Nonprofit Communications

The days when your nonprofit could get away with not having an online marketing strategy are over. Even the smallest or most locally based organizations are expected to use email and have some kind of website (or at a minimum, a web page on another organization’s umbrella site). And most nonprofits should be doing much, much more than that.

If you’ve been approaching online marketing in a piecemeal fashion, I recommend the following five-step approach to start pulling together a real nonprofit marketing strategy. (You can learn more about online marketing and this strategy for nonprofits during this week’s “Online Marketing Basics” webinar.)

1. If Your Website Sucks, Fix It. Here’s my 10-Point Basic Website Checklist for Nonprofits. Make sure your website passes on all ten points before worrying about anything else. Don’t have your own domain? They are dirt cheap. Get one now. No excuses.

2. Build Your Email & RSS Lists Everywhere, All the Time. The two best ways right now to communicate directly with your supporters online are through email and through RSS feeds. Learn more about RSS at TechSoup. Yes, there are other ways to reach people online, such as through social networking sites, discussion lists, and text messaging. But email and rss are going to reach the overwhelming majority of people. These lists are easy to manage and easy for your supporters to join and leave (if you have them set up correctly).

3. Create Tools and Great Content for Your Biggest Fans. The beauty of online marketing and Web 2.0 is that it is so easy for friends to pass info on to other friends. You can build your network of friends of friends of supporters of your organization incredibly fast online. But that means you have to identify the “influencers” or “patrons” in your network — your biggest fans — and give them the tools they need and the information that excites them, so they’ll pass it on. This is what Seth Godin calls “Flipping the Funnel.”

4. Dip into Social Media, But Dive into One Tool. Yes, social media is all the rage. You’ve got everything from Facebook Causes and Care2 to Digg and Flickr. It’s impossible to be everywhere in any kind of meaningful way. At the same time, social media is the new web, and you need to be a part of it in some way, if only to understand what others are doing. Pick one or two social media or social networking sites and dive into those. Learn how to use them and become a part of those communities.

5. Measure, Learn, and Adjust. Return on Investment (ROI) for social media is a hot topic right now and the best ways to measure success are still to come. But one of the great aspects of online marketing is that measurement is built right into most of the tools. You can tell how many people are subscribed to your e-newsletter and RSS feeds. You can tell how long people are staying on your website. Keep track of what you can, learn from both your successes and your failures, and adjust your strategy over time.

Learn more during the Online Marketing Basics webinar.

Nancy Schwartz has posted this week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants on how you can more fully involve your base of supporters in your organization.

She’s highlighted several great examples of how nonprofits are doing just that through a variety of means, including several creative campaigns that you should consider borrowing and remaking as your own.

Nancy says the “whole dynamic has shifted and you have to embrace it” — I agree completely. In fact, I’m preparing for a two-workshop later this week with this message at its core. More on that later . . .

Next week the carnival travels to Sea Change Strategies.

I need your help deciding the topics for this summer’s weekly webinar series at Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com. Please take this 3-minute survey where you’ll quickly rank your interest in several topics on a scale of 1-5.

I guarantee that the top five topics will be on the webinar schedule this summer.

Here are the top five topics as of this afternoon:

1) Nonprofit Storytelling: How to Write Your Nonprofit’s Best Stories (I’ve already scheduled this one for May 14. Details here.)

2) How to Increase Traffic to Your Nonprofit’s Website

3) Easy and Effective Ways to Build Your Email Newsletter List

4) Online Marketing Basics: From Email to Social Networking (I’ve already scheduled this one for April 3. Details here.)

5) Must-Have Features for Nonprofit Websites

Does that make sense to you? Take the survey now and let me know which topics you prefer. In addition to the online marketing topics that are favored now, you can also share your level of interest in webinars on media relations, writing, design, and marketing strategy.

I’m giving away five free webinar passes to those of you who take the survey. To enter the drawing, simply complete the survey and leave your contact info at the end. If you win, you can use the pass for any webinar on the schedule through the end of summer.

Thanks for your help!

You’ve decided that the benefits of emailing your newsletter to your supporters outweigh the costs and you are ready to make the transition from print to email. Here are seven tips to help you do it right (get more during Thursday’s webinar).

1. Don’t try the short-cuts. Sending a PDF of your print newsletter out as an attachment to an email list is NOT an email newsletter. Neither is sending a one-line email that says “Click here to read our newsletter on our website.” If you are going to use email to communicate regularly with your supporters, create a real e-newsletter, with real content in the email itself.

2. Dissect your old print newsletter. Not everything that you included in your print newsletter will be right for your email newsletter. For example, if you had a large calendar of events in print, it’s best to highlight only a few events in an email newsletter with links to a full calendar on your website. Think about what belongs where online — not everything will work in an email.

3. Consider a more personal tone. Email is a more personal form of communication than print. If you’ve been writing your newsletter articles in the third person (The Dog Lovers Association is seeking volunteers), now is the time to move to a more personal first person- second person style (If you’d like to volunteer to walk dogs, we want to hear from you).

4. Decide on full text, teasers, or a combo. An email newsletter should be relatively short compared to a print newsletter. That means you have to make some decisions about the quantity and length of articles. Some organizations will include one full article in an email newsletter with headlines only for other articles on a website. Others will include teaser text, or longer blurbs, for all of the articles, requiring readers to click over to the website for the full version of each article. Either way is acceptable, but I think it’s best to be consistent from issue to issue.

5. Prepare to spend lots of time on microtext. Working on the microtext like headings and captions is important in print, but it’s absolutely essential in email. Start working now on the kinds of subject lines, headlines, and subheads you’ll use in your email newsletter. A large portion of your mailing list will quickly skim and read only the microtext, so make it good.

6. Use an email newsletter service. Don’t try to distribute an email newsletter out of your desktop email program. The problems with this approach are too numerous to mention. Instead, use an email marketing service provider. The benefits far exceed the minimal monthly costs.

7. Add a sign-up box to your website. Ideally, this will appear in your site template so the sign-up box appears on every page of your website. At a minimum, put it on your homepage and about us or contact us pages. One of the benefits of using an email service provider is that your supporters can add themselves to your list automatically — but only if they can find the form on your website.

Want more? I’m teaching a webinar on converting your print newsletter into an email newsletter this Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern. Learn more and register here.

Sam Davidson is hosting this week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants with a green theme for St. Patrick’s Day. You’ll find posts on how nonprofits can save both kinds of green: money and the environment.

Next week the Carnival heads over to Getting Attention with Nancy Schwartz.