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This blog is all about do-it-yourself nonprofit communications and marketing. I love helping small and medium-sized nonprofits communicate more effectively with their members, donors, volunteers and other supporters, so that together, we can all make the world a better place. I do that as a blogger, trainer, speaker, coach and consultant.
I believe that even the smallest nonprofit staffs with the most modest budgets can achieve tremendous results through savvy marketing and communications. I hope this blog and my online marketing training and other resources encourage you to do just that, while helping you grow personally as a nonprofit marketer and communications professional.
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me with your questions and comments. You can also learn more about hiring me to speak at your conference or workshop and to assist you as a coach or consultant.
Check out my calendar of events for upcoming webinars, live broadcasts of Magic Keys Radio, online office hours, and more.
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If you ask veterans of hard-fought political campaigns which matters most, what a person feels or what a person thinks about your candidate, without exception, they will tell you that heart overrules head in the voting booth. The same goes for the way we make purchasing decisions, the way people vote on juries, and whether we support charitable causes.
Several advertising studies show the same thing. As described in Brand Immortality: How Brands Can Live Long and Prosper by Hamish Pringle and Peter Field, the UK-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising analyzed 1,400 case studies of successful advertising. They compared the profitability boost of ads that appealed primarily to emotions versus those that relied on rational information, like statistics. Ad campaigns with purely emotional content outperformed the rational only content by two-to-one. Ads that were purely emotional also performed better than ads with mixed emotional and rational content, though by a much smaller margin.
These results affirm what Dr. Robert Heath of the University of Bath’s School of Management found in 2006. He found that U.S. and U.K. television advertisements with high levels of emotional content made the advertising successful, not the message itself. The emotional ads enhanced how people felt about brands being advertised. Ads with low levels of emotion had no effect, even when they were factual and informative.
So why do so many nonprofits still insist on a “just the fact, ma’am” approach to nonprofit marketing?
On Tuesday, September 29th, I’m teaching a writing workshop via webinar where we’ll look at ways to add more emotion into everyday nonprofit marketing and fundraising text to make it more effective with your supporters. We’ll also look at using both negative and positive emotions and discuss the differences in those approaches, while also exploring the different emotional buttons that successful fundraisers and volunteer recruiters most often push.
This is brand new webinar, so I hope you’ll join us on Tuesday! As always, registration is $35 a la carte, or it’s included in your All-Access Pass.
P.S. Check out the Neuromarketing Blog for more on “where brain science and marketing meet.”
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
On Tuesday, August 4, Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies and Kevin Gottesman of Gott Advertising will present a webinar for us called Beyond Viral: Building Your Email List through Paid Marketing. If you are wondering how the leading nonprofits in U.S. expand to their email prospect lists to hundreds of thousands of people, Alia and Kevin will let you in on how it’s done.
I asked Alia to share some of her lessons learned about capitalizing on media coverage. Just how do you turn those viewers and readers into members of your mailing list? Read on, and register for the webinar. Here’s Alia . . .
Growing an email list is a crucial element for nonprofits to build their movements, cross-promote their social media, and raise more money. Every email list member is a prospective activist, volunteer, donor, and sneezer – someone who can help spread the word on your behalf.
Typically, any surge in media attention, regardless of subject matter, causes a surge in related web traffic. So for instance, when your organizations’ report on Iraqi refugees launches, you can expect two things to happen:
- More people will visit your website;
- More people will search on Internet search terms such as “Iraqi refugees,” “Iraq war refugees,” “Iraqi resettlement,” etc.
Generally, both of these secondary effects of media coverage are short-lived. Unless the report really takes off, the media coverage will peak within 3 or 4 days.
Our experience is that as the media dies down, so will the traffic. The challenge therefore, is to use the window of opportunity – roughly 100 hours – created by the earned media spike to convert as many visitors as possible to list membership – which is the gateway to participation with your organization.
The current industry-standard best practices for doing this would include:
- Amplification of traffic via blogs, Twitter and online PR. Online coverage leads to more traffic to your site than more traditional PR. The best way to amplify traffic is develop one or two clear calls to action and ask bloggers, tweeters, etc. to repeat them.
- Capture and divert Google searchers via customized search ads related to the media activity. For 100 hours (give or take) search activity will surge on a wide range of plain English variations of “your media topic here.” While organic search may get visitors to one page or another on your site, the only way to get searchers directly to the landing page is via paid search ads. Maximize those Google grants – or if you don’t have one – consider an expenditure and track your return. In most cases we’re talking hundreds, not thousands, of dollars.
- Launch concomitant online paid media. In an ideal world, the report release would be accompanied by a flight of online ads. As with search, one could expect click- through rates to be much higher in the 100-hour media coverage window.
- Devote significant home page real estate to diverting traffic to a landing page related to the issue in the media spotlight. For 100 hours, the top home page priority should be getting traffic to the conversion landing page.
- Develop a landing page that makes a very brief yet compelling case for signing on — by offering a free benefit or calling them to action. The quality of the landing page will be the single largest determinant in converting media coverage into traffic into names on the email list.
The following is an excerpt from the Marketing Sherpa Landing Page Handbook, considered the bible in the field:
“We suspect some marketers truly believe that if their outbound campaign is good enough, the creative will pre-sell prospects on the offer no matter how lame the landing page is. In other words, many marketers think the outbound campaign is doing the heavy lifting, and the landing page exists simply as a passive collection cup for all the sales or leads generated by the campaign.
The exact opposite is generally true.”
General guidelines for a good landing page are well-documented and include:
- Suppression of global navigation
- Minimal choices
- Collection only of information viewed as appropriate by the visitor
Conclusion
Many organizations fail to maximize the 100 hours of PR opportunity in converting traffic to leads.
It is critical that your organization work across the “departmental divide” – meaning communications, marketing, programs, advocacy, and fundraising work together to anticipate media spikes and create integrated marketing plans to convert those spikes into real live leads.
It’s Kivi again . . . pretty good stuff, eh? Join us on August 4 for more in-depth advice like this, along with real examples from Alia’s and Kevin’s work.
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
During yesterday’s webinar on “Successful Nonprofit Websites: How to Make Your Website Work for You,” I asked participants to rank their own websites on 8 of the 10 criteria we discussed.
About 30 people participated, mostly from small nonprofits, producing some interesting results from their own evaluations of their websites.
56% said that their website didn’t allow visitors to sign-up for email communication at all. Only 11% said their email newsletter sign-up form appeared either within their site template (and thus on every page) or at least on all of the major pages of the site.
Getting people to your website is the hard part. Don’t let them just disappear back into cyberspace. Encourage visitors to stay in touch with you by signing up for an email newsletter, action alerts, or whatever you’d like to call your email correspondence. The point is to capture those email addresses so you can start a conversation with those website visitors.
In contrast, only 27% said they didn’t offer visitors a way to donate online. Hmmm . . . What’s the reasoning here? You’ll take their money, but not their email address? Maybe because following through with producing the e-communication is more work and throwing a donate button on the site is easy? You need to do both — email communication and online fundraising — and I’m willing to bet that the orgs with donate links with no e-newsletter aren’t raising much online.
72% own just a single domain name. I strongly recommend that at a minimum, nonprofits own the .org, .com, and .net versions of their main domain names. Ideally, you should also own any reasonable guesses that people might make. For example, The Nature Conservancy owns nature.org (its main site), natureconservancy.org, and thenatureconservancy.org. They own most, but not all, of the .com versions as well. When you don’t buy all the versions, someone else will eventually snatch them up and most likely put an advertising site up.
Only 27% said they usually or always have a story on their homepage. 45% said there were no stories on their websites at all! Ack! Storytelling is probably the most powerful marketing tool nonprofits have and yet it’s not being used on websites. Stories are the easiest ways to give examples of the need for your organization, the challenges you face, what you are doing to overcome them, and your successes. If I had to pick one single area for improvement among the group as a whole, it would be this one.
Only 34% said their home page offered visitors a clear path to the top answers and actions they were most likely seeking. To help focus your site on your visitors instead of your organization itself, I recommend that you think about why people would come to your website in the first place. What three questions would they be seeking answers for? What three actions would they like to take (e.g. registering for an event, donating online)? The path to those answers and actions should be crystal clear on your home page.
It’s a lot to absorb, but the good news is that all of these problems are very fixable. Here’s what a few people said about what they learned during the webinar:
“You hit on so many of the issues I’ve been trying to articulate to my organization about our website that I’m thinking about just having them listen to the recording at our next committee meeting. The idea of a CMS, of making the website relevant to our clients (and donors and volunteers) and of loosening IT’s grip on the website is so intimidating to agency management that I feel I need another voice to back me up. They’re open to making changes, so I hope an expert voice will help me make my case!” ~ Rebekah Hickey, Community Services Consortium
“(Liked) the reinforcing comments about having pictures and stories. Also, I like it when you pose questions about how to improve example websites – the interactivity is great. Also nice to hear other suggestions and get my brain thinking, rather than just being a passive listener. ~ Erin Kangas, Manitoba Children’s Museum
“(The webinar) had a lot of practical ideas. We are in the process of selecting a company to re-do our website as part of a capacity building grant and I wanted to have some information on what I should ask for. I got it!” ~ Belisa Urbina, Renovacion Conyugal, Inc
Wish you’d joined us? You can get the next best thing – the video recording – by purchasing an All-Access Pass to Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com. The recording is available in the Webinar Archive right now, along with nearly all the recording from the past year. Your All-Access Pass also let you RSVP for live webinars for the next 12 weeks at no additional cost. Get the details.
P.S. Join us for our next webinar on Tuesday, May 12, Getting Your Nonprofit Started with Social Media.
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
Not raising money online yet? Or not raising enough? (How’s that for a stupid question?)
Next week we are hosting a two-webinar boot camp specifically on online fundraising. This is your chance to learn both the basics and the advanced techniques for turning your website and email list into a real, sustainable fundraising force for your cause.
Magic Keys Radio on E-Newsletters
But first, on Friday, Claire Meyerhoff and I are back with another edition Magic Keys Radio, our live Internet radio show and podcast and we’ll be talking e-mail newsletters and how you can use them for fundraising. How to do them, why to do them – whatever you want to know about nonprofit email newsletters – we’ll do our best to answer. Join us on Friday, April 17 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern (10:00 a.m. Pacific) for the half-hour show where you listen live over the Internet through your computer speakers. You can call in your questions over the phone or chat them in on the Blog Talk Radio site. The podcast is available right after.
Online Fundraising Basics: Jumpstart Online Giving to Your Good Cause
Then on Tuesday, April 21, I’ll be teaching the “Basic” online fundraising course, where I’ll talk about the different elements you need to have in place, including the system that actually processes your donations securely. But online fundraising is about much more than just processing credit cards and big “Donate Now” buttons. We’ll talk about what you need to have on your website (and where) and what you need to send out in email to be successful. We’ll talk about creating the kind of content for your website and email newsletters that inspires donors to give more, and to give again. We’ll also touch on growing and managing your email list and tracking your success. Get the details.
Advanced Online Fundraising: Getting to WOW! in 8 Steps
On Thursday, April 23, I’ll turn it over to Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies for the “Advanced” course. Alia will show you how to go beyond the basics and, in eight steps, take your online fundraising to an entirely new level. She’ll give you the how-tos and some great examples that show you how it all works. I took a peek at her slides today, and if you feel like you have a solid foundation in place (decent processing, decent website, decent email) and are ready for the next step, you will love this webinar. Get the details.
As usual, individual webinars are an affordable $35. You can take both of these for $70. Or you can do the really smart thing and get the All-Access Pass for $97, and take these two webinars, plus everything else we offer for the next 12 weeks. Your Pass gets you access to both the live and recorded versions of the webinars, plus access to the Webinar Archive of recordings from the past year. Take a 3-Minute Tour of the All-Access Pass.
I hope to see you and your great questions Friday, Tuesday, and/or Thursday!
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
Posted by Kivi Leroux Miller on Dec 8, 2008 in
Copywriting,
E-Newsletters,
Writing for the Web
Photo by terren in Virginia on Flickr
Email subject lines should tell us about the candy (the content), not about the wrapper (vague descriptions or formats, like “Winter Edition of the Newsletter”). |
Last week, in my Nonprofit Marketing Tips newsletter (sign up in left sidebar), I published some advice on writing the best possible subject lines for your nonprofit’s email newsletters.
Here are my five tips. You can read the full article with explanations here.
1. Describe the Candy, Not the Wrapper.
2. Emphasize the Personal Value of the Content.
3. Don’t Tell People What to Do.
4. Keep It Short.
5. Piggyback on Hot Topics and Brand Names.
If you want to learn more about publishing an email newsletter, check out the next three webinars in the Nonprofit Marketing Guide weekly webinar series:
Easy and Effective Ways to Build Your Email List (Tuesday, December 9)
Going from a Print Newsletter to an Email Newsletter (Thursday, December 18)
Email Newsletter Essentials for Nonprofits – From Start to Finish (Wednesday, January 7)
Registration is $35 per webinar, or you can attend all three and many more with your All-Access Pass.
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
Online Writing: Dos and Don’ts of Writing for the Web and Email
Webinar This Wednesday,
November 12, 2008
1:00 pm Eastern (10:00 am Pacific)
Learn More and Register
|
Maybe not, if you believe what Jakob Nielsen says about writing styles for print versus the web.
Neilsen (whose Alertbox e-newsletter is a must-read) writes:
In print, you can spice up linear narrative with anecdotes and individual examples that support a storytelling approach to exposition. On the Web, such content often feels like filler; it slows down users and stands in the way of their getting to the point.
Web content must be brief and get to the point quickly, because users are likely to be on a specific mission. In many cases, they’ve pulled up the page through search. Web users want actionable content; they don’t want to fritter away their time on (otherwise enjoyable) stories that are tangential to their current goals.
Instead of a predefined narrative, websites must support the user’s personal story by condensing and combining vast stores of information into something that specifically meets the user’s immediate needs. Thus, instead of an author-driven narrative, Web content becomes a user-driven narrative.
In my webinars and workshops on nonprofit websites, I talk about organizing your site around the answers to the top three questions visitors will have and the top three actions they’ll want to take. But in that same course, I also talk about the importance of telling stories on your homepage as a way to give people solid examples of exactly what it is you do.
So if we believe what Nielsen says (and I almost always do), how can good online writing and storytelling co-exist?
I believe the answer is through good page layout. Instead of throwing a story into the middle of an article that is otherwise very how-to oriented or full of bullets, put that story in its own column or box. Let the story support the fact-based article and vice versa, but don’t meld them into one.
What do you think? How do you blend the web user’s need for speed with emotional storytelling? Leave a comment to add your perspective.
Want more? Attend Wednesday’s webinar on how to write for the web and email.
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
Posted by Kivi Leroux Miller on Sep 19, 2008 in
E-Newsletters,
Online Courses,
Writing for the Web I’m teaching a new webinar on Tuesday, September 23 called Email Newsletter Basics for Nonprofits: From Start to Finish.
This webinar is for you if:
– You are thinking about starting an email newsletter, or
– You have an email newsletter, but you’ve been winging it and have some knowledge gaps, or
– You are debating whether an email newsletter is right for your organization or not.
The webinar will be an expansion on the article I wrote a few months ago called 10 Surprisingly Easy and Startling Effective Ways to Improve Your Email Newsletter.
As usual, it’s $35 for one connection: as many people can attend as you can fit around one computer monitor and speaker phone. Or if you have the All-Access Pass, this webinar is included free of charge.
P.S. If you didn’t listen to Magic Keys Radio today, you missed a great show with Nancy Schwartz talking all about nonprofit taglines. No worries, we recorded it! You can listen on your computer or download/subscribe to our weekly podcast.
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
Does this belong on our website? What should go on our home page? How can I make our website more user-friendly? How can we grab our website visitors’ attention and keep it?
My answers to these very common questions from nonprofits usually include some form of this response: It’s all about the answers your website visitors are seeking and the actions they want to take on your site. If you focus on making your site about answers and actions, you’ll successfully address the concerns behind these questions. (Learn more about online writing during this Thursday’s webinar.)
Answer Your Visitors’ Questions
People use the Web to find answers to their questions. What questions would someone have when they come to your website? That will all depend on what it is you do, but let’s look at a few examples.
If you run a local humane society, people will have questions about adopting pets.
If you run a Meals on Wheels program, people will have questions about receiving meals and delivering meals as a volunteer.
If you run a “Save the Squirrels” group, people will have questions about why the squirrels need saving and what they can do to help you save them.
Figure out the top three questions people have related to your group’s work and make the answers prominent on your website — on your home page and in your site navigation. Immediately upon visiting your site, visitors should either see the answers or see where to click to get them.
Make It Easy for Your Visitors to Act
In addition to finding answers to their questions, website visitors also want to take actions online, and they expect those actions to be easy and time-saving over doing it in person or over the phone.
Let’s look at the same three organizations and review the actions visitors would like to take on their websites.
If you run a humane society, it would be great for visitors to see which pets are currently available for adoption and to fill in adoption forms online (or at least print them out and start them on paper).
If you run a Meals on Wheels program, visitors will want to apply for meal delivery and complete forms to volunteer online.
If you run a “Save the Squirrels” group, visitors will want to advocate for the squirrels in some way, such as by signing a petition or sending an email to an elected official.
And, of course, every nonprofit should let visitors sign-up for an email newsletter and donate online.
Learn More
Want more online writing tips? Don’t miss this Thursday’s webinar: Online Writing: Dos and Don’ts of Writing for the Web and Email, Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern.
Tags: online-writing, web-writing
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
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