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.”

Guide to Integrated Marketing

Last month at the PRDMC, there was a double session on Intergrated Marketing. There were strong examples of stations planning their integrated efforts, and stations in various stages of execution.

DEI asked each panelist for a list of “truisms,” or ideas they felt were essential to consider when planning or managing an integrated marketing campaign. Their truisms follow.

Also - In prepping for the panel we found this really good overview of integrated marketing by Denise Zimmerman, President of NetPlus Marketing. Worth a read, and worth sharing with PD’s and Managers.

http://www.netplusmarketing.com/about-netplus/media-center/article.cfm?id=13

I’ll be posting other truisms from conference sessions in the next several days. Please let me know if you find this kind of stuff useful.
-Izzi Smith, DEI Marketing Advisor & President, I.S. Marketing, Minneapolis

Marketing Is Hard, Integrated Marketing is Harder…But Worth It @ PRDMC 2006
Truisms from the session planners:

From Susan Lyons, Exec. Director/WQED Radio and Lorraine Snebold, Consultant/WQED:

• Enable it! Create a culture of Brand Integration. Educate people about it. Get employees involved and don’t forget anyone. Eliminate silos. Be open; forget traditional conventions.
• Incent it. Set clear objectives and deliverables. Write this into your staff’s performance development plans. Create a reward system.
•  Communicate it relentlessly. Create one communications briefing document and make it available to all employees, partners, members, underwriters, funders and stakeholders.
• Make it emotional. Give it sizzle.
•  CELEBRATE it internally and externally! Capture it. Share it. Publicize it. Cross-promote it like crazy.

From Tara Taylor, VP of Marketing and Strategic Planning/Oregon Public Broadcasting:

• It’s not about the creative. It’s about herding cats and giving people ownership.
• An agency can give you great creative, but if you can’t implement it your money is wasted.
• Get related with the key stakeholders on an individual basis before launching the project.
  • Who are they?
  •  Meet in person. Discuss in person. Use e-mail only as a back-up.
  • What are their specific needs? and concerns? their objections?
  • What are their perceptions of marketing? Know where they are coming from.
•  Be flexible. Know what you will and won’t compromise on.
  • Creative will evolve during implementation.
  •  There are circumstances you can’t foresee until you’re there (i.e. new equipment)
  •  We work with creative people who like to put their own mark on their work.
• Prioritize elements and roll-out components
  •  Will your launch be a big splash or more viral? (viral allows you to spread out your resources over time)
  • If creative resources are limited, what components do you start work on first? On-air? Print, etc.?

From Tim Emmons, Station Manager/WNIJ:

•  You can’t over-promote your brand. It should be everywhere you are, in everything you air or publish.
• We’re in radio - so we use audio to promote ourselves. This takes creativity and courage, since core listeners will tire of our promotion before the rest of our audience!
• Use wild ideas on the air - you’ll know if they’re working (or not). It’s only radio. It’s better to try an idea and pull it off the air than to not try the idea at all.

PRDMC Session on the Future of Membership: New Technology Meets “How We’ve Always Done it”

………and do we  have enough medication to think through all the questions?

Mark Fuerst, Executive Director of the Integrated Media Association, and Paul Hagen of Hagen 20/20 gave great presentations and provoked interesting discussion during the “Future of Membership” session at the PRDMC.

Mark led by walking us through membership innovation over the past 20 years and a look into the future.

Future of Membership slides M Fuerst

One challenge Mark outlined is that our view of the future is rooted in the oral traditions of what has been accomplished in the last 20 years. In other words, “the way we’ve always done it.”

But as we move forward, “the way we’ve always done it” is going to have to co-exist with new models of membership/support.  For instance, today listeners become members. But in the future we’ll have to consider a broader range of gifts that don’t automatically fall under “membership”, especially as listeners continue to find public radio content through online communities based on interests (i.e. folk music) other than just our broadcast signals.

Finally, Mark laid out the tough questions (this is where the meds come in)

• If we really “focus on the listener,” do we really know what they want?
• Are we comfortable with our current level of membership overhead—already at 35% (and rising)?
• How can small stations provide the right level of service and personalization?
• Are we leaving money on the table by not offering opportunities to give to multiple content/service providers?
• Will people pay for online content (especially news)?

For the next part of the discussion, we invited Paul Hagen, President of Hagen 20/20, to offer thoughts about the new models of the future we need to explore.

Future of membership slides P Hagen

We found Paul through an article he wrote about non-profit CRM called “Creating the Relationship-Centric Organization: Nonprofit CRM” http://www.idealware.org/articles/relationship_centric_org_CRM.php

(if you take anything from this post, I encourage you to check out this article)

Paul quickly homed in on a “data explosion” that nonprofits are not nearly prepared for.  Currently 51% of nonprofits manage data in 4 repositories or more.  In other words, we are spending a lot managing multiple systems but are missing the power of linking them together in a way that improves our ability to communicate and serve our constituents.

At this point, again I was thinking about some medication.

It all seems so daunting, and yet we are at a point where station management, development directors, and membership managers have to make the time to talk about how we can address the explosion of data.

A prime example is podcasting.  Public radio is not known to be a quick adapter to many things, so to look at how quickly (in about the last 18 months) stations have started creating  downloadable content is astonishing.  At the January 2005 IMA conference in San Francisco, podcasting wasn’t even a topic on the agenda of discussion.  It has come into being that quickly.

While a handful of stations, in particular KCRW, is selling sponsorships of podcasts, no one quite yet has figured out how to harness this programming for membership purposes.  There hasn’t been time to figure out much more than how to add membership messages to the podcast.  In future months the system will have to weigh whether to start asking for registrations or even charging for the service in order to support the costs of providing it. 

This leads us back to the question: Once we collect the data, how do we use and manage it?

Fortunately Paul didn’t leave us just sitting there, he outlined the 10 critical factors for success and grouped those by five categories: Strategy & Governance, Process, Data, Training/user management/change management, and technology.

There were many take-aways from both Paul and Mark’s slides. The discussion at the session was spirited and Paul didn’t get to make his way entirely though them, so take a moment to check out the presentation and weigh in.

In the next few weeks we’ll be inviting you and others to join us for a online conference call to talk more about these issues. If you are interested in participating in the call please email me directly, melanie_coulson at comcast dot net to receive updates.

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

Online Sponsorship -New revenue opportunites explored at PRDMC

It was just one short year ago at PRDMC 2005 in Los Angeles that KCRW announced the first public radio podcast sponsorship.  It created quite a stir then and this year the conference was abuzz with conversations surrounding online sponsorship.  It is clear that stations are reacting to research that shows explosive growth in online advertising spending and are making moves to not miss out on this new revenue opportunity. 

Peter Conti, Jr. of Borrell Associates was a presenter at the conference.  Borrell Associates is a research and consulting firm that focuses on online advertising and marketing.  Peter presented trends and projections showing continued, astonishing growth in online advertising spending—something that I think we have all heard and believe at this point. He went on to point out the top categories for online advertising spending: 

• real estate services
• automotive sales
• credit and mortgage services
• recruitment
• dot-com businesses
• hospitals
• computer-related services
• eating and drinking places
• other medical professionals
• telecommunications

And areas of future growth in online: 

• Online Promotions
  • Referral links
  • Press releases
  • Contests, entry forms
• Online Direct (e-mail)
  • Broadcast e-mail
  • Solicited (opt-in)

Peter finished with some advice for maximizing online revenue in public radio: 

• Assess market share and set goals for growing it, not just maintaining it
• Go after new business categories
• Sell a solution
• Increase your mix of ad forms (revenue streams)
• Dedicated sales staffs generate more revenue
• Avoid using the Internet as added-value

If you haven’t visited the Borrell Associates website, it’s worth a look: www.borrellassociates.com. DEI will continue work in online sponsorship.  In the coming weeks and months, look for webinars on how to get your online sponsorship program up and running and more information on deiworksite.org.  Additionally DEI will be working to recommend standards for online to its member stations.  Finally, for 2006, the DEI Benchmarks will begin tracking online sponsorship revenue data so we can begin to look at best practices within public radio.-Marlene Schneider, DEI Corporate Support Coordinator & Principal, Revenue Solutions

“It’s a Copy Mardi Gras” Interactive Game

Hope you got lots of ideas and inspiration when in New Orleans!

If you were not able to attend you missed a great conference and an unexplainable life experience. John, JC and I have a treat for you from Friday Night’s Late Night Copy session - “It’s a Copy Mardi Gras.” 

For those in attendance we had a wonderful, fun-filled learning experience.   The three hours were lively and generated lots of discussion and prizes.  BUT - if you couldn’t be there - here is the next best thing.  It is an interactive version and like his “Indecency Test” gives you a chance to answer the questions before revealing the answers.  This was a collaboration of myself, John Crigler and JC Patrick from NPR. 

The Power Point is available on John Crigler’s web site here:

http://www.gsblaw.com/resource/pub_result.asp?ID=1820437272006 

If you want last year’s “Late Night” it is on my web site here: 

http://www.cathyives.com/fundraising.html 

Have fun and good luck! 

- Cathy Ives – DEI Advisor & Independent Development Consultant