Market Data on Online Marketing

Borrell & Assoc has released their 2006 online advertising estimates for all 210 of the country’s market areas.  The spreadsheet is free.  You can find this and more reports from Borrell and Associates here:

http://www.borrellassociates.com/report.cfm

-Marlene Schneider, DEI Corporate Support Coordinator & Principal, Revenue Solutions

Marketing Manifesto?

I’m not sure how much stock I put in “absolute truths” about marketing, and don’t even get me started about 5/7/10 essential rules.

But - here’s an interesting “Marketing 2.0″ manifesto from the Make Marketing History blog:

http://makemarketinghistory.blogspot.com/2006/11/j-train-marketing-20-minifesto.html

I especially like the idea of “ Interaction Requires Iteration.”  What are some interesting ways you let your listeners talk with the station?  No, pledge comments don’t count.

Izzi Smith, DEI Marketing Advisor

11 Things You Should Know About Online Donations

The Guidestar.org November e-newsletter featured a new study in partnership with Network For Good called The Young and the Generous: A Study of $100 Million in Online Giving to 20,000 Charities. (Network For Good, incidentally, processed it’s 100 millionth dollar in charitable donations in September.)  Depending on how much you want to read, there’s a summary version of the 11 main points and the full report here: 100mil_online.

 

Here were my main take-aways, but read it for yourself and weigh in.

 

Online givers are young, their average age is 38.  Compare this to the average age of 61 for DM donors.

 

Online donors are not new to making donations. Ninety-six percent have given money before, but they are new to online donating. This was a big one for me: Online donors are generous. Whether it’s impulse giving or using credit cards, online donors (excluding gifts of $5k or more) are giving $97 per gift, versus the industry average of $27.

 

Take a look at your stations’ average gift online versus phone pledges and pre-drive direct mail during your most recent pledge drive and see if this is true of your donors.

 

Large more well-known organizations like the Red Cross are receiving the majority of online gifts, but the numbers of donors giving online follows the long tail, where smaller, less well-known organizations are still receiving 50% of all dollars donated through Network For Good.

 

Donors turn to the internet for disaster and year-end giving.  If you don’t have a plan to promote year-end giving on-air using your website, or don’t have an e-appeal planned between now and December 31st, get started… today.  At just pennies per email it’s time to start putting appeals into your donors’ inboxes about what with their help, the station has accomplished in 2006, and with their continued support what can be possible in 2007.

 

Give while you work - donors are most generous on weekdays during normal business hours.  Tuesdays between 10am and Noon are good for donors. When are your e-renewals and appeals being sent?  We put a great deal of time into making sure direct mail drops the same day every month, and pre-drive mail X number of days before a drive begins, but how carefully are you thinking about your online efforts?  Build them into your planning calendar the same way and you will reap the benefits.

 

Finally, Donors give online because it’s convenient.

 

A lot of the info in this study reinforces what we already know; about convenience, that donors are younger, and disasters incite giving.  And it’s good to know those trends are continuing as we make our way into tackling the unknowns in the future of online giving.

 

I hope the newer information reinforces what you already know about why you should have an online giving program, or spurs you into planning to get started soon, or expanding your existing efforts.  There’s money sitting right out there on the keyboard!

 

-Melanie Coulson,  DEI & Independent Advisor for Membership & Online Fundraising

Your Membership Database

I’ve received a few questions from stations and other nonprofit organizations recently about membership databases.  Maybe you are looking to seek a new database or maybe your current one needs some TLC in order to make it work as intended.  These resources may help. 

This is a useful article about common mistakes in database selection:

http://www.idealware.org/articles/ten_common_mistakes_in_selecting_donor_databases.php

You can download this highly detailed planning workbook in PDF format to help guide you on important decisions about your database needs: http://www.techsoup.org/binaries/Files/DatabasePlanningWorkbook.pdf 

For DEI members there are a number of helpful resources on the DEI website related to database management, source codes, and database selection. Your database is your lifeblood!  Ensuring that you have the right one, your staff is well trained on it, and the codes are all set up in a way that makes sense to everyone and will allow you to use the database as intended and pull the reports you need will pay off in a big way!

Feel free to contact me or any of DEI’s Advisors if you have questions.

posted by Betsy Harman, DEI Advisor and Harman Interactive, LLC

Brilliant Election Night Outreach

Minnesota Public Radio’s “Policy and a Pint” events are just brilliant, but they’ve outdone themselves for election night tomorrow.

The premise of “Policy and a Pint” is simple.  Invite listeners (focusing on younger listeners) to an area pub to mingle, drink, and talk about a major public policy issue with an expert of note.  Here’s what they are doing tomorrow night. Clearly, this a bit of production, but the idea could be likely be scaled to fit most any station.
Policy and a Pint: Election Night Party

Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006
7–11 pm
The UBS Forum

(Live video begins at 7:30)

Watch live video

Listen to live audio

Minnesota Public Radio will host an “alternative” election night event in The UBS Forum modeled after The Current’s successful Policy and a Pint series. This event will bring together 80+ bloggers, news junkies, and interested citizens to talk about politics and election results in an informal and non-partisan atmosphere. The event is jointly sponsored by 89.3 The Current, MPR News and the Citizens League.

Steve Seel and Tom Crann will anchor a live video stream from The UBS Forum. They will also be cutting into Mark Wheat’s shift on The Current to provide election updates. The forum will host high-profile political bloggers from the region who will update their blogs and and participate in the hosted discussion.

Steve and Tom will talk politics with local political analysts and commentators and, where possible, connect with the candidates themselves. Monitors throughout The Forum will broadcast the latest results from MPR and other sources while a DJ provides entertainment and continuity during breaks in the action.

This event is free, but tickets are required. Tickets will be given away on The Current and through the Citizens League. Refreshments will be served.

Guests commentators and analysts:
• Abdirahman (Abdi) Aynte lives in Minneapolis, MN where he writes and edits the bilingual blog, Hiiraan Online (www.hiiraan.com). He also blogs at tcdailyplanet.net
• Tim Bedore is a stand-up comedian, making nightclub and corporate appearances, as well as broadcasting humorous commentaries on public radio.
• David Brauer, the media commentator for All Things Considered and a freelance writer. He’s the former editor of Skyway News.
• Barry Casselman is a freelance writer who has analyzed national politics since 1972. He writes for the Washington Times and Preludium News Service.
• Lorena Duarte was born in El Salvador and immigrated as a child to Minnesota with her family. She holds a degree in Hispanic Studies/ Romance Languages and Literature from Harvard University and nowlives in Minneapolis where she was most recently the Editor of La Prensa de Minnesota, a bilingual Latino newspaper. She is also a poet and spoken word artist and she contributed to and co-edited “¿Under What Bandera? Anti-War Ofrendas from Minnesota y Califas” and performs her work regularly throughout the Twin Cities. She is also active in several organizations that focus on the issues of community and social justice.
• Claire (Ginger) Gorman produces and reports for the leading drive-time talk radio program in Canberra, the Australian capital. In 2004 she won an ABC Local Radio Award, her second, for a seven-part series titled “Death and Dying: Breaking the Taboo.” She views the WPI fellowship as an opportunity to stand back from the frenzy of daily radio and take in new perspectives.
• Duchess Harris, Associate Professor of American Studies at Macalester College. Harris is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in American Studies. Her general area of interest is Twentieth Century African American political history. Within that broad subject, she is specifically interested in the organizations of the Civil Rights Movement, the contributions of women of color to feminist theory post-1970, autobiography, and critical legal studies. She received her B.A. in American History and Afro-American Studies with an English minor from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 and her Ph.D. in American Studies with a minor at the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota in 1997. Harris was a recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship during the 2001-2002 academic year. She joined the faculty in 1998.

Kathryn Pearson, Political Science professor at the University of Minnesota. Pearson specializes in American politics, national institutions, political parties, elections, and women and politics, with particular expertise in the U.S. Congress. Pearson’s current research focuses on party discipline in the House of Representatives.

• Britt Robson covers politics and the Timberwolves for City Pages.
• Jan Stuchlik, As foreign desk editor at Ekonom, the largest business weekly in the Czech Republic, Stuchlik covers a broad range of international events. He has a master’s degree in international politics and diplomacy and says his mission as a journalist is “to contribute to cultivated and erudite newsgathering about the outer world.”
• Bill Wareham, is the MPR news director.

For more on Policy & Pint, check out: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/07/13/policy_pint/