a process for it. So, you know, anyone who works in email knows that you can spend a lot, you get bogged down approvals processes and getting emails actually set up and out the door, make sure you have a plan for if something happens that you need to react, tio, that you’ll be able to turn something around quickly expedited approval, absolutely put out the layers that we don’t really need you to get this out within hours. Really, we’re talking about our absolute the quicker you want to be the first person in their in box and that’s, you know and and and also you don’t wantto on lee send the one email, though, and then walk away and say, we did our apparatus rapid response? We’re done, it’s, a big enough moment. Keep it going. You should, you know, make sure you’re following up with people who took the action with different actions to take and just keep the keep the drum beat up for as long as its people are paying attention to it. Okay, okay. Let’s see are their automated tools that we can weaken you can recommend around rapid response that that that help i would say automation is actually the is is great and i think is a huge space that non-profits and grown as well. So again, corporate marketing so much of what you see, those drip campaigns, the re targeting you get is automated esso they have a lot more time tio, you know, think of the next creative thing to dio rather than just manually setting up the next email to send you know, an hour after someone visit their website, but it’s, when you’re playing with automation, it’s really important to not just set it and forget it because of moments like rapper response. So if you have ah triggered welcome siri’s set out for new people who join your list, don’t just let it go for a year and not updated with what’s actually current and relevant, same thing if you if you know that you’re going to be having automated message and going out and then something happens, you want to make sure that you’re going back in and either revising or pausing it, especially if it’s unfortunately, we never want this, but if it’s a tragedy or something out in the world, you also really don’t want to seem tone deaf, so automation is great, but and we actually talked yesterday about, you know, if we’re all going to be replaced by robots, one day robots can do all of the automation take a lot of the work off your hands, but they don’t have the brains and the heart to think about. Okay, wait, what? What does a user really want to be hearing right now? Be sensitive, exactly sensitive to what people are feeling? Yep, reading okay, okay, fund-raising you have ideas around fund-raising lots of ideas about fund-raising i think about it way too much, i mean, this could bea, you know, you talk about fund-raising for hours, i think the interesting thing right now that people are seeing is we saw we saw this huge boost in email on online fund-raising, you know, around twenty twelve and with all of the ground that we broke their and things like quick donate all these new technologies appearing, making it easier for people to give online, so we saw a huge boost around then. And now i know so my clients and organizations i’ve been hearing around here are kind of seeing a plateau effect, so let’s say, you’ve done all the optimization sze yu have the tools, but and so you probably saw some huge a huge boost in your numbers, but now you know, what do you d’oh and so and with and it’s also like the cat’s out of the bag with the male fund-raising right, like people know that it works so now everyone’s doing it, and that gets back to the volume issue where how do you break through the noise? That’s? Why, i think it’s super important toe really? Look at first, we’ll continue toe investing your list, get those new people on board, but also look at the people that you currently have and make sure that you’re you’re targeting them effectively, so things like making sure that you’re sending the right ass amounts for people segmenting by previous action taker. So if someone’s dahna someone who is an offline volunteer could probably be a wonderful online fundraiser for you two and too often, organizations treat their people in silo, so they’re volunteers are out in one. Area and digital isn’t really touched them their direct mail people are in a whole other area than their online givers are also treated differently and it’s so important to look at each user individually as a whole person and making sure that you’re there recognizes that there recognized for their relationship with the organization surveys could help. Here is really simple where we had someone on the show yesterday talking about just like five or six questions surveys? How many times do you want me to do? Do you want to hear from us? What channel do you want to hear? When should we ask you for for your your gift? If they’re assuming they’re in annual about a sustainers but, you know, so simple, like survey and listen yep, yeah, and then adhere to what they ask absolutely so again because there’s so much volume the more personally khun make your messaging, the more like the people are to respond. Another thing i’d say is there’s also, people often ask what the magic number of fund-raising emails is a year, but i think it’s so much more important toe to make sure that you’re developing really creative and interesting and timely campaigns. So look at your entire year and you really do have to start a year back and figure out what’s, you know, if they’re big moments that you know of that you can create fund-raising campaigns around. So, you know, giving tuesday is a great example of it that’s when it’s really blown up in recent years because it’s such an organic fund-raising opportunity that people are listening to in paying attention and they want to be a part of, and now the challenge is figure out how to create those moments your own moments, right? Because so many people are now involved in giving tuesday it’s hard tto tto break through the noise. So look at your calendar. Figure out what your giving day could be. Where can you drum up noise around your organization? And the more that you can tie it to a specific date so you can then have a deadline and a goal and ramp up your volume towards it. The more likely people are toe to pay attention. Um, you know, it’s all about crafting that urgency in a really authentic way. Okay, we’ll leave it there. Sara driscoll. Okay. Great, thanks so much. You’re loaded with information could talk about enough for our how did you get this into ninety minutes are over long. Okay? Sara driscoll she’s, the email director and vice president at two seventy strategies and this is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur the non-profit technology conference. Thank you so much for being with us next week. There’s no live or podcast show happy turkey day affiliate’s you’re covered. We’re going to replay this week’s show for you. If you missed any part of today’s show, i’d be seat. You find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant bye weinger cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com by apple it’s accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and by tello’s credit card and payment processors. Passive revenue streams for non-profits tony dahna may slash tony tell us ah, creative producers claire miree sam liebowitz is the line producer. The show’s social media is by susan chavez and are very cool music is by scots diner brooklyn. Thank you for that information, scotty with me 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. 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