The last couple of weeks we talked about ways you can ask your community to get involved with your work in ways that don’t involve donating money. With year-end fundraising coming up, today we will focus on donations with another appearance from the fake organization The Center for Wayward Squirrels to provide some sample language.…
Doormats get walked on all day long. You don’t want to be a doormat. And yet, all too often, we see nonprofit communications staff behaving in ways that reinforce these “let me wipe my dirty feet all over you” bad behaviors in others. You might be a doormat — or at a minimum, sending doormat…
Last week I shared some ways you can ask your community to show their support that don’t involve donating. Here is a quick recap: Sign a Pledge Watch Video and Share Take the Quiz Ask an Expert a Question Download a Guide Honor a Memory Today, I am back – along with our favorite fake…
An explainer video explains who you are and what you do in simple and clear yet engaging language. Explainers can also cover concepts, problems and programs. I recommend one of two different approaches to explainer videos when organizations are trying to explain their missions: The Problem and Solution. In this type of explainer, you lay…
An engagement ask is simply another way, besides donating, that people can confirm that they share your values and want to participate in your good work. You are asking people to do things that help build rapport with them over time, allow them to give in other non-monetary ways, and since these actions often take…
On today’s Video Strategy for Nonprofits webinar, I organized my presentation around the barriers that are holding nonprofits back from fully embracing video as the superior communications channel that it is for so many different marketing goals. The amount of time that it takes to produce videos was the biggest barrier among today’s webinar participants.…
If you are a little bit leary of trying live video, you might just be surprised by how much better you like it compared to pre-recorded videos. That was definitely my experience when I started experimenting with live video a couple of years ago. Here are the 7 reasons I like going live: There’s no…
If the results of our informal webinar poll last week are any indication, about 2/3rds of nonprofits can’t or haven’t customized their email unsubscribe pages. That’s the page that people get when they click “unsubscribe” or “manage email preferences” at the bottom of your mass emails. Last week, I shared three great examples of unsubscribe…
You’ve been working so hard on content and trying to keep people engaged, but it’s inevitable: some of them will click that unsubscribe button (or perhaps the “manage preferences” link if you offer it). All is not lost . . . yet. You have a great chance at keeping those people on your email list…
When I look at the top ways that people are joining our email list at Nonprofit Marketing Guide over the last 90 days, the winner is a quiz on our website. You’ll see it in a few different places . . . it’s an announcement bar at the top of our website: You’ll also be…
This week I’ve spent several days working over our marketing metrics here at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, especially related to email engagement. Our CRM tells us who is engaged and who isn’t according to a basic test: If they have opened or clicked any email or filled out a web form in the past 90 days, they…
Should it be this word or that word? Nonprofit communicators debate these kinds of things all the time. For example, earlier this month, I wrote a blog post called Improving Your Open Rate: The From Line. As I was writing, I realized that I was using “from field” in many places, but “from line” in…
