Welcome to another round of Mixed Links! We’ve got some great social media and communications posts today.

This post by Kari Saratovsky not only sheds some light on the recent rise in Pinterest, but also shares some great infographics on Millennials. Check out The Millennial Story, Told By Infographic(s).

Think Facebook was confusing before? Beth Kanter shares What Do Facebook’s New Timeline Apps Mean for Nonprofits? Make sure you are fully awake (having a big mug of coffee, not a mixed drink!) when you get into this one. It’s powerful stuff, but not necessarily easy to understand.

When I released my 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, I found that creating and sharing videos gained more in importance for nonprofits from 2011 to 2012 than other social media channels. Nonprofits are definitely beginning to see the benefits of being able to tell their story visually (more on that in my e-newsletter next week). If you are looking to jump on board, YouTube has just released even more features and tutorials in their YouTube Nonprofits Program.

For more ideas on using videos, Lori Jacobwith gives us an Awesome Example of Using Technology to Keep Supporters Engaged.

The folks at Throwing Light ask the question, Email Tsunami: How Much Is Too Much? Leah has some great ideas on how to find what’s right for you and your organization. I know this is a big question for many of you, so if you are curious what other nonprofits are doing, see what our Trends Report showed.

And for email’s staying power, Allyson Kapin proclaims Email: Still Not Dead! I love the point she makes about Mark Zuckerberg proclaiming that email will die, while requiring that people have an email address to sign up for Facebook. Be sure to check out the great infographic she uses to make her point.

Katya Andresen shares some new and interesting statistics in Why You Need Someone Else to Be Your Messenger. She explains why only letting your executive director or CEO speak for your organization may not be the best idea. People’s trust in these positions has gone down recently as folks rely more on recommendations by “regular” people.

Last but not least, Jeff Brooks writes How to Handle “Great Fundraising Ideas” From Your Board. And by “great fundraising ideas” he means “horrible fundraising ideas.”

I’m off to hang out with 35 Girl Scouts for a Camp-In (so I’ll be saving my Happy Hour for later in the weekend). Anyone want to guess how much sleep the adult chaperones will get tonight?

See you next week!

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Elexa Liu

We love to hear success stories about the nonprofits we work with. Elexa Liu works with Hope Worldwide in Hong Kong and has participated in many of our training events both online and in person (Yes, she flew all the way to Seattle to take part in the Total Focus Marketing Plan Workshop I teach with Nancy Schwartz). She recently sent me this email on what happened after she started focusing on telling a good story instead of inundating her supporters with boring statistics.   ~Kivi

Dear Kivi,

Hope you are doing well. Again, thank you for sharing/teaching/passing on your knowledge and experience and resources about nonprofit marketing and communication.

I have been trying to implement all that I am absorbing from you and others (notably Tom Ahern) in my communications pieces – tell stories, “report” back what good has been done with the donations, lay forth visions, and thank, thank, and thank. In essence, going for the heart and the head. For the past 2 years, unsolicited donations from existing supporters has been increasing.

A private individual recently asked us to submit a proposal to apply for a donation of approximately HK$400,000 (about US$51,600). She came to our centre for a visit and told us that our newsletter was what caught her attention as she researched about different NGOs to support. She said most of what she read were boring facts and program details. Instead, we had a story that touched her heart but we also laid out the vision of what we do to help the kids.

So thank you! I still have much to learn (sometimes I feel like my head would explode!) but this was indeed very encouraging to me.

Best regards,
Elexa

Have you made a shift in your communications that’s working? We’d love to hear your story too, so please feel free to share in the comments.

Sherry Kirschenbaum

After the 10 Changes to Make in 2012 webinar, I received an email from Sherry Kirschenbaum about how her organization uses an editorial calendar to organize ideas for their newsletter and media pitches. I was so impressed with how Sherry was connecting such a diverse number of those “special months” to her organization’s mission and programs, that I asked her to show us how she does it. For more writing inspiration, be sure to sign up for our free monthly Writing Prompts email.  ~Kivi

Guest Post by Sherry Kirschenbaum, Media Manager at United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ

During her most recent (very excellent) webinar 10 Changes to Make in 2012, Kivi spoke about editorial calendars as a tool in media outreach. As senior writer/media manager at United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ (also known as UJC MetroWest), I am using the “mother” of all calendars, Chase’s Calendar of Events, to drive content for our monthly e-newsletter.

Some background: UJC MetroWest (which encompasses Essex, Morris, Sussex and northern Union counties in New Jersey) has been doing a monthly e-newsletter for the last several years. When I came on 15 months ago, the Chief Marketing Officer asked me to start thinking about a revamp to freshen things up.

Having successfully used editorial calendars in the past for both internal and external communications, I decided, among other changes, to look at Chase’s Calendar to see if there were enough commemorations throughout the year that dovetailed with our mission:

United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ stands at the center of a network of 24 partner agencies that support families in crisis; job search strategies for the unemployed; services for seniors, people of all ages with disabilities, and women in abusive relationships; Israel advocacy; formal and informal Jewish education; and experiences to ensure our Jewish future.

I occasionally needed to get a little creative, but in general, it has been a bonanza of ideas. It has also helped me to easily identify the most qualified person (in house or at one of our partner agencies) to write a 500-600 word piece that I am responsible for editing. An added bonus: our partner agencies really appreciate the opportunity to get free publicity.

The editorial calendar for the column, titled “Monthly Matters,” basically looks like this:

2011

October: National Financial Planning Month/National Disabilities Month. The executive director of Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest, the planned giving and endowment arm of UJC MetroWest, wrote an article about the long-term personal and financial impact of endowments.

November: National Long-Term Care Awareness Month/Family Care Givers Month. An article on eldercare mobility by our director of Eldercare Services ultimately resulted in a mention in an Associated Press article.

December: Spiritual Literacy. I turned to the director of Health and Healing at JCC MetroWest, a partner agency. Ultimately, however, an article on the mind/body connection was deferred.

2012

January: National Mentoring Month. The director of our Young Leadership Division wrote an article on youngish adult leaders mentoring young leaders.

February: Youth Leadership Month and Jewish Disabilities Awareness Month. This month we will have two articles, one focusing on the impact of our teen leadership programs and the other speaking to I AM ABLE, a brand-new advertising campaign in the local Jewish newspaper.

March: National Social Work Month. This article will be written by a social worker at Jewish Family Service of MetroWest, a partner agency. Content still undecided, although we are leaning towards the ongoing stress on middle-class families caused by economic downturn. (The recession may officially be over, but many people in MetroWest would say otherwise.)

April: Autism Awareness Month. A piece by a parent of a child with autism whose life has literally been transformed as a result of UJC MetroWest programs and services. This piece will also be pitched to secular and Jewish media outlets.

May: Jewish-American Heritage Month. The director of the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest, a partner agency, will focus her piece on the history and accomplishments of Jews in the MetroWest area, going back to the early 1900s.

June: National Camping Month. The coordinator of our One Happy Camper initiative will address the benefits of Jewish camping in Jewish identity formation.

In regard to my media manager hat, breaking the year down like this is very helpful in determining pitches for the media. For example, I am also using the article about the “I am ABLE” campaign as part of a pitch to Jewish media regarding Jewish Disabilities Awareness Month; the piece about stress on the middle class due to the economy will be pitched to local secular media outlets.

Sherry S. Kirschenbaum is senior writer/media manager at United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ. She can be reached at (973) 929-3084 or skirschenbaum@ujcnj.org.

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

I’m writing a new e-book to be published this spring by our good friends at Network for Good on how you move from doing a print newsletter to an email newsletter. If you’ve been through the process, you know it’s not as easy as it sounds!

Do you keep doing the print version, or for how long? How does the content and frequency change? How do you get email addresses for people you’ve only communicated with in print? How do you explain all of these changes to your supporters? You have many strategic decisions to make about your newsletter that go way beyond the technical decisions required to actually get a decent email newsletter out to your list (we’ll cover those in the e-book too).

We want to include lots of examples and stories in the e-book, and that’s where you come in! I’ve set up a quick survey to collect some of your thoughts and experiences about this process of moving from print newsletters to email newsletters. If you are anywhere in this process from just considering it to having completed the transition, I’d love for you to take the survey.

Thanks!

Don’t see the survey form below? Go here.

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

I just received this interesting chart from MarketingSherpa about the evolution of email marketing in the business world. They asked respondents to say whether they were in the trial (beginner), transition, or strategic (advanced) phase for several components of email marketing, as a way to gauge the maturity of an email marketing program.

Here’s what this chart tells us, according to MarketingSherpa. Marketers have the most strategic — or mature — processes in place for list building and list hygiene maintenance. The intuitive philosophy of “the money is in the list” has probably driven organizations to focus on list size and health.

At the same time, these organizations are accepting the importance and complexity of segmenting audiences, delivering meaningful content to those audiences, and integrating email with other communications channels, which are reflected in the areas dominating the transition phase. Finally, marketers are still playing around with testing and funnel optimization (the paths you create for people to subscribe and get more engaged with you), with many organizations still in the trial phase.

Where does your email marketing program stand on these criteria? (If you are still really new to email marketing, we might need to add a fourth category called something like “Haven’t addressed this at all yet.”)

While I didn’t ask our 2012 trends survey respondents to talk about their email programs in these terms, I did ask how often you will email your supporters and how you rank email compared to other communications channels. We heard from nearly 1,200 nonprofits! I’ll share the answers to those and many other questions during this week’s webinar, Trends for 2012 and Your Marketing Plan for the New Year on Thursday, December 1. I hope you’ll join us! I’ll release the full written report in mid-December.

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

That’s the question that the MetroWest Health Foundation asked today on Twitter.

Turns out that the current name of the e-newsletter is  . . .  ”E-Newsletter.”   Here’s what it looks like.

I do have a ton of nonprofit e-newsletters in my inbox called “E-Newsletter” so it’s not like that’s a horrible thing. But the fact that everyone does it also argues for being a bit more original. Plus I’m just not a fan of being so literal about everything we do. (Side note: Read Katya’s post today on why you should not call your annual appeal letter your “annual appeal letter” in the actual annual appeal letter copy! I agree wholeheartedly.)

I don’t know what MetroWest Health Foundation should call its newsletter, but here is how I would work through the decision.

First: Where’s the Value to Readers?

Why do people want to get the newsletter in the first place? What do they get out of it?  Newsletter names like “Healthy Hearts” or “Faces of Hope” would fit this description. You can also put the category of reader in the name, like “The Memo for Busy Moms.” Conveying that value or that sense of membership in the name reinforces the decision to read it.

Second:  What’s Special about the Content?

What stands out about the content? Is is truly timely,  a la “News Flash,” or is it full of advice and resources a la “News You Can Use”? Or is there a play on words related to what you do? For example, animal shelters often use “Tales” in their titles as a play on cat and dog tails.

Third: Fill in the Blank

If you are still struggling, trying filling in the blanks as a brainstorming exercise:

Your ________ Update

The ____ Post

________ Weekly (or Monthly)

________ Insider (or Inside ______)

______ Tips (or Tips for _________)

_______ Buzz

_______ Times

Other synonyms to play with are Bulletin, Brief, Dispatch, Note, Report, and Digest. Add some adjectives.

Here are some other e-newsletter titles that I discovered in my inbox:

National Parks Conservation Association: Park Lines

Grist: Daily Grist

North Carolina Zoo: Zmail Update

The Land Trust for Tennessee: Today’s On the Ground Update

National Wildlife Foundation: Kids Connection

NC Wildlife Federation: Wildlife Wire

Center for EcoTechnology: EcoBytes

What’s your e-newsletter called? Do you have any suggestions for the MetroWest Health Foundation?

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

I’m teaching a workshop in Toledo on Wednesday for the Center for Nonprofit Resources (a program of the Toledo Community Foundation) called 7 Steps to Better Email Fundraising and Communications.  I’m looking forward to meeting the 50+ nonprofits signed up for the workshop.

Here are the seven steps:

1. Acknowledge Trends in the Way People Consume Information Today

Email needs to be short, timely and personal. That’s the best way to cut through all the mess of information out there.

2. Decide Your E-Newsletter’s Role in Your Strategy

Are you using email to motivate action like donations or volunteering? Or to educate donors about the work they have supported in the past? Or to provide services to members? Knowing what you want to achieve via email is essential to creating the right content and delivery schedule.

3. Develop the Content Your Readers Want

This goes back to my Good and Bad Gift Givers Theory of Communications. Do you think about the people on the receiving end and what they want, or do you just give them what you want them to have?

4.  Make It a Fast Read by Writing and Designing for Skimmers

Focus on your microcontent like subject lines, headlines, captions, and bolded text. That’s what people actually read as their eyes skim over your email. Use a very simple, clean layout that is easy to skim, and that works well on a small smartphone screen too.

5. Deliver Your Email as Professionally as Possible

This is not a do-it-yourself step. You need to use a professional email service provider to send your emails and to manage your mailing list. Using the bcc field is not the way to go. When you use a reputable company, they also help you send simultaneously a plain text and an HTML  version of your email which ensures that just about everyone can read it.

6. Track Your Progress and Adjust as Needed

One of the great benefits of email over direct mail is the ability for people to click out of the email and over to your website to take action. You can easily see stats like open rates and click-through rates and know within 48 hours how well your email worked.

7. Integrate with Your Other Communications Channels

Email won’t work as well alone as it will when integrated with your other communications tools. In particular, pay attention to the pages on your website that come up when people click on email links (i.e. your landing pages). Also look at ways to use email to stimulate more conversation on your Facebook page for instance.

I’ll be sharing an abbreviated version of this workshop during our next webinar on October 4 called Getting Started with Email Marketing and Fundraising.

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Your email newsletter can be the engine that drives your online fundraising program, educates your supporters, and inspires them to volunteer with and advocate for you — but not without a strategy behind it and an approach to communicating that’s more like personal gift giving and less like mass e-blasting.

Drastically Improve Your Newsletter in 15 Easy Steps in 15 Days

We’ve turned one of our popular programs on email newsletters into a new free e-course, delivered via (you guessed it) email. After you register for this course, each day for 15 days you will receive an email with a doable challenge, along with some tips and resources to help you make your e-newsletter more inspiring, engaging, and effective.

Subscribe to the Free Email Course Now

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

If you want website visitors to sign up for your email newsletter, you have to make it easy and give them a compelling reason to do so.

Let’s look at a few ways to do more than just say “sign up for the newsletter.”

Be More Specific About What They’ll Get

The easiest approach is to simply be more specific about what you are sending out in your newsletter.

Here’s the signup box from the Humane Society of the United States, promising the latest news and action alerts:

Here’s one from Network for Good, offering free tips with a clear benefit (improving your fundraising):

Let Them See a Sample

The Nature Conservancy’s sign-up box includes a “View Sample” link that takes you to the latest edition, so you can see what you are really signing up for.

Every Now and Then, Hijack the Home Page

While I don’t recommend you do this all the time, for specific campaigns, you can hijack your home page with an email list sign-up. Here’s one that United Way is doing right now, centered on a pledge to volunteer.  This is what you see on the home page . . . clicking Skip at the bottom takes you to the regular home page.

When you take this approach, your initial emails to the people who sign up should be focused on the pledge or campaign specifically, but then you can transition them to your regular e-newsletter. This same tactic is also used with online fundraising, particularly at the end of the year.

Want More Tips?

On Tuesday, August 23, 2011, I’m teaching a webinar called Building Your Lists of Email Subscribers, Friends, and Followers where I’ll share tips from nonprofits (as well as my own experience) on how to build your lists of e-newsletter readers, blog subscribers, and social media fans/followers.

What Does Your Sign-Up Box Look Like?

Nonprofits, tell us about your email sign-up box and how it’s working for you in the comments — and include a link to your website!

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Thumbs Up or Down?

Sometimes it’s hard to know whether you are doing the right thing or not, or where to stand in that big gray area. Take nonprofit emailing, for example.

There’s the CAN-SPAM law, but its application in specific situations is often confusing and subject to interpretation.  There are “best practices” that various experts share, but it’s easy to find plenty of inconsistencies and conflicting advice online, and each bulk emailer seems to have its own rules.  There’s what “everyone else” is doing, which may or may not reflect the law or best practices!

So what’s a nonprofit to do?

Take this specific case emailed to me for advice last week (with identifying information removed by request):

“We’re a politically focused nonprofit think tank, and we work to improve bipartisanship in DC (a herculean task!)  We host many events aimed at bringing both sides together to work on various policy issues, sometimes working directly with congressional committees or offices.  We regularly email congressional staffers with event invitations, relevant policy information updates, etc.  We obtain the congressional data from a vendor that specializes in providing congressional directories – there are numerous such vendors in this area.

We are NOT fundraising or selling anything as we do not charge admission for our events.  We are communicating with congressional staffers  about specific policy issues that they deal with.

The problem is we are purchasing the congressional contact information and these contacts did not opt-in.  Many of these staffers attend our events and provide us with their contact information, but still do not meet the definition of opting-in (at least not until after-the-fact).

It wasn’t until we began planning a switch from our current bulk email vendor to a new one that we realized this was a problem.   I spoke with a representative from the new company we are considering and explained our situation, but they were adamant that what we were doing (buying the directory and emailing to it) is a big no-no.  Further checking revealed that many bulk email vendors have the same policy.

So, we need some help to sort this out.

1.  Is what we are doing a violation of the CAN-SPAM law?

2.  If we are okay with CAN-SPAM but still in conflict with permission-based restrictions – what are our options for bulk email?

3.  How do other groups who communicate with Congress deal with the opt-in situation?

4.  Is there some other aspect to this situation that I’m overlooking?”

I’m no CAN-SPAM expert, but here’s what I would say:

Most of CAN-SPAM doesn’t actually deal with opt-in, but rather what’s actually in the email and opt-out.

It’s also confusing when you work in the political arena, because “political email” is exempted from CAN-SPAM (naturally, the pols give themselves a loophole!). We end up seeing lots of organizations that are not technically campaigns or not sending what is really “political” email, but who are heavily involved in the political arena, doing all kinds of list swaps, etc. that might be illegal, and are definitely not “best practice.”

In this case, it seems like the permission-based opt-in best practices that many bulk email companies are enforcing — and not the law itself — is what’s tripping up this group.

To get to “single opt-in” many people rely on the “existing business relationship” theory, where it’s OK to email someone if you already have a business relationship with them. I bet many of the groups in this situation would argue that because their mission statements are about working with this narrowly defined and limited audience (congressional staffers), they have an automatic business relationship. This would be the “but that’s what everyone else does” argument.

There seems to be quite a bit of disagreement about the “existing business relationship” theory, however, and what really constitutes a relationship. In this situation, would someone have to attend an event BEFORE getting on the email list, for example?

And that’s just single opt-in . . . getting to double opt-in would obviously require an individual to confirm his or her email address. Some of the bulk email companies will allow a single opt-in list, but send out those emails on a lower-quality server, seriously affecting the how many actually get delivered, while reserving their “high quality” IP addresses for double opt-in email. Some won’t allow lists that have been rented or purchased at all, regardless of what those renting out the lists say about the opt-in status of the list.

What’s black and white here, where is the gray area, and where should this group stand? What would you do?

Can you share your experiences and thoughts in the comments? I’ll also ask some of the big email companies to weigh in too.

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.