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My Guests:
Rachel Clemens & Sean Doles: Increasing Your Donor Retention
Keeping the donors you have saves money and increases efficiency over acquiring new ones to replace them. Retention tactics come from Rachel Clemens, president of Creative Suitcase, and Sean Doles, vice president of mission advancement at YMCA of Austin. We talked at the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference.
Amy Sample Ward: Social Media For Year End
Amy Sample Ward returns from maternity leave with social strategies that close out your 2016 and align with your critical 4th quarter fundraising. She’s our social media contributor and CEO of NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network.
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Oppcoll 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. We have a listener of the week, marcus t coleman jr he tweeted, if you work for work with or support non-profits you should give twenty martignetti is podcast i listen insightful and practical interviews, marcus, thank you so much for that insightful, impractical that’s. Um, but that’s that that says it, i mean wonderful and magnificent would be would be called keeping cubine tra in context with the superlative culture that we have but insightful, impractical. I do appreciate that. Thank you very much. Non-profit radio is in the white house with marcus because he works for the white house office of faith based and neighborhood partnerships. So cool he’s at mt coleman jr marcus, thank you so much for loving non-profit radio very appreciative. Congratulations on being our listener of the week oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with book arai assis if you wormed in with the idea that you missed today’s, show increasing your donor retention, keeping the donors you have saves money and increases efficiency over acquiring new ones to replace them. We all know that retention tactics coming from rachel clemens, president of creative suitcase, and sean dole’s, vice president of mission advancement at y m c a of austin. We talked at the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference and social media for year end amy sample ward returns from maternity leave with social strategies that close out your twenty sixteen and align with your critical fourth quarter fund-raising she’s, our social media contributor and ceo of inten, the non-profit technology network on tony’s take two new non-profit technology conference fund-raising videos responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers wee bey e spelling dot com from the non-profit technology conference. Here are rachel clemens and sean dole’s talking about donor welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc the non-profit technology conference this interview is also part of ntc conversations. We’re in san jose, california, at the convention center. My guests now are rachel clemens and sean dole’s that’s very nice wave wave to sean metoo dignified coming from austin you’re supposed to do who you are. Right, it’s. All right. Rachel is president at creative success non-profit communications firm. Creative suitcase. What did i say? Creative success also. Creative success. Very successful case right there. All right, let’s. Try it again. President. Creative suitcase non-profit communications firm and sean dole’s is vice president of mission advancement at the y m c a of austin. Welcome, rachel. Welcome, sean. Thanks, feminist. You’re very welcome. We’re going to get to your topic on dahna retained shortly very shortly. But i have to shout out the swag item for this interview, which is from phone to action and a cardholder for the back of your iphone. Of course. Peel off the adhesive and stick it. Stick it to your phone, and then you put your phone toe action business card in it or your subway metro card or your whatever other drivers license, et cetera. Very practical. Goes in the swag pile for today. That’s our ntcdinosaur pile it’s pretty good. It was bigger, but it got stolen overnight. You believe that? I had an auntie. I’ll score through the scarf. Got scarf. You can’t trust these non-profit folks know who’s after hours i was here, so i was. There till six. Thirty oppcoll okay, come back and see us increasing your donor retention, rachel, when we not getting quite right, some i’m not imputing all non-profits and all practices, but what are some non-profits not getting quite right about some of their donorsearch practices that are leading to too much attrition. So the reason we want to talk about this today was we work a lot with our clients to dio urine strategies or giving campaign strategies, and what happens is a lot of the times were doing the strategy we’re doing the design, and then we asked, what you going to do to cultivate these donors after the fact and there’s not a good plan for that. So what’s happening is they’re working a lot to get new donors in the door, but not necessarily working to keep the donors that they’re getting right, which is a problem. We have very high attrition rate right? Right? I’ve heard as high as seventy percent. You have you have a different number? Yeah, we have it. The number from bloomerang that forty three percent comeback for three percent fifty. Fifty seven percent. Lost right still over. Has still high. Yeah. That’s. Terrible. After all that work, i feel like it should be, like two or five percent, right? Yeah. Only because you know how much, shawn? Because we know how much it costs, of course. Toe replace a donor than to retain one. Right? It’s it’s. Infinitely more efficient to retain that donor. Keep them happy. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Uh, let’s. Jump into some strategies. My voice just cracked again. Like thursday today. Jump. Okay. Reverse puberty. Twelve years old. Yeah. One of your wanted someone a reading from the recession description to expressing gratitude. Stewardship? What can we do better around stewardship? Let’s, start with you, sean. Well, i think first and foremost, you have to have an organized plan, and then you have to execute on that plan. You have tio be judicious. It has to be realistic in terms of its sustainability. Dahna it has to fit with your level of resource is whether it’s cost or staff time. It’s gotta be realistic. So you got you gotta. You gotta create the plan. Then you gotta execute on it. And you know if you can do that. You will see a tangible result from it, and and you have to be flexible along the way. Sometimes you you have the best intentions with a plan. And then reality gets in the way. You have to adjust your not going toe get to everything on your plan. Maybe. Or maybe you try something that you intended to do and it’s not working the way you had envisioned. You got to adjust, but donors will recognized the effort made to thank them, too. Communicate the impact of their gifts. They recognize that in it. And it is that that appreciation is manifested with recurring donation. What what types of things? Rachel belong in our are our stewardship plan strategy, right? So i think the first place is what are you going to do? What? The tastic tactics you’re going to put in place? So is sean mention thanking them so cumulative. Thank you’s, both online and off. So you might look a email strategies, impact videos, any sort of mfa graphics that might be appropriate to show impact. You also want to think about, huh? Okay, basically, the reason you want to do a lot of those things is that you want to remind them why they give in the first place. So thinking about why they might have given segmentation is also something to think about. So when they give the first donation, why are they giving you might ask them what particular focus area they have so that you can do many campaigns to them around those focus areas moving forward, so there’s air some tactics, and i think another key point is is personalization. To the extent that it is possible your organization’s may have thousands of donors, but to the extent that you can cut through and have a one to one communication to them that says, tony, thank you for your gift. Here is how you have made an impact on someone’s life, including if if we know if they’ve if they’ve given it to a certain campaign, right? We’re certain program recognizing that and and and i realize we’re at a non-profit technology conference, but in this day and age, something as traditional as a hand written note or a personal phone call such kari carries considerable currency and can be some of the most effective forms of stewardship that we could do. I’m a big fan of handwritten notes there, so they’re more effective now, then they then they were twenty years ago on the y has the benefit of having children as part of their after school campaign, so they’ll use kids will create bookmarks as part of can’t arts and crafts project. Hey, we got another arts and crafts project for you were making book bark, so we’re making placemats and we get a thousand kids making place mats and then we turn and we share them with our donors and anecdotally, those air, some of the most effective stewardship pieces that we create, people say our love, this bookmark it puts a smile on my face every time i you know, i’m flipping through the pages of my favorite novel, retouching of course it’s sweet it’s, handmade child made made in the usa what’s not to, like made in austin, texas. That’s. Right? All right, all right. What else? Stewardship meet such a broad topic? How else should we be thanking our donors and in the process? You know, as you point out, rachel were cultivating them suddenly for their next gift. So what else can we say about stuart, i think another thing to consider our reactivation campaigns or win back campaign, so for example, if if you’ve got a large database, but you’re not getting a lot of engagement from that database, segmenting those those donors in the database that you would consider an active so you would define what makes an active donorsearch o r there’s someone who’s given in the last year, they opened our emails, click right? You take the enact of bunch and you take them through reactivation campaign. So basically, you say, hey, we haven’t heard, you know, we haven’t. We’ve missed you. Um, we’d like to re a connect with you or this is the last time you’ll hear from us, and at that point you’re asking them toe op back in you’re not asking them to opt out, you’re asking them to say, i still want to get information from you on, but once you do that, you can take him through sort of a re welcome siri’s or something like that that would basically re engage them, get them interacting, opening things again before you go and ask for money can go it’s, not an effort, teo ask for money right out the gate. Okay, so it’s more just trying to get some engagement. Yeah, show that they’re still interested. Okay, okay, education. Re connect them to the cause. 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 t i g e 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. And, you know, from the outset, i think they’re several different ways you can approach this categorically one is kind of short, medium and long range, you know, the immediate recognize mission, the immediate thank you letter or communication, it goes out then what’s going on what’s going to be going out on a monthly or quarterly basis. Other other ways to conceptualize it are the online versus offline, you know, there’s a handful of things that, you know, like i mentioned the note, the phone call, you know, in in our organization, we recognize major donors by hanging banners in our wine say facilities might walk into a gymnasium or a swimming pool area, and you see a big banner on the wall many, you know, museums or schools have different sign inch opportunities so there’s there’s, you know, and then they’re they’re all the online tools now that are available. There’s obviously, emails where you can communicate impact stories, whether it’s us, short form digital videos, your email, communications, social, social media where you’re recognizing a donor through your social media channels. Dahna you’re doing much with the video in this in this category there’s a stewardship and cultivation we we do it in a way we do a lot, and it about two years ago it became ah, strategic focus for us. When we saw that, you know, we could send out an email that would have lines of lines and lines of text, and it would have a certain sort of open raid or click through rate, or we put a video there and the, you know, the open rates or the quick through rates were astronomically hyre so would much rather quick on the video watch it even if they only sit there for thirty seconds or a minute. So we put a big emphasis on video. And so we we created dahna a program that we called project fifty to which was essentially a goal of creating ah video and sending it out once a week, fifty two weeks a year that would communicate some ass aspect of impact and who was the scent, too? This would be sent to two donors or specific segmented groups within our within our donor or within our stakeholder based people that might have expressed a specific interest in water safety or childhood obesity or family that we don’t you know, we like most non-profits we don’t have tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy advertising, teo, tell these stories to the community, so we had to figure out cost efficient, cost effective ways to get these stories out. And so that’s one way that we’ve done that another way, you know where i was trying to regional it sounds like you had yeah, look like you want to say something e o i was actually going toe have him speak about how they’re doing thank you videos for their donorsearch i was the other piece of it that in addition to that, we’ve done some very, very simple. What were we no budget videos using a phone smartphone? Yeah. Ah, where we take a group of kids that summer camp we give him ah poster that says, you know, thank you, mr jones, for making our summer, you know, remarkable and, you know, it’s a one minute video that you then personally email to this major donor doing the video just for that person just for that person. Yeah. And that on social it took a minute to do that video and we were we would do twenty of those videos right to made me obviously, if you’ve got thousands of donors, you can’t do it wrong, but your major donors and it can make a huge difference. They share that with their friends, their family, and then they’re going to love that, and the production value doesn’t matter if it’s in this day and age it’s accepted, i have i have a lot of guests who say low production values find its sincerity right, hart, authentic genuineness, authentic that’s what that’s, what really grabs people not you know you don’t need to make a makeup lights. Yeah, they’re used to cat videos. I mean, we’re fine this’s that moves us, it doesn’t have to be high production value, too, to be enormously moving and a great, great choice, okay, anything else around the thank you’s? The gratitude i would just add one thing coming from a visual communications background is to make whatever you’re producing to make it his visual or as compelling as you can. So there’s a lot of especially in austin, we have over six thousand non-profits there’s, a lot of noise in our space sustaining out can be tricky e-giving people, things they can engage with or that looks like something they’d want to share goes a long way just that visual communication is really important. I think sometimes it doesn’t get the web is visual. Yeah, people stand, they don’t read you kidding this thing’s going to click video? Yeah, i think the other thing too back-up actually one of the things that’s most crucial and dahna retention is actually making that first give really simple and really easy. So making the give process online like if they’re going to come through your donation page making sure that donation page the user experience on that page is optimized for your user where they don’t have to think too hard. They have to do too much work, making it super simple no again making it visually interesting. Maybe you add delight factor. There’s organization called saturday place has a great little donation feature. You hit their donation page and is very visual. You have a sliding scale of dollar amounts so you can play with it and see how the impact changes. Oh, so you slide the scale and what happens is little pictures. Yeah, there’s little icons. The change. And so it might be like apples, so you’re you’re providing lunches for saturday place or along the other side. They have they have different categories so you can provide basics, which is the lower dollar amounts or at the very high end, you can provide futures so that i mean, wow, right, that’s pretty cool. So and so, as your slideshare seeing different icons? Yeah, you’re seeing them change based on what you’re giving her. What the impact is wonderful, it’s really good, you know, the other piece of that is at the entry point designing your systems so that you can collect information that will help you. You segment to your donor’s mohr, effectively, whether you are using an offline old fashioned pledge card that maybe has a section where people can indicate what areas of focus our of of key concern to them or in your online donation page, maybe pull down menu where they have the option of selecting, you know, identifying that, you know, out of school time or or educational enrichment is of your concern to them then subsequently, when you were we’re going through your stewardship plan, you can maybe segment that group and share some some impact stories with them that are particularly that air going toe particularly speak to that to that audience so segmentation personalization, but designed that into the process from the very beginning. Okay, surveys could be valuable there, too, if you have maybe you haven’t built into the to the process where you have some donors for whom maybe they didn’t answer the question or you weren’t doing it then. But, you know, simple, like five six question surveys i’ve heard this a couple of times from a few different guests easy, you know? But you have to keep up. You have to keep your promise if they say this is the programs i’m interested in or i only want to hear from you at holiday time, you know, don’t get them in february when they talked about, you know, december, their preferred month. I think people can also use their thank you pages after a donation as a way to get some of that demographic information. So for example, they’ve just given to you, they just engaged with you. Maybe you don’t want to do it on the front end in the donation page section because you’re worried about having more fields or whatever the case may be. So putting those making that thank you, paige, work for you. You could try testing. You know, some of the segmentation questions after the fact after the way they don’t have to open a separate email survey. You know, maybe just put it right there. Could test how many d’oh. Okay? Because the reality is, the more questions you ask up front, the more boxes you require them to check the mohr attrition. You’re going ritual saying make a donation process simple. Yes. And after now, i’ve given my gift now that was thoughtful enough to ask you, how many times a year to our do they want? Do i want to hear from them? What times of yes, the moment they feel best. Right? Right? Yeah. They’re feeling great. And they’re giving moment. Yeah. That’s. What? It could be a valuable test. Excellent. Let’s. Move. Teo yeah. I had a plan for an implement. Sustainer sustainers campaigns. We talkabout reactivation kapin about your sustainers program. What do you we know how valuable those are, right. Month after month. Just giving five dollars, twenty dollars? You know, whatever. I think the keating house, any plan is to have a plan. I mean, truly that’s where a lot of it breaks down. You know, you might have a goal to make. Increase your sustainers but it all comes down to the processes that are underlying, you know, foundation for making those things happen. So making sure you have ah, you know, a marketing template that you can work off of that you’re building a plan every time you’re getting stakeholder input into that plan, you could probably speak more to the actual implementation. Well, like, you know, in one instance, y m c a. We have facility members. We have what is essentially a sustaining member ship, that we will mark it several times. You really emphasize that toe where somebody would be paying, say, an additional ten dollars a month on top of there, traditional y m c a membership dues, right? And so in in, in order to recognize them, they get a special membership card that they swipe every time they come in, they get a special shirt there’s several other ways that we recognize them had become sort of ah, conversation piece for them and in a continual reminder of their support for the why i will run several very finite, you know, tightly plans many campaigns throughout the year like one around water safety coming up on this time of year one is we approach summer camp one is we approach after school care one at the very end of the year and will utilize the segmentation there so so that we’re only hitting those audiences that indicated we cared about water safety we cared about, you know, you know, the summer in richmond, right? And so we’re not creating donorsearch a t hg where, you know, a single donor feels like us you’ve you’ve asked me twelve times this year to give you money, you know? Wait, ideally, maybe we’ve asked them twice on specifically for the program save right expressed interest in yeah, again segmentation, yeah, for the sustainers thing i think one thing that’s interesting if you look at the younger audiences, you know, they grew up paying for things monthly, and they’re used to streaming video and paying eight dollars a month for netflix, so i think thinking about maybe how you khun specifically target that age demographic for sustainers might be an interesting test, you know, like and in it there they’re used to self where is a service? You know, it’s sort of the same model, but in non-profit world? Yeah, just excellent. Yeah. You’re right there in the habit of yeah, of being just routinely build. Okay, we just have a couple minutes left. Something about anything more around. Oh, you have some ideas about digital automation deciding which tools are best for you. So, yeah, i think the thing about data and if you’re gonna have a plan, you’re gonna be able to track and measure that plan, right? So sean always says garbage in garbage out if you don’t have a good database that’s pulling in accurate and good data, then you’re not going to get very far. Eso we you know, we talked in the session about before you look at features for databases, really looking at what your needs are, what your goals are, and you need to make sure that if you’re in development, that you’re talking to the communications department as well, you’re dahna programs anybody that’s going to touch that data needs to have some upfront say about, well, how they’ll use it why they want it. What it’s going to do for them? S o before you look at features really looking at needs and goals, what are the paint points? What the problem is you’re trying to solve with this new data base, you know? And then the other key point there is, once you have the database in place and you’re able to extract data creating reports that are meaningful that you can use in actionable way. So in other words, we create report cards, so to speak, for each of our facilities for the campaigns they run as well as for our association, where we’re tracking dahna retention, we’re tracking, you know, major major gifts, number of major gifts, number of gifts under a thousand dollars. We have all these different metrics that then we can we can analyze and see what kind of patterns emerge and then use that information. That’s really it’s not anecdotal, it’s, not a gut your level hunch, it’s riel. And then we use that to formulate strategies that will improve our performance in the next campaign. So then we owe our major donor, you know, level percentage, major give percentage. Was down. We want to formulate some strategies that are going to address that little things like that will help us create riel pathways for improvement in the future. We got some templates were goingto have up on our where slides live ones, a marketing campaign temple and then someone in the session as sean to share templates for the report card. How can we share these there at creative suitcase dot com slash sixteen and tc? Okay, they’re also in our collaborative notes, okay, people here here for people who are here subscribed to ntc conversations, but otherwise creative suitcase dot com slash sixteen and t c you okay and what’s their marketing template. Yeah, one is, ah, word template is a marketing campaign template, so it’s, like, what are we trying to achieve, who our audiences is, what our risk. So it basically ask all the questions that are hard to get to on your own sometimes seem just fill those in. It talks about tactics, you start running with that, and then shawn, is it excel docks? E think it’s actually a word i have to look and see, but well, it’ll be a template for for establishing a report card for your campaign performance that’ll be in the same place. Okay, that’s a great resource. We’re gonna leave it there. All right? Sounds. Thank you. Alright. Rachel clemens. Sean dole’s. Rachel again is the president of creative suitcase non-profit communications and sean dole’s, vice president of mission advancement at the y m c a in boston. They’re both from austin. Sounds that’s rachel too. Thank you very much. Thanks for having us over sharing. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc the non-profit technology conference. Thank you for being with us. Social media for year end with amy. Sample ward is coming up first. Pursuant, they’ve got another free webinar for you. Upgrade your best donors today, it’s with pursuant consultants chris taft and christian priest and they will help you identify your donors who have capacity and interest in doing more for you. Maximize your resource is to engage the right prospects and fine tune your prospect visits it’s on tuesday, november fifteenth at twelve central and to register you go to pursuant, dot com under resource is click webinars and that when again is upgrade your best donors. Today we’ll be spelling spelling bees for non-profit fund-raising spelling bees with live music and dancing and stand up comedy and spelling monisha lt’s raising money for ugh, these air ideal for that because fund-raising is but this is all about is great fun, but it’s fund-raising as well. Check out their video we b e spelling dot com now it’s tony’s, take two, i’ve got more non-profit technology conference video interviews for you these are all on fund-raising donorsearch vase growing your sustainers revenue byway non-profit times just had a recent story from blackbaud sbi pecan unconference something like triple digit revenue hikes from sustainers, and they’re quoting chuck longfield who’s, the chief scientist at blackbaud, also a non-profit radio guest, all the smart people around non-profit radio s o sustainers revenue very, very timely and smart email marketing and dahna retention, which is today’s interview, but you could watch the video. They’re all from the twenty sixteen conference hosted by the non-profit technology network. Of course, my video on the beach introduces thes four videos and has links below it’s at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s take two. The phone just rang and i know it was amy sample ward, maybe step award. How you doing? I’m doing well. How are you? I’m wonderfully thank you. Let me give you a proper introduction. Our social media contributor and ceo of inten, the non-profit technology network. Her most recent co authored book is social change any time everywhere about online multi-channel engagement she’s that amy sample ward, dot or ge and at amy r s board are for renee. Of course. Welcome back. Of course. Thank you. I’m glad to be back. Yes, that we did chat, you know, briefly on the three hundredth show, but now you’re officially back from maternity leave. Congratulations again. It’s. Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. And and on that show, which was july twenty ninth, little lauren lewis was three months. That was his three month birthday s. So now, he’s. Just a little over six months, right? Yeah, exactly. Outstanding. Eso excited. So exciting for you and max. Wonderful. Yeah, it is exciting. And it is crazy that he’s six goes fast. I heared from all my friends who have children. I don’t know, personally, but my niece and nephew it does go fast. Yes. You have a little ah, little baby anecdote, little baby, orin louis anecdote. You want to tell her anything? Ah, that his peculiarities or anything? You sure? You know, i think every baby is different and he’s got he is certainly a product up his parents. When we meet up with other people that have babies, he is the only one who is constantly trying to talk, try to like, touch and engage all of the other big its crew. They’re all just lying there looking at him. Multi-channel he’s trying to talk to boys multi-channel engagement strategy has seen a lot of ourselves in him already. Cool. All right. That’s. Great. Multi-channel engagement. Listen. Seventeen ntc registration seventeen to twenty seventeen. Non-profit technology conference registration just opened. I note way want encourage people to go to that it’s an outstanding conference registration just opened three years ago on the first, and we’re already at record response. So we know this is going to be a really big ear. Excellent. All right. Just, uh, just he’s. Just this, like, weak or not? Even what? Today’s the fourth, right? So just in three days, you’re already ahead from this time last year, three days in last year o ahead from any year, yeah, standing, congratulations. Okay, so people goto and ten dot or ge and then i don’t even know do you have to click on the events tab? But now it just opens it and take you right there on the stage and ten dot org’s okay, go to the conference for pizza, but this one is in washington d c right? Yeah. It’s in washington, d c march twenty third through the twenty fifth and you know, dc is always our largest year whenever we go to d c because so many organizations air there or have partners there and feel like, you know, they’re they’re used to travelling there, so we know we always plan for the years that were in dc to be the biggest we’ve had, but it’s always like the biggest we’ve had until that year, so we know this year will be kind of the record that we’ve ever had until sometime in the future we go back, but yeah, it’ll be it’ll be fun. We’re planning all kinds of fun things. For this next-gen outstanding, always lots of hundreds of smart people speaking and it’s a very smart conference. So go and learn how to use technology wisely wiser in your social change work. That’s cool, i said, we want to talk about some some strategies that you have for year end social media um, and before we before we jump into, like, different strategies, i would like to start with how to evaluate whether we’re doing the right thing or not through our social engagement strategies. And you like google analytics for that? Yes, i mean, i think the biggest thing both kind of tio, this piece that you’ve brought up and more broadly to the idea of social media around you’re in campaigns it’s so frustrating and dishearten name to me when i see organizations or talked to organizations who are, whether it’s a you’re in campaign or any other time of the year and social media is like a compartment of itself it’s over, you know, on one side, and then you have, like, all these other people and and channels that you’re working on the campaign, and i feel like that’s, just setting yourself up to seo. Social media is invaluable toe, right? Because it’s not even a part of your plan and it wasn’t part of how you thought of the strategy, and it was only later that you were like, oh, gosh, we have this campaign going on let’s tweet a bunch about it, but that’s not that’s, not integrating right disintegrating social media into your campaign, you know, that still an after thought, and i think, um, just recognizing that you wouldn’t say, okay, we’re going to launch this fund-raising appeal for the end of the year, and we’re not going to tell anyone who’s going to work on the e mails related to it until, like, the day of, well, you would never do that. So why’re you doing that with all the social channels, you know, here don’t make social a step child? Thanks. Well, just don’t make it a separate no don’t help integrate. Integrate. Yeah, yeah, right. So so in our planning way want to build in analytics? Yeah. Okay. What? What? What advice do you have around specific? You are l’s? Or how would you like us to do this? Yeah. There is a lot with with google analytics. That you can do i mean, first, i always think you should go into planning campaigns with some sort of information already. So looking at your google analytics before you start planning your campaign to say, okay, gosh, what parts of the site are people using? I’m sure many organizations have a donate page that’s up year round, you know, our people even going to it to the rest of the year if they’re not then putting your year and campaign information on that donate paige is probably not going to get a lot of eyes right because no one’s going that way. So do some of your homework before you start planning using google analytics looking how people are using your site, but then also, you know, google analytics separates out traffic, evaluate what kind of social traffic you have for us, say direct links, which a direct link is often you know, that you sent him emails and someone had a direct link into your sight. We have to search or anything, so figure out what that incoming traffic flow is like now, because otherwise you’re going to spend planning your campaign, you’re going to want you and be like, oh gosh, we have all these people visiting our website. Well, maybe you already had that be visiting your website. You know you’re not gonna have anything to really inform your evaluations think doing some homework first on how people are using this i and also how people are getting to the site if they’re coming from social channels, they’re coming from email so that when you plan, you plan with those pieces in mind and then once you’re running the campaign it’s really not difficult, and there are plenty of resource is if if you want some step by step guides on using google analytics to set up what are called campaign girls so that you can instead of just always writing, for example, and tend that order, you can have a longer you are all that is still just sending people same page, but that girl has some important code, innit for google analytics, so it knows this is a link that you’re only using on social media for this specific pain, you know, here’s a different version of that code in that girl that you’re going to put in your email and that way you can say okay, we’re all obviously sending people as much as we can to the donate page or two, you know, to the ntc page. Um, but we’re able to look in guru bilich cincy, okay, a lot of the people that are coming are coming from social media, and those are the ones who are, you know, staying and going to the register page, etcetera, and then these folks coming from email, you know, they’re not coming as much or or whatever the situation is, but using the campaign you or else we’ll help give you so much more information about who’s responding, who’s coming to that page and how they’re taking action, okay? And it xero so it sorry, yeah, you’re you’re monitoring where they’re coming from and where they’re going to all in that bowling, that girl because of where you because we were in place because where you place it? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Brilliant. Okay. And there’s, of course. There’s tons to be said about google analytics. I think i think i’ve got an interview from one of the ntc on google analytics. I know we have one on google adwords, but separate. I know there’s. We could i know we could do ours on google analytics. Oh, totally. And like i said, there are resources to help give you some step by step if you’re new to using it. But it’s google analytics is free. You should be using that, and it does not take on incredible amount of technical knowledge to get it set up. You just have one little line of code you need to add to your website, and then your account is activated and you and you could do all this tracking. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Any you mentioned resource is do you know any off the top of your head that you can recommend? Yeah. I’m happy tio tweet a few and sent him to you to post up with the the archive. But with the takeaways, i could put him on the facebook page. Okay, you know, if you’re okay that you could do that? Sure. Um, okay, is there any other point you want to make about the analytics before we get into actually doing the campaign work? Well, i guess the last point that i’ll make kind of to wrap it back up to where we started is that if you don’t do that homework at the beginning to create some sort of benchmarks when you launch the campaign and you’re trying to kind of report out to staff or even your board about how well it’s going it’s going to feel really arbitrary to say, one hundred people from social media donated, right? Well, great. What is that compared to before the camera? That, yeah, so do that homework so that you could be informed in your planning, but also so that you can kind of report against that benchmark, you know? So so you’re reporting makes sense and has some context. Okay, very good. If we’re going to do this as part of a campaign, then we need to have consistency across all our all our channels, right? Yeah. I mean, one thing i always think about just in our own planning it and ten is that regardless of the age, demographic and regardless of the channel, that the donation comes in. So even if somebody is going to write you a physical check, the majority of people still go to your website before they make that donation. So even if they are following you on social media and that’s where they saw the ask and they’re going to do it online donation people are still kind of following up on your ask and and what it is that you’re potentially working on before they donate. And so the the huge opportunity there is to recognize that you’re not necessarily always going to know where they saw that ask and what is it? What other piece of your work they’re evaluating? So creating some consistent experience around that is huge, and it doesn’t take a ton of work. Most organizations are already going to create some sort of collateral or brandy material for their campaign, so making sure that you have those same images in the right dimensions, right cause, of course, every platform wants to have its own particular dimensions, but so that your facebook banner, you know, has an image that reflects your campaign. Maybe you are, you know, to use a pretty standard example for your ad campaign there’s, a family that you serve and you’re telling their story in your appeal letter, right? So making sure that maybe a quote from that story that’s really compelling as a standalone quote is in your facebook, the inner and your twitter banner has a reference of the same campaign. So wherever folks are kind of touching into the campaign and then moving around to evaluate if they do want to donate their there, seen the same, uh, appeal. Not that it’s, like exactly the same image over and over, and they’re just getting sick of it. But you’re within that same world of the campaign instead of heading over to your twitter page and having it be about your last event, hate and it is completely unrelated and doesn’t speak to the same thing. Okay, very good. Tomorrow, let’s, go out for our break, and when we come back, i’ve got live listener love. Of course, the live love has to go out and me, and i’ll keep talking, including integrating offline, you’re offline support for your social support for your year end campaign. Stay with us. 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 neo-sage 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 were 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, tap trends, sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m melanie schnoll begun managing director morgan stanley philantech management. Melanie schnoll begun is next week’s guest for the hour all right, the live listener love it’s gotta go out it’s all over the world. It’s amazing. May where we’re starting, we’re going to start a broad protest it i don’t know if i’m saying it right. Testy romania love it kayman jin germany guten tag the live listener love goes out also to norway. We can see the city but i really don’t want to mispronounce it g et u p h e norway live listen, her love to you philippines we got craze on city. Istanbul, turkey. Milano, italy, seoul, south korea, on io haserot, of course, comes a ham nida also ottawa nation’s capital canada. Checking in ottawa live listener love to you, iran. I’m sorry. We cannot see your city. But we know that you are with us. Coming into the u s st louis, missouri, rosedale, new york, binghamton, new york, new york, new york. Unbelievable. New york. Thank you for that new york love it’s going out to you. Thank you for bringing it in. It’s going out, including new york, new york. Love that. Thank you. College station, texas with us live love. Eugene, oregon not oregon. I heard i was on a bus yesterday, and somebody said she was taking jetblue to oregon and i wanted tap on the shoulder corrector no it’s, oregon, eugene, oregon live listen, love going to you okay? And, of course, on the heels of the live listen, love comes the podcast pleasantries because how could we not say thank you to its really its more than ten thousand now? The numbers are going up it’s more like twelve thirteen thousand i make it official, but i want to see if it sticks before i start boasting, but we certainly have had shows where they’ve been twelve close to thirteen thousand listeners. Yes, is that consistent? Not quite, but were spiking. So podcast pleasantries to the many tens of thousands one point three, ten thousands listening. Thank you so much. Whatever activity you’re doing whenever you listen in your time shift. Thanks for being with us and the affiliate affections to our many am and fm station listeners throughout the country, including in oregon, i mentioned yugi eugene, oregon live. Listen, love, we’re on a station in salem, oregon, so if you were listening on one of the am and fm affiliates affections to you. Thank you so much, kayman sample ward. Um, here we are and, uh, let’s move along to ah what’s your next you threw out another strategy. Go ahead. What else? You want to talk about social media wise for our year end campaign? Sure. Well, i think one thing that we’ve seen organizations kind of struggle with or unnecessarily struggle with that kind of stumble with is how to balance their own kind of full year and campaign with these e-giving days that are now more prominent so e-giving tuesday often is happening kind of in the middle of people ar e having their own urine campaign, and then sometimes towards the end of the year, sometimes at other times of the year, you know, different states or regions have their own kind of local giving day. And so how do you balance all the effort that goes into, you know, even just a single giving day and having visibility and donors on that with what we’re already running for six weeks? Kind of an end of your campaign, and i think that that is tricky. I think it it requires planning. For that day, when you’re doing your full end of your campaign, if you’re going tohave, you know, six weeks is your end of your campaign knowing okay in week three e-giving tuesday is happening, so is there may be a version of our campaign ass that we want to reserve, as are kind of giving tuesday version of the ask so that it feels like, you know, an opportunity to make an additional asked during the campaign that otherwise maybe would have felt like too many asked, right? Because you’re kind of taking advantage of that day versus feeling like, you know, okay, we’re going to create a whole separate giving tuesday campaign. I think organization should try to be really realistic about their capacity, because e-giving days in and of themselves take a lot of effort, and your primary effort is probably going to be your own and of your campaign, but not necessarily completely avoid it. If it is something that’s going to give you a little bit more attraction, or like i said before, an opportunity to maybe make a different version of the ass that gives you one more touchpoint during the campaign, so planning is important and also being realistic about what your team can do, you know, you maybe, you know, maybe you need to pass on giving tuesday or something else in your in your year and strategy, you know, be realistic. I mean, you know, it’s the same thing we’ve talked about so many times, like shiny object syndrome, you know, in in the social channels, no, you can’t do everything in your year end campaign that you might like, so plan and be realistic and, you know, obviously get the get those the input of the people who are going to be doing the work one i think the other part about being realistic there is that for, you know, the vast majority of organizations that bulk of donations for your end of your campaign aren’t coming the first week of december, they’re coming the last week of december. So the timing of giving tuesday as the tuesday right after thanksgiving may not be the most high traffic time or your donor’s anyway. So thinking about that, too, do not have unrealistic expectation that, you know, that’s going to become your your bigot e-giving day now, and if it isn’t you know what? What do you want on giving days that made on giving tuesday? Is that a day like you said, you know, to skip because for your community it’s not worth it? Is it for your community an opportunity to maybe make a really small, ask and get people that otherwise wouldn’t give to give just ten dollars, and then you can ask them again before the end of the year? You know, i think there’s different ways to kind of use giving tuesday as a test for your community, but for most organizations who are running a full end of your campaign that’s just going to be one little blip in the longer campaign, it could also be for something smaller and non non non financial, maybe it’s, maybe it’s a signing of a petition or maybe it’s volunteering, maybe maybe use giving tuesday is a volunteer recruitment day. Totally, i think that’s a great idea because it led people deal like they’re still participating in that day and they’re still contributing to the organization, but maybe those are the folks who wouldn’t give for soon, and they’re not going to otherwise respond to ask, yeah, and so leading up to giving tuesday and and that day, you’re taking a little break from from from the money asks, and then you get back to it. Okay, um, okay, anything else you got in that? In that respect? Um, i mean, no, we could we could talk. I mean, i want to be conscious of time and talk a little bit about offline, too, because i think a few great pieces from the interview earlier in the show today, okay, let’s do that. Okay? Like, let’s, go there, the piece about cards, you know, and thinking about those riel physical touches that make make it so much more meaningful. Um, i’m such a i’m such a big such a big proponent of the hand written note on dh and the small card that you can do, you know, you know, you don’t starita blanket and a half by eleven inch page on your on your screen and feel like i have to fill it with words for the next forty forty minutes. Yeah, it’s one or two sentences on a on a little note size card and then a matching envelope i mean, hand written envelope it’s it’s enormously touching me. Sean dole’s, sean and shauna. Rachel both said it, but yeah, i’ve been a fan of that for a long time. It’s quick, it’s, genuine and sincere and it’s uh, extraordinary. It just doesn’t happen anymore, so you’re standing on when that we’ve tried is specifically when it comes to kind of year end things, of course we love at and then we love sending cards and stickers and things all year round, but when it comes to the end of your things picking a threshold like fifty dollars or five hundred dollars, whatever is your makes sense as a line for your organization and saying, ok, anybody at that number above is going to get a handwritten card and then because that takes slightly more capacity, but then we’ll also pick a day, usually before people go off line for the holidays so, like, you know, maybe the seventeenth or the eighteenth of december and anyone who was donated by then we divide up among staff so that every staff person only has, you know, eight or twelve people, and everybody just called to say thank you for donating doesn’t ask for another gift, doesn’t the purpose of the call is just to say thank you and, you know, as you can imagine, eight times out of ten, you’re getting a voicemail anyway, because people are at work or whatever, but we get such incredible response. From people saying, oh, my gosh, you actually called to thank me for it just donating because otherwise donating is pretty human list, right? You just goto you got an email, you went to a website, you, you know, putting your credit card like you didn’t interact with anybody. So being able to have a card or a phone call to say thankyou makes it feel like we saw that you gave that gift right? And that i think, is a really powerful thing is that people have people recognize that someone’s paying attention, right? They know that i made this gift and i am seen by this organization. I think that for a year on campaign, when there’s so many messages out there and, you know, so many different competing asks it can make people really remember you that’s where we have to leave it outstanding. I agree the offline on, and it is fun. It could be a lot of fun. She’s amy sample ward, ceo of inten at amy sample ward, dot or ge, and at amy rs ward. You still got it. You haven’t lost it since the spring loved having you love having you back. She’s gone already you believe that you hung up on us? I think you’re cutting all the way cutting out so i don’t know if i could say anything ever having. Very welcome and i was saying you didn’t you haven’t lost it since the spring next week. Next week, as i said, melanie schnoll begun how to appeal to high net worth people also next week please vote whoever for it’s important. Get out, please vote. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com the beseech got lost the past couple weeks. I don’t know what happened to beseech but it’s back if you’re not responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez and this cool music is by scott stein. Thank you for that scottie 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. 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 eight pm 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 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 sacristan. 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.
