A lovely snail mail newsletter

A Goodman sends out a monthly newsletter called Free-Range Thinking.  Besides Current, it’s the only professional publications my postal carrier delivers anymore.  I’m so attached to my newsgator feed reader I have pretty much moved everything to it. Consider adding our fine blog to your rss feed, and you won’t miss a post.  But I digress…

If you haven’t checked out A Goodman I reccomend you do, and sign up for this newsletter.  And if you are attending the PRDMC next month in Reno, you will be able to hear Terrence McNally from A Goodman speak in a session called Storytelling as Best Practice.

How fitting with the PRDMC quickly approaching this month’s edition of Free-Range Thinking gives the 10 immutable laws of storytelling.  As I was reading the 10 laws, it struck me how well Andy Goodman’s 10 laws fit in line with our efforts to integrate the elements of programming core values into our fundraising practices.  Here’s a couple highlights of what I mean, but really go check them out for yourself.

Stories are about people- Regardless of the cause an organizaition supports, it’s people that drive the action.  Pub Radio example:   A great on-air testimonial about a listener or reporters first hand account of a driveway moment or a breaking news event. 

Audiences bore easily- Who of us hasn’t written an appeal or made a pledge drive pitch that has way Too Much Information (aka.. TMI).  Sometimes we get stuck stretching out a pitch break or a fundraising letter just to fill the space.  When storytelling works well, Goodman suggests the message of your case needs to leave the audience asking “what happens next?” and “How is this going to turn out” make certain your story makes the audience, “sit up and take notice”.

Stories have clear meaning - to quote Goodman directly, “When the final line is spoken, your audience should know exactly why they took this journey with you.  “If your audience cannot answer the question, ‘what was that story about all about?’ it won’t matter how dilligently you followed rules one through nine.”

Brand Messaging: Issues Central to CMO Viability

Clorox, Wells Fargo, JetBlue and Home Depot are all well recognized names and brands. For nearly an hour, the executives of those companies discussed a range of hot-button issues central to CMO viability. Here’s a link to the complete story and a video recap of that conversation. http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=116493

  — Gordon Bayliss, DEI Advisor for Corporate Support

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

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 

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