Convio Nonprofit Benchmark Study Compares Public Broadcasting With Other Sectors

Convio has recently released an online benchmarking study.  While the analysis didn’t have as much depth as I would have liked to have seen, what I really found useful in this report was the comparison of metrics between various nonprofit sectors including public broadcasting, health organizations, environmental orgs etc…

The public broadcasting stations in the study were among the highest in the area of open rates and click through rates for e-newsletters.  Clearly listeners and viewers are interested in what we are sending them.  This also may be due to the fact that public broadcasting stations have more people who are already donors on their lists due to the fact that pledge drives are our main means of list growth right now.  The stations were also among the highest in average gift and online dollars per email address.  

But public broadcasting stations are among the lowest in registration conversion - converting website visitors to registered constituents - providing an email address for future communication.  Among the stations that were in this study, only 1.4% of the people visiting the site are signing up.   I bet the rate is even lower for most stations.  I think we need to address this!  On many station websites the sign up forms are hard to find or there is no good reason provided as to why you should register. 

We are missing opportunities to begin to build relationships with listeners and viewers who aren’t yet members.  I bet if we grew our lists of online prospects, we could begin to send some successful acquisition e-appeals. 

Take a look at the study, see what you think and share your comments.  You will need to fill out a form to register in order to download the full study.

http://www.convio.com/site/News2?abbr=news_&page=NewsArticle&id=2603677&news_iv_ctrl=1164

Betsy Harman
DEI Advisor for Membership / Online Fundraising
Harman Interactive

Which Half of Radio Marketing Works?

Very long, but very complete presentation of research into how radio marketing really works, and how strategy/response differs by audience segment.  Mark Ramsey is worth reading regularly.

http://www.hear2.com/2007/01/radio_which_hal.html

Posted by Izzi Smith, DEI Marketing Advisor

Good Stuff Roundup for the New Year

Happy New Year! I’m afraid the holidays came between myself and Newsgator.  As I was cleaning out I found some gems from the last few weeks for you to check out.

The Harvard Business School blog, Working Knowledge, posted it’s most popular articles of 2006.  Check out the articles on Developing a strategy for digital convergence, and Do I Dare Say Something.http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5584.html  

Continuing with the top of 2006 theme Idealware has 2 lists, one of favorite external articles: http://www.idealware.org/blog/2007/01/top-10-external-articles-of-2006.html.   

And internal articles of 2006:  http://www.idealware.org/blog/2006/12/top-10-idealware-articles-in-2006.html Including Creating the Relationship-Centric Organization: Nonprofit CRM, by Paul Hagen, who was a presenter at the 06 PRDMC,  And the A few good… series on different online applications for non profits regardless of budget. 

Katya Andresen’s non profit blog had a recent real-world example of why personal fundraising works…. And why passionate listeners are your best messengers: http://www.nonprofitmarketingblog.com/site/why_personal_fundraising_works/ 

Mail Chimp shares some interesting email marketing stats of their customers.  Non profits have some of the lowest unsubscribe rates of any type of business, and a quite good open rate of 36.59%.  See how you stack up and other types of businesses as well.  http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/email_marketing_benchmarks.phtml 

 There are more coming…. Check in again later this week!

 -Melanie Coulson,  Independent Advisor, membership and online fundraising