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Amy Braiterman & Dan Clasgens: Stay Out of Email Jail
And avoid deliverability death traps. Segment. Re-engage. Analyze. What’s a pristine? Our Nonprofit Technology Conference panel breaks it all down. They are Amy Braiterman from CDR Fundraising Group and Dan Clasgens with DAV, Disabled American Veterans.
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Buy-in 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. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of cola sister gas draws to me if you gold me with the idea that you missed today’s show, stay out of e mail jail and avoid deliver ability traps, segment reengage analyze what the heck is a pristine our non-profit technology conference panel breaks it all down. They are amy braverman from cdr fund-raising group and dan class skins with dv disabled american veterans real estate in prospect research. Maria simple is our prospect research contributor, and the prospect finder she returns with resource is tips and strategies for reactive and proactive real estate research. I’m tony steak, too, the late summer finger wag responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuing capital p wagner, cps guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com by tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream, tony dahna em a slash tony tell us and by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr to four, four, four. Nine nine nine here is stay out of e mail jail from welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc non-profit technology conference coming to you from the convention center in new orleans. Sponsored, of course, by hosted by non-profit technology network and ten this interview, like all our eighteen ntcdinosaur views, is sponsored by network for good, easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits my guests are amy braverman she’s, associate director of digital media at cdr fund-raising group, and dan class ken’s, digital marketing strategist for dvd disabled american veterans. Amy dan, welcome hi! Thanks for having us. Thank you for having this time. Have you not brought radio? My pleasure. Your workshop topic is stay out of email, jail and avoid deliver ability. Death traps. Yes, that’s. Very good. And we now i covered this probably two or three years ago. And i learned that there’s such a thing as a une e mail deliver ability specialist that’s a title. People people study this stuff. You have to study this stuff to stay on topic. Okay. It’s a full time job. Really? Amy let’s, stay with you. Why? Why? Hyre what kinds? Of problems that we having generally, we got plenty of time together going to detail. Okay, start us off, general. Generally, i think our biggest problem is that there’s a lack of control there three main factors that kind of go into email deliver ability, and that is the email platform that you’re using you yourself, the non-profit and your best practices hyre how you’re sending e mails and then lastly, the mailbox providers, gmail, hotmail, yahoo outlook they all have different rules for how you get your emails in their inbox is how you reach your supporters and because of those three factors and the complexities that they all have it’s really tough. Teo, just stay on top of everything makes it a full time ok? It sounds a bit of a morass. Damn morass. Yes. Oh, i mean, absolutely. It’s changed your q. I think your radio probono hyre on dan. I missed the count. Well, i think what we’re finding honestly is people you want to engage with people that want to get they want you to engage with them, and i mean, we as marketers way are not really big fans of having to keep up. With these rules, but as a consumer, tony, i mean, you only really want to get the information that you’re interested in, and from that standpoint, i think google and yahoo and i mean they’re their jobs not to serve us it’s, to serve the consumer, and i think they’re doing a good job of it, okay? So they have the interest of their customers, principally, right? And not you other people are serving you, but not the email providers. Yes, i think i think the biggest challenge is it’s just it’s such a huge change of mindset, of going into it because, you know, in the in the world where i live in a stable american veterans, i mean, we’ve been one of the very large direct mail operator for a long time, and i mean, buying less ranting list, i’m as part of the direct mail business, and there you just take every address and amy and get you send a mail, right? It doesn’t work that way in the inbox anymore and it’s causing us to really change the way we think about how we do email folks and i think it’s also because it usedto work. Like that, i mean, email best practices years ago where send your e mails to everybody, everybody and anybody, we don’t care who you are. We don’t actually really care if you’re that interested in us or what you are interested in. And because of the fact that our in boxes are generates so much information. So many e mails? Well, yeah, i mean, it was even three years ago. I remember before i join cdr doing an email audit where that was the organization’s practice, and i was trying to explain to them, hey, we can’t keep doing this because you’re going to get these five percent open rates are going to ruin your center reputation, and they’re like center what? Like, you know, two years ago, i’m sure there was folks in our session today who are, like, we’re still sending to anybody we know about this segment thing, and we know why we should do it, but weren’t we have to it’s a total is dance, i’d like change your mindset of going from we want to reach everybody, and we need max impressions, too. We need to make sure that we are maintaining our reputation and how we’re interacting with our supporters, okay, this center reputation it’s a pretty simple phrase to understand, but it’s it’s it’s what? The platforms, the email platforms are these have judging the fight. They each have their own score that’s what makes it tricky? They don’t all play by the same rules. Yeah. It’s a morass, right? Yeah. I mean, extended reputation. We’re saying in our session today is basically like, your credit score is already done. Yeah, where you going? Outside or on the downside? We’re coming on the booze. You’re the khumbu. What? You even show happy hours here, right after this and the wind, the open bar non-cash bars only about twenty five feet away. Also we figured, hey, why not reach more people and tell them about all of our trials and tribulations and successes and maybe not such here’s the thing email, i mean, whether you’re a large non-profit like myself, a disabled american veterans or you’re the smallest non-profit in this room, this challenges facing all of youse gotta send her reputation. You know what? It or not? You’ve got one. You’ve got one, okay? And it may be good or maybe bad and it’s the same like analogies of your credit score. If you go to buy a car, you can buy a car with a bad credit score. There’s going to be huge interest rate, you can still send emails with the bats under reputation. You just might not be actually getting to the people. What are some of the factors that go into the centre reputation, dan? Well, i mean, i definitely understand it varies across email platforms. Yes, so i mean, how much people engagement your emails? Are they opening your e mails? Are they clicking on things who you’re sending it to? We’ve spent a lot of time our session today talking about spam traps and, you know, the providers out their pristine spam mail traps, for instance, or one where they actually put thes fake e mails out there. And if you’re not practicing best practices, buying list and doing these other types of activities where these e mails are on there and you’re going to them that’s a trigger that you’re not following these best practice. So there’s these traps out there, it’s like a land mine, and we’re just walking through there drops spam traps, there’s all kinds of so they’re seating bogus addresses on tow until lists that it shouldn’t be buying. Yes, okay. And you maybe what? What? What traps way covered four of them today. The four main ones we did the pristine. The next one is the recycled spam trap. And this is something that so pristine. The big difference is a human never had that they’re created tio by the email industry to make sure you as an e mails under r following good practices a pristine a pristine, pristine, pristine like a pristine beautiful beach with your note. But it’s not very beautiful. Now, it’s not okay, what’s a pristine okay, so the first teen is they’re created by non humans to monitor your email practices to make sure that email centres like devi or any non-profit or any for-profit consumer product is sending emails responsibly. How does it do that? How does it work? I have no clue because i am not that technical, but you can google and find out a little bit of i mean, look into pristine there other type of perhaps we talked about were like way too so for typos like you misspell it. Like instead of gmail g mall, yahoo without the one of the o’s or something that gets onto your list fake address. You don’t really want to give someone your address, but you need to complete the form. So if you’re sending to a lot of these like where the email addresses misspelled, they’re the domain is misspelled. That’s ah, that goes into this. Yeah, it’s not as much of a factor of some of their you know their heads. Different variants is teo, but they all play into it. It’s, time for a break pursuant. Their latest paper is pursuing e-giving outlook. You’ve heard me talk about it. They took the latest fund-raising reports. They boiled it all down. It’s ah it’s ah it’s! The thie essentials that you need from all the fund-raising reports that have come out recently all in one concise content paper plus there’s a video archive. Go to tony dahna em. A slash pursuing remember the capital p for please now, back to stay out of email. Jail. Okay. And then what was the fourth one? The fourth one is a role account. It’s a little bit more difficult to explain. But it’s it’s kind of in that same vein of, like, it’s? Not really you it’s something else that was added on there, and then the recycled, which we touched on for a second. But that is an email address that used to exist by a real human being and then is no longer in use. And after a period of time, the email provider the mailbox provider has said, this is not tru e mail address anymore. Okay, so they wait all these things together. They put them through their mash, and they decide on your center reputation. Yes, and it’s like a scale from one to one hundred. Anything above eighty is great. Seventy to eighty is saying you’re doing well, but you have room for improvement below seventy says, wow, you really need to fix your practices and that’s where it could impact you deliver ability. So so you’re saying the email providers will just not deliver your messages? Yeah, they just go off sometimes in the la la land buy-in we’ll sail on the whole the whole campaign with this one whole send all of it tonight could do that or it’s going to vary again. It’s going varies. Based on the timeline out provider that you’re going through to get to your constituents, that is okay, but you shouldn’t be risking obviously don’t want be risking it. I mean, if you’re if you’re below seventy with female, you’re in bad shape. I think the big thing is your score coming from coming from a fund-raising perspective at a non-profit like d a d i mean, we are driven by the ultimate dollar, right? So trying to get folks to realize that, hey, we can’t blast out all five hundred thousand of these people because half of them aren’t even open in the e mails if they’re not opening, they’re not engaging it’s, hurting all all that impacts deliver ability, but amy is found with us, and with other accounts of cdr and an industry has is we’re actually emailing less people more frequently, and we’re generating more revenue from it. Okay, okay, you’re deliver ability. Your reputation is hyre you’re engaging with, you’re sending two people who truly are engaging with you all those reasons, right? Exactly. Okay hey took the cliff notes version of our session today. We’re drill well. Let’s. Wrap it up. I got another. Fifteen minutes or so, roughly, but it’ll go fast. Kruckel okay, so we talk about avoiding the death traps, all right. Are there any more death traps? Anything we need to know about about what the industry is doing to snag us up recovered? Yeah. I mean, spam traps were the big thing. And the thing that we really shared with people today is that hitting a spam trap isn’t the end of the world. When you google for reports or to find out about spam traps, the resource is like what you’ll see back is all these very dramatic things that make you feel like a horrible e mail market or if you hit a spam trap. But it’s, not the end of the world you can really recover. And spam traps are telling you that you actually have a symptom of a larger problem. That there’s something going on with your email practices. That is just not working. And you need to take a look at it and figure out, you know, what will work. You know, i was actually thinking about this, dan, like when we hit a pristine spam trap in january of twenty. Seventeen and had a two percent open rate from an audience that we were getting seventeen percent open rates before so it’s a huge drop and it let us know we clearly have an issue, and i honestly think that hitting that spam trapping experiencing that was really the best thing has happened to us definitely opened our eyes and change the way we act. Yeah, you work together, we work together, we worked with cpr. Yes, dahna could never you could smoke whatever with your eyes not aware we want teo, especially our fund-raising right, it’s growing it’s always fund-raising growing doesn’t talk about sex vacation because that’s that’s a solution to this isthe dan, how is segmentation solution? I think just knowing what people are interested in and feeding them, information that relates to their interest is huge, and once again, i mean, we’re come from a world of direct mail where we’re mailing out this mail piece toe hundreds of thousands of people and that’s what’s cool about digital is you can really get it down to a very small interest group and hit him with that interest. I think what we’ve done with our segmentation has really paid. Big dividends and the fact that, you know, we’re able to see, because each of these people respond differently the types of messages to the different types of subject line, so we were able to test better with segmentation and overall, i just think that it goes back to what i said before, people that want to get our stuff, they’re going to get what they want and that’s, why we’re seeing the metrics and the click throughs and everything else respond accordingly. Is there any segmentation beyond interest? Well, yeah, i mean, we we got the frequency that they donate, obviously. I mean, you know, when’s the last time they made a gift, what type of action did they take with the organization? I mean, where do they attend a Job fair where they’re 5 k participant? Where are they? A veteran? Are they not a veteran? I mean, there’s, a lot of things of in segmentation there’s a lot of layers to it. You need a really good date. I think one of my challenges at our organization and we’re striving to get better every day is taken. All these separate databases out there that you know, these silos that exists and merging them together and having this global view of how this hand impacts this hand and, you know, it’s part of my job every day, and, you know, about amy and her cd, our team really works on developing great strategy, i’m in there educating the stakeholders and trying to manage, you know, all the politics that go on inside a large, large organization and, you know, making strikes, people are listening to what i’m saying, they’re so that from that point, you know, we’re doing good things, okay? Okay, amy, anything you want to add on deputation or you like them, dan covered, and i think the best thing about having dan as like our email partner or digital fund-raising partner and marketing is that he’s done an amazing job educating internally, learning, learning we’re all learning together and then getting those stakeholders bought in and if you’re a non-profit out there and you’re struggling with this, that is probably the hardest part is educating internal resource is and just stake orders about hey, we’ve got to make these changes because, yes, the money is still coming in, but eventually, if our center score continues to drop, we’re going to not see that money. No, you have a case study one hundred twenty six percent increased in open rates. Is that is that a tv or somewhere else knows it was that dvd. So when we hit that spam trap in our way, we’ll learn from what can we learn from it? We can learn that you need teo segment your audience. Find out what content is relevant to them. Get buy-in from internal state quarters and you can recover from any mishap that has happened to you. You can get open rates that go from two percent up to where ours air usually steady now in them twenties at twenty three. Twenty four percent. You know, we used to judge a good open raid at, like fifteen percent was an industry standard. I think for us a deviant cdr. I get bummed out when we’re not at a twenty two or twenty one. I’m like, oh, let’s, figure this out, let’s see what we can do. I think the other metric that is our new favorite is open to cliques. So this says of the people that open my email, this percentage clicked on. It and that tells you if you sent them content quick, something is like something in it, like click to a donation form, click to a survey promotion, more anything and that tells you if your message and the content you’re providing your supporters with means something matters to them, it allows us to also see the content they’re interested in. What are they clicking on? What aren’t they click on? I think the other thing that’s really played into the whole email challenge we face is the the idea of unsubscribes for spam people marking you as a spammer is like death sentence. I mean, essentially they’re saying your spam and not only they saying that they don’t want your stuff, but they say they’re your annoying them and that you’re not they don’t. They didn’t ask you to come there in the first place, and what we’ve learned and we’re learning every day is, you know, we sent out a large audience and you get a handful of spam rates, but the percentage is so low that it’s not as impactful if we just be about one hundred people and two people. Click on spam suddenly that’s two percent and that span percentage rate is another thing that plays into deliver ability. So one of the things that we’re working to do and put more in our strategy is to make it maur educate people how it have two unsubscribes easier making unsubscribes more available because if they don’t want to be bothered, then we want to stop bothering them. And that’s that’s really what these providers air forcing us to do. And at the end of the day, i think from from a consumer standpoint, it’s awesome, but from a marketing standpoint, a those that adjust and and go and change the way that they do things i think there’s still going to find probably way we’re fine is even more success than the way we used to operate have a hacker, the rial spammers getting through that because i’m you know, i’m marking junk all the time. A lot of i p addresses a lot of their spoofing are there? Or are they just there constantly turning over? Yes, every day i mean there’s a lot of everyday, they change, i think, there’s something like two hundred thirty four million spam traps out there. And there’s it could even be billion like it’s huge and there’s a a not a crowd sourcing thing that allows you to track spam and see how many traps are currently live and what’s happening in the internet just to give you like a thermometer checking the pulse rate of what’s happening out there because i know i know some of the bad guys are getting through. Yeah, they get there. You just want to minimize it. I mean, at one point, when we in order to get that very low open right, have issues that we saw. We probably hit a few hundred spam drops. You’re not going to hit one spam trap, there’s. Not like one out there that like. Oh, i hit the one you were going to hit multiples. You could hit three recycled like we celebrated huge success going from a few hundred two. We only hit three like that’s. Amazing. Because there’s. So many out there and it’s. Very easy to get to let’s. Talk about re engaging you. You touched on amy reengaging. People who aren’t engaged aren’t clicking. What are some tips for? For this let’s? Spend a few minutes on this. Yeah. I think one of the things that we all struggle with is it’s hard to say good bye to people like you want you know it as fundraiser isn’t even unsubscribes way don’t like to see that list, especially for what we pay the cost per acquisition in this industry is so high that it’s like it’s hard to give up on that, so what we’ve started doing is every time we’ll do it full, send sometimes to r un engaged file and will recover some people, which will see that as a win will take the hit on the spam complaint rate to bring back some more folks we’ve advertised to them in different channels, whether it’s, facebook or doing in male ads like for yahoo, our gene mail, those air this sponsored ads at the top of your inbox and then what we’re actually really focusing now on is how can we be a lot more thoughtful in trying to re engage so making the qualifications for who’s going to get that reengagement email stricter, you know, like let’s send to lapse donors from the last two years and see how that gets us let’s do laps donors the last year. Let’s do laps donors for a year and open an email a year ago. So we’re like working through to see what kind of rates we can get. Who we can bring back and figure out what that unique. What works for davey and that’s that’s. Kind of our re engagement tactics. What do you feel is a decent reengagement rate? I don’t think we have that yet. I don’t know, i don’t think we have that thing is every time we hit this un engaged audience so there’s good there, i’m out of it, but there’s bad too. So what we’re really trying to drew is sort of strike a balance of what that is, and i think it d a v for us as well, it’s harder not to crack because we’re dealing with a lot of different groups here, like we have our donors, as i mentioned right there, there’s the one point three million members of the organization that an entirely different group of folks we have our advocates, those that are part of our commanders action network, that air really interested our legislative issues and all these different arms out there. What might work in one audience doesn’t necessarily translate to another audience. So i think as you look at your organisation, you have to that’s where it goes back to the segmentation, understanding what drives those people, what motivates those people in the more data you have to support that, i think it will help you figure out what are the better strategies to re engage in these folks and at what point is amy said, are we willing to say goodbye? Is it possible that we’ve talked around it’s a little bit to figure out why your emails aren’t getting what? Why your emails aren’t getting through to you? Can you tell what whether you had a spam trapper was pristine? Or is it possible to evaluate that or you can their companies out there that can give you reports to tell you what types of spam traps you’re hitting to tell you how many different ip addresses air out there for you so there’s lots of different ways to figure out they’ll tell you what’s going on, but they won’t say, oh, this is specifically why you did it that’s kind of up to you to figure out, but chances are that you can get that information at least on how many types of traps you’re making your hitting because what it does it allows you then to do to go clean up your file, i think that’s another important topic that we haven’t talked on is let’s clean up the file. So now that you identified a problem, i hit to spam. Traps or one hundred, spam traps. Whatever your case may be, you can work with different services to have them look at your file. They match it up with the different mailbox providers, and they’ll tell you whether or not they’re valid email addresses invalid. Whether they have, ah, hard number of heart bounces off, bounces that, whether their spam complainer. So they have the propensity to hit spam on your emails. And what that allows you to do is put on lee, sent to the valid e mails. You know, take all of those invalid, take all the ones that are marked as spam, and put them in a group and not talk to those people. So then that also helps to ensure your developed deliver ability is happening, and that you have a good center score oppcoll way still have a few minutes left together. What what haven’t we talked about? That we should be flushing out more. I definitely think the tools we’re using, you know, different non-profits of different sizes have different tools, and she mentions a lot of these providers that score your tools, but just the tools that you have, i mean, obviously, you know, there’s big companies like blackbaud there’s the male chimps in the different things, but knowing how, you know, turning to them as a resource on some of their standards, because as amy mentioned before, there’s three parties in this and they’re one of the parties, so the googles and the yahoos and all those providers they’re i mean, they’re they’re the gatekeeper on that end, and we can practice our best practices there, but take advantage of those resource is out there. I don’t think that enough people actually go on and look at the research and the information that’s out there, and this is very nice that you’re saying that the email provider, the email providers they themselves put out there and, you know, amy and i, we’re we’re more marketers than we are techies. So if your organization has so somebody in charge of email that’s, more of a marketer or somebody in the communications team, for instance. It’s, good to loop in some of these folks i know for me and my organization. I have been lost without some of the stuff that cd ours helped assan cover. Having them to turn to is a resource helped implement some of these things because it changes every day to wave made a lot of progress. But this story’s not ending because then you could be two steps forward. One step back kugel changes something they’re not sending out of press release, right? We’re learning you want after that after after you dahna campaign or ascended it’s fun, you know the job’s never the same any day. That’s one thing that you can say for sure when it comes to evil marketing hundreds and like dan it’s totally right, you know, even us, as you know, as a friendraising agency are focuses on fund-raising and marketing, raising money and using the reaching out to your the platform that you’re using to send your email getting their technical help. It’s huge! I don’t think i would be where i am or as a group with davey without having the support of their i t department, they helped us do cem further very authentication called demark and deacon. Which folks can google learn all about it’s? A little bit confusing, but it’s really important? Because it insures that hackers aren’t spoofing your emails and that aren’t sending things under the dv domain that are actually devi. We have george in jail on twenty one radio you just transgressed seriously, we’re ah, i don’t think we have enough time to explain, but just repeat de marque de marketmesuite oppcoll that and decamp d market with the c a r c and d kim decay. I am i’ve seen these things in print. I don’t know what they mean. All right, we’re gonna let you off the hook. Thank you. Or sorry for the jargon jail. But they are. It is very important. Teo, just go and check it out. Go ask your i t department about it. They can actually educate you on these two terms and check and see if you need to get better email authentication and implement these leads to tactics. Okay, dan, anything you want o close with god. Give you a few seconds to close. No. Honestly, i just think that, like i said, it’s it’s every evolving, so it’s going to change a month from now, six months from now stay on top of your game. If they want you, they want you to contact him. That’s what you want to contact, engage him and make it more about them instead of about you. And i think the more non-profits do that, the more success they’re going to find that’s dan class begins, i say right, you got i did with the hardy digital marketing strategist of devi, the disabled american veterans and also amy braverman, associate director, digital media at cdr fund-raising group. Thank you, amy. Dan. Thank you. Thankyou, tony. This interview sponsored by networked for good, easy to use donorsearch monisha and fund-raising software for non-profits. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the twenty eighteen non-profit technology conference. Thanks so much for being with us. We need to take a break. Wagner, cps. They go beyond the numbers they’ve got. The resource is for you. Lots of different subjects at weger, cps dot com and you click resource is after you spent some time on the site. Pick up the phone. Go in. Real life talk to eat hooch doom. You know him? He was on the four hundredth show. He’s been a guest. He’s a partner there. He’s a pro. Good guy, wagner, cps dot com. Then have a chat with you now for tony’s. Take two it’s late summer and i’m wagging my finger at you reminder. I implore you. I can’t beseech, but i do implore make time for yourself over labor day weekend. You don’t just find it. I can’t find time. I don’t have time. I can’t find any time. Make the time make the time for you you have talking to you. You the person you personally make time for yourself over labor day weekend. Hopefully did doing summer sometime. But i regret to inform you that labor day is creeping up and, uh, you need to make time urine e-giving profession. You need to take as well that you can give efficiently and feel good doing it time alone is restorative it if it’s refreshing make the time there’s more on my video at twenty martignetti dot com. I’m very glad to have maria semple back. You know her for pete’s sake. She’s the prospect finder. She’s, a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her latest book is magnify your business tips, tools and strategies for growing your business or your non-profit she’s, our doi and of dirt cheap and free. And i know she’s not gonna let us down today on that she’s at the prospect finder dot com and at maria simple. Welcome back, maria. Simple. Good to have you. Oh, it’s. So great to be back. Thanks for having me. Pleasure. Absolutely. Um, you want to talk about real estate and i was game real estate for prospect research. What’s the value here. Well, you know, it’s it’s kind of interesting because i always include real estate data in every single research profile that i do. So i almost feel like we’re doing a back to basics show here. Okay, you know what we’ve got? You know, the core pieces of information that that really should be part of every profile and real estate is is definitely one of them. And i was, you know, in preparing for today’s show. I was trying to come up with, you know, the why? Why would we want to even focus on real estate? Why is this important and so you know, i’m going to offer up a couple of reasons. You prepare one. You prepared. You wanted you wanted teo. I’m doing that. Okay. That’s. Something new. Okay, so one is from a report called the cap gem and i world wealth report, which indicates that really state actually account for eleven percent of a high net worth individuals. Total assets, right? So, i mean, when you think about the average person, right, if they own a home or they own a coop or an apartment or something, i mean that’s a significant portion of their wealth, right? Because, you know, are they going to gifted to you? Are they gonna liquidate that asset and give you the money? Probably not. However, that does lead me to think about planned e-giving, as you know, a way to think about real estate as well. Especially if you know, your prospects happened to be a childless couple. So plan giving is something that, you know you might want to think about with regard to any of their real estate holdings that they may have, whether it’s, you know their primary home or or secondary homes. Yeah, there’s. A lot you could do with real estate, certainly the methods you mentioned, if a lot of times you might hear that child or the children don’t like the beach house or the don’t like the home upstate in the woods or out in the mountains, and so that strongly suggests that it’s going to be liquidated or, you know, you might hear that those exact same sentiments and there’s a possibility that that piece of real estate could be left to you so that the person or the couple can continue living there for their lifetime and they pay all the expenses, and then you’re at their death at the death of the survivor, actually, with the survivors death, the property immediately is transferred to you because because you’re actually changing the the deed of the property that’s all called a retained life estate, she wanted to google it and find out more, but you don’t need the unity of the jargon just understand the concept, you know, if there’s a couple that is expressing dismay that the kids don’t really want the house? Uh, yeah, so that and, you know, by the same token, if you happen to come across in doing your research that a particular property of one of your donors is actually owned in a truck. You know, that kind of should send up that little signal flag to you that they have done sametz state planning. And you you want to make sure that you know you’re involving all the correct parties in the conversation. If you’re coming across the property owned in a truck, how would you find that out in your research? Well, if so, let’s say you have the name of aa prospect your your donor and you have their address and in researching their address, you find that the property is not in the the donor’s name or the donor and the spouse’s name, but rather it’s owned in a truss, actually that’s going to be? Yeah, yeah, totally it’ll be very clear because it’ll be titled that way. Ok? It’s it’s titled to the right the asset is titled to the trust. Okay, so so in your public records, that’ll do that’ll reveal itself. Yes, absolutely. So, you know you mentioned public record, so we’re very fortunate in this country in terms of doing donorsearch research on in these types of public records because all real estate across the united states is part of public records, most of it is accessible on the internet very, very occasionally, if it’s a really small little town that maybe doesn’t have a big web presence or they don’t have their tax assessor rolls, you know, available online, i might need to make a phone call, but i have to tell you that is happening less and less for me these days. Aziz, i’m able to find most of that data that i need online. Okay, you got i’m sure you have some sights, recommendations free and dirt cheap that you can share. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So, i think a really good starting place to be able to start finding, you know, ah, assessed value and taxes that people pay on their properties. Um, if you don’t know where you’re where the local tax assessor office is available online and so forth there’s one site that has a compilation state by state by state this toe where you can actually find the assessor info and it’s actually a fellow prospect researcher and she’s been maintaining this site for years. Her name is cristina. Pulawski and her sight is pulawski dot net, and i’ll spell that quickly uh, p u l a w s k i dot net and, um, if you go to that site, you’ll see a listing of all the states click through to the state of interest to you, and then you’ll easily be able. Teo, find the data that you’re looking for in the assessor and this is a free site. Yes. Pulawski dot net is free are doi n i knew are doing was not gonna let us down. Oi, end of dirt, cheap and free. Ok, what else you got? So so that that’s one that i really like is a good jumping off point for although that’ll get you teo teo, the assessor assessed values a cz well as taxes. So so let’s talk about those two pieces real quickly. You know, assessed values are very often not what the market values are. So in a minute, we’ll talk about some market values, sight. But, you know, i always like to include what is a prospect in my profile? I like to include what taxes are for the most recent year on that property, because i think it is very, very telling if somebody is able to sustain. And i did research once on dahna a couple who owned a property in in a wealthy area of new jersey but also had a house at the jersey shore. And between the two properties, tony, they were paying one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in property taxes. Okay? Yeah. That’s. A lot of money right there, right? That kind of tells you there’s some well, yeah. And then you take the take the value of those homes, multiply by nine and you’ve got ninety nine percent of their their their assets, right? Nine. Ninety percent of their wealth. Because you said for high net worth e the home is eleven per cent of the of the total assets. Yeah. Okay, very real. Look at look at all this information. We’re getting off just the that’s just from the assessed value. We don’t even know the market value of these properties yet, right? Okay, exactly way. Just have a minute or so we have a minute or so before break. So go ahead. But take take a breath after a minute or so. Hey. So the other thing i want to be able to tell you about is ways to find estimated market market value for the properties because, they said, it is very different from the assessed value on di think a site that we’re all very familiar with. Is zillow so kind of introduce that concept? If you need to go to break, and then we could talk a little bit more about zillow and different information that you could find there. Ok? The only thing i’ll put a finer point on is just to make sure that people know the assessed value that’s, the for those who may not own property. That’s, that’s, the that’s, the tax roll, value that’s, the that’s, the value of your home that is used to calculate your taxes. So they multiply that assessed value by the tax rate and that’s. How you get your your what you got to pay for taxes on that property versus market value, which i think is quite clear. Okay, let me take this break. Tell us you’ve heard enough. You’ve heard that you had to tell us moughniyah lt’s from charities that referred the companies for the credit card processing from the companies that are doing the processing and from those companies. Come processing fees and fifty percent of those fees go to those charities. You’ve heard the teles mony als that charity khun b you you can be getting the fifty percent of the fees. Go to the video. That’s. A place to start. Tony dot, m a slash tony tello’s. Now, let’s, go back to maria simple. Um okay, you were gonna hit us with market value. You got market value. Resource recommendations, love these are doi n, right? Right. So so i mentioned zillow and one of the reasons why i like zillow so much. Is that it’s a great snapshot of that property? I mean, literally, you will get a mapping. Sometimes there is a picture of the home. Uh, you’ll have information about, you know, the number of bedrooms, you know? Really, you square footage. What it left sold for three year. It was built. So you’re going to get a lot of information about that particular home, right? There, out of zillow, it mean it’s used extensively in the real estate profession, used extensively by anybody looking to buy or sell a home. So it is, you know, one of those sight that you definitely want to think about looking at, they call their estimates. It’s used extensively by me after i go to a friend’s house for dinner. And then i go home or i just go to the bathroom, and then i checked zillow, i got a guy i don’t know, i don’t know. What is this place worth? Sometimes i can’t even wait to get home. I was extensively you’re right. It is very use its used extensively. You’re absolutely right. Ok, is there another? Is there? Is there another market research resource? I mean, market value resource. Ah, well, if you are thinking about researching anybody in a city, it might be a little bit different self-funding example, in new york city, there is a site called city realty dot com, where you’ll be able, teo put in an address, uh, it’ll give you a picture of that building whether or not that building has a doorman, uh, you know, where recent sales were. Of apartments in that building uh, the year it was built, the amenities and so on and so forth. So again there you’re going to get an awful lot of information, even on those buildings where apartment, you know, maybe owned within a particular building. Yeah, cooper, condo and zillow. Zillow isn’t going to help you with with apartment properties, is it? Not much? I mean, you think the last time i was at a dinner with a friend’s apartment, whether i was successful, i don’t think i was able to find what i was looking for? No, i don’t think so. I don’t think they don’t know why i do it for all of them, so that nobody, none of my friends, they’re the only ones who’ll listen and none of them knows which which one i’m talking about. There just i do it universally. So i guess they should all just assume i’ll stop getting invitations. I don’t know one of the other. Um, yeah, but zilla doesn’t help with condos and co ops, right? I’m pretty sure. Yeah, yes. I want to look a city realty dot com that’s for new york city. Right? That’s for new york city, but suppose you’re one of the many, many listeners who does not live in the new york city metro area. What are you going to do for for condos and made it again? I would then go to, you know, look at the particular city that you’re looking for data on go to their main website as a place to start looking and start drilling down for any links that have to do with real property values. Realist, hey, you know any of those tax assessor’s. So those are some of the key words you want to start looking for in any of those drop down menus that you might find in any of the the city’s website. Ok, yeah, so you might you might have to just settle for assessed value if you can’t find a market value of cooper condo, right? But then you know what? They’ll give you the rate that you’ll be able to also, then, you know, multiply by to come up with an approximate, you know, tax tax assessment. Yeah, right. I was just saying, you know, just you might not be able to find market value for for apartments. That’s all. Yeah. You know, the best way i’ve done that then is to try and find an equivalent, uh, size department and what it’s sold for recently. Uh, look, it used to be able to find at least taels value’s. This’s why, precisely? You see you found a workaround. This is why you’re the prospect. Research contributed for now. Provoc radio. I knew there was a reason. Uh, no, i’m always reminded, but yeah. Okay, look, look for a comparable sale. Recent comparable sale. There you go. Brilliant. Brilliant. This is this is why you need to always, always, always go to that wonderful free site called google and put the property in there because right from that, don’t forget you’ll be able to get i mean, it’s just amazing. I can’t believe the precise photos and how closely i consume in on a home that i’m researching in terms of i can see number of cars in the driveway very often when i’m doing this type of research. So it’s, it’s amazing. He’ll definitely want to make sure you’re googling the address as well. So google as well as a swell a zillo. Okay for ok, ok. Um let’s see? Uh, you kind of like google maps for ah, well, before we go to google maps and broader real real estate discussion, is there anything more i don’t want to leave? You will leave your you’re good contributions unspoken. So is there anything more we need to talk about with respect to individual properties? Yeah, the only other thing i might mention is this sometimes sometimes in addition to putting ah, a property in the name of a trust, somebody might decide to really try and put some protection around that property and put it in the name of an llc. So if you’re resync researching someone like let’s, say you’re researching an entrepreneur and you know from conversations that you’ve had with them or from your board, that’s had conversations with this person that they have multiple property somewhere, and here your trying to find their name and you’re looking up their name, you know, the city that they live in a city and state, and you’re just not coming up with it. It might be that they own that property in an llc he might need to take one step first to go to the secretary of state. Database for that state. Put in the person’s name and see if it comes up connected to any l l sees, once you’ve got the name of the llc, then go back into your property database and research on the name of the llc as opposed to the individual. This is why she’s, the prospect researcher contributor. You gotta have a problem doing this work for you. If you don’t have one. Get maria. Uh, you know, brilliant. Brilliant. There you go. Very simple work around. We’re stymied. Everybody who, uh, who ran up against it, though. Okay? Yeah. Yes, holden elsie’s because, uh, i guess there’s, i guess there’s there’s a tax advantages, the business you’re doing, some kind of business passed through or something. Well, very often they’re just trying to protect the asset. So, you know, let’s say that, like i said, make-a-wish avectra nor or they own a big private company, um and they’re just trying to protect it against, you know, lawsuits and that sort of thing. Um, instead of putting it in their spouse’s name or a child’s name or whatever, still add maybe that extra layer of protection as a limited liability company. Owning the home as opposed to, you know, on individual a supposed them owning it personally and it being a personal i said it’s an asset of the llc. So if their personal assets wherever compromised for some reason thie the property in the llc would be outside that that reach. Okay, we just have to have a minute before break. So why don’t you just give us a little tease for what? How google maps could be helpful real estate wise that i bet a lot of people are not thinking about. So, you know, you and i have always often talked about pro active research versus reactive research. A lot of what we talked about it to this point in the show is on reactive research. Well, there’s a feature in google called my math that’s going to allow you to do some pro active research to really identify you know where some of your donors and prospects are based. Ah, and i’m going to give you some ideas and had to use that particular data. Yes, much more than just putting in an address. But that’s, right. Time for our last break text to give you get more revenue because they make e-giving easy for your donors. If somebody can send a text message, they can donate to you it’s simple not only simple but affordable, secure there’s taking care of these things for you, you text npr to four, four, four, nine, nine nine that’ll give you info, and you’ll also be able to claim your special listener offer npr to four, four four nine nine nine. We’ve got about six more minutes for real estate in prospect research and go ahead, marie simple reveal if this feature of google maps that we can use in our prospect research, i’ll bet a lot of people are not aware of, right? So it’s actually called my map and ah, the earl is a little bit long, so i’ll make sure that i get it to your social media team. Or maybe i’ll go ahead and upload it wherever you’d like me to do so. But it is google dot com slash math splash about flash my math. Okay, so it’s a bit long. I wish they had it a little bit shorter. You could probably find it anywhere, you know, once you first and foremost, you’ve gotta have a google account. So first things first, you gotta have that once you’ve got that, you’ll be able tio look at all the various tools that you know that that, uh, that place that you would go to once you’re logged in your google account, if you want to access to your calendar and all those other things and other features that google offers that you might be using, you’ll be able to find it there as well. So one way or another, you’ll get to it or just google google my maps, and then you’ll get to it that way. But what i loved loved loved about this, and i couldn’t believe how easy it was to use and how awesome the results were. Uh, it will allow you to upload a spread sheet into google and google wuebben map out while the addresses in that spreadsheet. So i started thinking about this and wondering, ok, well, i could see the applique ability for, uh, for a business to do this, but how can a non-profit potentially use this particular feature? And so i was thinking about a situation where you know, you’re thinking about running a special event or you’re thinking about running a cultivation event and you’re trying to figure out, where should we hold this event? You know, geographically, where does it make the most sense so that we could get the most people in attendance at the event? So you can upload a list of, say, the donors for that from that particular county or region or state or, you know, whatever it is, uh, and it will map out for you, it will put those little you know, those little markers were all so accustomed to teo jump a little pins, write it so it’ll will populate the entire map, and then you can actually hover over one of the over one of the pins and you’ll be able, teo, click on it and it’s going to give you all the information that you have tied to that particular prospect that you’ve uploaded from the spreadsheet. Yes. Oh, right, right. So all your data that you up, right, so it’s pinning the address, and then everything else you uploaded with it would would appear when you click on it or mouse over it. Or is it one of the other day when you picked up let’s. Just be careful because of that. Here’s. The caveat that you might not want to upload that personally identifiable information. The name you might not want to write. You might want to think twice about putting in. Um, they’re full name, for example in there or their email address or, you know, things like that or phone numbers. So you might be in this situation up loading less might be better just from the point of view that, you know, once you’ve uploaded this in here, this map is then saved in google under your map. This is a map you can call up at any time. Uh, and so i’m always wondering, ok, well, who else could potentially have access to this map then? You know, in the back of my mind, this is the way i’m thinking about. So i might be a little bit careful about uploading anything beyond city and state. All right, very good. Very good admonition. Oh, so? So you can use this map to see population densities within within a state. Now, did you see any maximum number of rose that you can? You can, including your excel spreadsheet. I mean, could it be ten thousand? Can you map the whole country? I didn’t, you know, i didn’t try anything with a huge spreadsheet. I sampled it with a much smaller one, but i you know, i have tto dig a little deeper, and in google’s, they do have a pretty good help section about how to use this so they might address that there. Um, but i’m not sure if they’re gonna limit you on the size of this. Okay, that’s a great question, but also, if you are, if you’re planning a visit somewhere, you know you’re doing your well. This is summer, so you’re not doing your winter visit to florida, but whenever you have to prepare for your winter visit for florida, so as you’re doing that what counties should be visit well, let’s, upload, let’s upload on a simple spreadsheet all our florida addresses query by state nfl put it in a spreadsheet exported to a spreadsheet. Upload that to google maps and you’ll see the population densities throughout florida and you’ll know which counties in town’s teo host in and then then you could then go for your personal visits. You could map your way through through the state dry, you know, find the best route, right? Doesn’t help you with routes. Yes, like so then you khun route from one visit one of your donors to the next to the next. And get get yourself a nice, efficient routes that you can maximize your time. You know, while you’re visiting florida so that you can visit, say, you know, five donors in a day is opposed to maybe you were thinking you could only get two. Well, wouldn’t it be great if he could get four or five people in that one day? Right? Google will will route you through them. Love it, love it. Okay, wait. We just have ah, minute left before we have to wrap it up. Maria simple. What would you like to leave our listeners with so two more deuces real quick. One is if you have a lot of you run five k’s and walk and things like that and you’re not. And some of these people may not be already tied into your organization to the level that you’d like them tied in beyond their participation. So why not again? Matthau out where all of these folks, you’ve got their registration data. They’ve registered for your race again. Tie in to google maps, find out where these folks are all coming from, to participate in your five k and see how you can have some further engagement with them. Another, you know, i thought about was we have to leave it. There dahna next next time. Maria simple she’s, the prospect finder, she’s at the prospect finder, dot com, and at marie, a simple thank you so much, maria, you’re welcome, good talking to you. Next week, we’re live with a studio audience from the foundation center. 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, well, your c p a is guiding you beyond the numbers weinger cps dot com. Why tell us credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream? Tony dahna slash tony. Tell us on by text to give mobile donations made easy text npr, to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine a. Creative producers. Claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez. Mark silverman is our web guy, and this music is by scott stein. You’re with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Schnoll you’re listening to the talking alternative network oppcoll waiting to get a drink. Nothing. Cubine you’re listening to the talking alternative net. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down? Hi, i’m nor in something potentially ater tune in every tuesday at nine to ten p m eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Yawned potential. Live life your way on talk radio dot n y c hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Are you into comics, movies and pop culture at large? What about music and tv? Then you’re in for a treat. This is michael dulled, your host on talking alternative dot com. I’ve been professionally writing comic books, screenplays and music articles from fifteen years. 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