L-R: Sarah Granger, Beth Kanter (standing), Qui Diaz, Danielle Brigida, Wendy Harmon

I had the privilege to attend the 2009 NTC Conference session entitled, “Mapping Social Media Strategy to Metrics: Listen, Learn, Adapt.” Beth Kanter was the featured moderator and speaker. Other panelists included Danielle Brigida (National Wildlife Federation), Wendy Harmon (American Red Cross), Qui Diaz (Livingston Communications) and Sarah Granger (Future Campaigns). The session was set up as a moderated discussion – and I mean discussion with Q and A – between Beth, the panelists and the audience about the role of listening, metrics, learning and adapting social media practices for engagement and listening. She started the session by noting that she wanted to “bring the room expertise forward,” and I think that really expresses her style of moderation. The audience was also encouraged to twitter using the hashtag #ntcmap to add to the conversation. For further thoughts from Beth Kanter about the session and to view her slides from the session, visit Beth’s Blog. Additionally, Rob Cottingham created great visual notes from this session here.

I found the session incredibly informative: it was rich with real social media campaign examples, uses of metrics, listening tools and techniques and – most importantly – real sharing. I left the session armed with a great list of new listening tools, the importance of listening and learning from it and the sense that we are all still struggling with the best way to use social media for insight and its utility. However, this is my most important take-away: this is all new and we will all fail using social media in some way, but

Failure is just an opportunity to Adapt. Adaptation is real success.

These are the notes that I took during the session:

The Listen, Learn, Adapt phrase was borrowed from David Armano, who also has a blog. David says we need to reap INSIGHT before we can reap dollars, which seems to be the fundamental underpinning of Listen, Learn, Adapt.

How and why does listening provide value?

Wendy: It is our foundation. The ARC is mentioned over 400 times a day. Listening gives us insight about how people feel about us and what they want from us.
Danielle: It is the foundation. We have a place to act. We are nothing unless someone else thinks we are something.
Qui: Listening is important because it lays the foundation for effective strategy, it also helps you evolve strategy and campaigns.
Sarah: Listening has two parts- listen to community and members for quality, and utilize the quantitative statistics we have received.

Then the audience wanted to know more about the mechanics of listening, which I found very informative. Here are some ideas:

Beth:”Use your RSS reader like a rock star.” Make RSS feed from hashtags and keywords from twitter. She shares some things, skims a lot, and deletes liberally. She urges people not to read hours’ worth of material. “You don’t have to smell every flower as you leap through the field.”Wendy: I aggregate and distribute the data as appropriate for internal audience in the field. We gather data per region.

Beth: how manage the data? Answer (A): practice! Beth: how do you share the info? A: We gather data each morning, distribute it in emails to the appropriate people internally, If it involves a sensitive issue, we contact the appropriate person. Wendy sources the information and sends out daily summaries. Beth: is that useful to get people to buy into value of social media? A: Yes, they have an ambient awareness of what people are saying about us at minimum.

Danielle: We use a Delicious (social bookmarking platform) account. For every mention, we tag it with “education” and “program name” and then count the # blog mentions. Internal staff looks at it by keywords to see the mentions per day.

Sarah: Google alerts are helpful. We develop an online page to keep track of the mentions per campaigns and organization.

Qui: For our larger clients or brands, we need reports. We set up media citation reports – similar to media clippings. This could be a document with a clip about a blogger and metrics (their Technorati authority,etc) about the blogger and a response recommendation.

Insight/Knowledge sharing on listening from audience members:
Joe Soloman (@engagejoe):  Netvibes is a great tool. Create tabs of different RSS items you follow and make it open for others to listen.

Amy Sample Ward: uses Netvibes and is writing a blog post about Netvibes to be published soon.

Dmitri: Feed Digest customizes feeds and tags. Reposts on twitter and FB to groups. etc. Nonprofitcommunicators.org is his site.

Follow up:  number of hours of week spent by panelists just listening?

Wendy:  2-3 hours in AM of concentrated, then “ears open” through out day. At least 10 hours focused listening a week.

Danielle: 5 hours a week – one hour every morning. I organize my work flow with Google Alerts and use the RSS reader in AM.

Qui: I encourage small nonprofits to dedicate a 1/2 person  to the job, 10 hours a week for monitoring and response.

Sarah: Our nonprofit is heavily online. I listen 15% of the time.

Beth: There is more listening info at the We Are Media wiki – see listening toolbox. Also search Beth’s blog in the category on listening.

What is the learning process from social media and how do the panelists involve their organizations in the process?

Danielle: NWF learning is ad hoc. Our learning process favors qualitative data over quantitative data. We compare qualitative information to the quantitative data and move on from there.

Qui: Listening is everybody’s job. You want to make sure everyone listens and can take what they are hearing to right responder.
Sarah: We share qualitative data by email. Track, analyze, report with excel spread sheets.

Audience Insights on sharing learning process:
Lynn from Monterrey Institute: We use Yammer. It’s like “twitter for groups.” It is open source and great for information sharing.
Amy Sample Ward:  Net Squared has 3.5 people over 4.5 time zones. They use Delicious and send tags to each other. People send links to different staff.

Using Metrics to Track Strategy: Real Case Examples

What are some specific stories of using right metrics to track a strategy?
Wendy: It is important to measure what  your metrics will tell you if you have reached your goal. Our goal is to offer real-time, valuable information to the public in times of disaster. We aggregate information and post it to a blog and on twitter. We  measure whether or not we are helping people and if they got this information. We also measure whether or not the media also uses our site. Specifically, we measure # retweets (manually), # members of the media that use our site.

Danielle: We measure the Wildlife Watch program. We ask people to tweet #nwf/(name of wildlife they see). We measure with hashtag.org. We use url shortners (bit.ly or poprl.com) to track retweets. Laura Lee Dooley (World Resources Institute) wrote a post about URL shortners from a measurement perspective.

Qui: Offers a corporate case study. Network Solutions (a domain names provider) had negative brand perception. They had to change their reputation. We assessed the current brand conversations  and found that they had a 58% negative comment and blog ratio. We used some tools (she recommends Radian 6 for about $500 a month, but it does misses some things) but the best is to search manually on all the platforms (such as icerocket. twitter, board tracker, etc). We knew the baseline metric: 58%.  They implemented a campaign to counter this. The metric after the campaign was around was 18%. (Editorial note: I wrote about this specific campaign previously here.)

Organizational Resistance to Social Media: Strategies for Adoption

Audience question for panel: Share a story about when metrics are impressive but the boss doesn’t get it.
Danielle: At NWF we started with activist change. Of the many people on NWF’s  MySpace, only 400 people were interested in becoming activists, which was disappointing. It’s important to listen to what EVERYONE is saying to get good ideas. Even one good idea. I was in wrong department looking at revenue at NWF and converts, but switching to the educational department was the right place for new media.
Sarah: The key is biting off small pieces and educating people step by step. Find a champion and work with that person.
Beth: Organizational change is slow. Discussions change opinions.

Analytics Questions from the Audience

1. How do you deal with folks that just click and nothing else?

Beth: Look at cocreation networks online. Shows ladder of engagement and an overlay of # views and influence. You want all of them in your eco system. Probably have less influence than the people who are spreading.

Danielle: look at WHAT they are clicking on. for ex- if just educate.
Qui- if click through, give them good “calls to act” with opportunities to engage with the organization on the other end.

2. What are the ways of capturing offline data points to influence social media stuff? Do you collect offline data to measure online social media?
Danielle: every program has an offline component. All offline components have an online component. Example: if you are outside, have smart phone, and see wildlife, you can and tweet about wildlife with nwf hashtag.
Wendy: if you are online, you will often write about an offline activity. Example: people donate blood and write about it.

Qui: Do an initial qualitative assessment. Ask how people initially use the web and computer, and then ask later how they’ve changed behavior.

Adapting – “we’re evolving!” Examples of Listen, Learn and Adapt

Beth shares a great “adapting social media after listening” story by Carie Lewis of the Humane Society of US (HSUS). HSUS asked people to hold a sign meme to protest Wendy’s restaurant’s treatment of animals, and upload photos to Flickr. Only 2 or 3 people did it because of technical issues uploading to Flickr. Failure? Not exactly. HSUS listened online as people complained about difficulty to upload it.
How  did HSUS adapt?
When they created their LOL Seals campaign and made it as easy as possible to upload and caption photos. Used a Flickr API to upload a photos that people could caption, and they captured the user information too, such as  2500 email addresses. What is that value?
How has HSUS further evolved its use of social media?

HSUS then wondered if their main target group was really on Facebook (55+ women), so they developed a Facebook application: upload a photo of your cute pet, ask people to vote on which pet is cutest, and raise money for Humane society. Garnered 13,000 installations, which spread the information about the contest. HSUS raised about $600K through it.

Panel:
Qui- Network Solutions example. They reached out to people, and looked at who referred the most traffic for an online event. Now NS knows who will send the traffic and this will streamline its time investment. They initially tried to use Linkedin but it sent no one to site, so they’ve learned and will not use it for that again.
Danielle: We tweak our social media strategies all the time. Can’t ever be satisfied. With a Twitter hashtag, when more people use it, it’s part of wildlife watch program and up on website.
Wendy: We have few campaigns because want to build overall presence on platforms. We tweak constantly. Look back two years and we can see how we operated differently, but this was accomplished through incremental changes.

Beth: How does your organization look at learning, and change it from failure?
Danielle: There is no failure. Have to learn from everything. Have to assess investment continuously.

Beth: Sometimes it’s easier to change the social media strategy than the organization. Has anyone in the panel seen an example of how the organization has been changed by its use of social media?

Danielle: Initially I was the outcast because of my advocacy of social media. I needed organizational buy-in. I have to continuously track it. I advise that you fight for this within your organization, and keep doing it. I’ve changed my role and I still do email marketing, but I’m also an internal consultant when programs start. Now I say: if people don’t like social media, don’t start with them and find someone else who wants to use it.

Sarah: I worked with an organization that had some social media protesters. But as new people were hired, the adoption increased.
Beth: I’m an early adopter but working with resisters now. I’m learning from it and hope to write about it.

What the panel has learned today:
Wendy: If you are really interested and can see opportunities for the organization, just try it and adapt and learn.
Danielle: How metrics “bubble up” from using them.
Qui- Listen to voice of minority, too. There has to be a decision-maker in the org, too.
Sarah- Find others, colleagues and talk and learn from them.
Beth- Place your AV order ahead of time!

What Did You Learn from This Session (from reading this blog post, or in person at the session)?

I’m live blogging the “Donate Now. Or Later. Or Whenever” session at the NTEN 2009 Conference.

The presenter is Madeline Stanionis from Watershed Company. I placed this artsy image of sangria because Madeline offered FREE CUPS OF SANGRIA to every person sitting in the session. So, I’m actually live blogging with sangria. Who knows – maybe I’ll blog better this time? You be the judge!

Big mistakes:

-we don’t ask because “we’re so nice”

-we only associate with people similar to ourselves. We forget that most people don’t care about what we care about.

What’s working now?

IT IS NOT ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY!

IT’S ABOUT THE PEOPLE! We need to reach PEOPLE on the other side of our email lists.

YOU are usually NOT THEM. Don’t make that mistake. We are almost never…them.

So, be yourself. Use “I” statements like “I feel, I think, I hope, I dream, I fear…” That makes us human. When you write an email you could add a note about how it makes you feel!

Let your PASSION show. Stop sending boring tweets all the time- people connect to passion.

So…. “Say The Thing That Must Be Said.”

Example: Planned Parenthood Action Center sent out a note about Sarah Palin when Sarah Palin was the VP nominee.
They created a campaign around The Thing That Must Be Said called, “You are NOT our Candidate.” The eletters talked about why she was not “our” candidate.

Example 2: Planned Parenthood created a “Let’s Talk About Sex” campaign. So they sent an open letter to the President to “Talk About Sex.”

Example 3: another group set up a special website just to thank Obama for passing a law.

Next: Go to the fish

Example: a friend on Facebook raised almost $2000 for her birthday through the Birthday Cause.

Example2: www.morebirthdays.com. You can make the American Cancer Society the sponsor for your birthday cause. Can do it through Facebook.

Creative Campaigns Examples

PETA renamed fish “sea kittens” and a Save the Sea Kitten campaigns.

AlterNet – Didn’t have money to publish books. Asked people to donate $10 and name will be listed as a publisher of their book.

People don’t stop giving, but just in smaller amounts, so make gifts meaningful.

The Nation- creative campaign to build a list. They gave away an all-expense paid “day at the Nation” magazine to the person who told the most friends about The Nation.

Raffle off meaningful memorabilia that would be meaningful to your stakeholders.

Humane Society of the US- vote for best pet but had to pay $5 to vote 5 times. People understood why.

Stop with the Silos.

We let ourselves get into these “silos” where departments don’t talk to each other: We need to diversity.

We can learn from each other and other departments’ work.

Or integrate marketing efforts by combining different types of mediums – text plus email, or email plus phone calls, etc.

Special Guest and Case Study: Ceciie Surasky from Jewish Voice for Peace. They energized and changed their organization through one campaign.

JVP is a national grassroots organization to end Israel’s “occupation” and promote a US foreign policy of coexistance. They exist purely at the pleasure of individual donations across the country. It’s a “donor-activist” model. Six months ago – had a 22,000 person supporter list. Couldn’t figure out how to grow it.  Needed to change the org. Only had 4 staff  people.

Created the Shmenista Campaign.
Shmenista means 12th-grader in Hebrew.  12th-graders were writing letters saying that they didn’t want to serve in the army because of Israel’s policies in the territories and be “conscientious objectors.” The young girls writing these letters were being put in jail. These girls wrote letters and put out an open call to help them. The JVP decided to take up this call: young people being brave.
Easy and cheap to create this campaign. Created an online petition campaign – www. December18th.org, using a WordPress template for the online petition and Israeli supporters created a video for the campaign free of charge. (December 18th was a planned peace/resister protest in Israel.) The online petition was sent to Israeli ministers in government.

(Play video during conference – black and white, very emotional. Anyone can view it on the December18th website.)

What were the other assets?  Ed Asner and Howard Zinn sit on their Advisory Board. Published guest blog post by Ed Asner. It was then picked up by the Huffington Post.   Then JVP was covered and placed in magazines around the world. Why?

The media is still covering this issue and crediting JVP. Now JVP has organized a speaking tour with Code Pink using the five young people featured in the video. All from the website, emails and the video. To date over 100,000 people have viewed the video. Most of it viral. Collected over 55,000 letters for the campaign.

What has changed?
It has made JVP rethink campaigns and how they are created, and the way the organization has cut down its “silos”. Have since created new campaigns, and the media now covers them without publishing press releases. Fundraising impact: over 3X what we have expected in prior years. Brought in a lot of new donors.

Lessons learned by Jewish Voice for Peace

• Jewish Voice for Peace has moved away from a policy- and data-focused approach. They need their hard-core activists (and they need that data and policy language) so they can’t ignore that aspect. But, by moving away from that approach, they have actually inspired the hard-core activists. Speak the truth, passionately, from the heart, and that inspires. With these campaigns – no one asked for data.

• Needed an external consultant to kick them into gear. (They hired Watershed Company to give them ideas and kick them into gear.) Don’t ask permission to move forward. Just move forward.

• We had all the resources that we needed in-house. We had the stories, passion and know-how. It’s not about technology, but about the people.

My Takeaways:

Rethink the way that the organization is structured to include all staff in developing creative campaigns.

Speak honestly and passionately about your cause and campaign. Include media- very powerful medium.

A good media-worthy story is very viral.

Say The Thing That Must Be Said.

image by 10ch

I’m at the NTEN 2009 Conference attending the session “What It’s Worth: The Value of Online Fundraising.” The session is presented by Allison Van Diest of Blackbaud and Clinton O’Brien, VP for Nonprofit Services with Care2. . Nonprofits use Care2 to recruit new donors and supporters and advocates for their organizations.

Goals of the session:

Why would you benchmark? How to make the case for fundraising tactics using measurements.

Purpose and value of benchmarking web metrics.

Review some 2008 industry benchmarks. from a March 2009 survey. What the data reveals, or doesn’t.

Case studies.

Purpose of benchmarking

Need them for goal-setting, comparison, prioritization, to make a case for resource utilization, forecasting results.

Sources that informed this benchmarking:

-1200 responders to State of Nonprofit Industry Survey 2008

-Blackbaud client data

-Care2 community data

-Q1 2009 State of Nonprofit Industry Survey: Return on Internet Investments:  93 valid responses. 97% of respondents had a website. 56% held email marketing or fundraising. 52% participate in social networks. 1/3 had revenue under $1mil, and 1/3 revenue over $10 million. Good mix of verticals in type of organization (largest group type was health care orgs at 17%). Most responders are fundraisers at the organizations.

Below is analysis of data from the Q1 Survey (93 responders), but integrated with other data from Blackbaud when noted:

Website benchmarks:

• 52% had a positive ROI on investment
• 26% made no investment
• 22% had negative ROI
• median amount collected through website transactions was $5,000 (this included organizations that didn’t collect any money also).
• Median ROI of website value was 110% (took the number in the center to get the median vs. mean number).
• From those that collected at least $1 in website transactions: $20K was median dollar amount collected through website transactions and 37% median ROI from website transactions .
• NOTE – Definition of “investment”: asked orgs to give a $ amount for website building and consulting amount and HR related website costs which was the self-reported “investment” from 2008

Need to consider the source: how did people get to the website?

• 63% of those with positive website ROI conducted email marketing or fundraising campaigns
• 46% of orgs with positive website ROI reported participating in social networks.

Note: these organizations may not have had a positive ROI of each channel, but did for the website, so reconsider how look at ROI for channels is a thought.

Email Benchmarks

Asked people to figure out value of an email: of those who reported doing email marketing, median number was 290,000 emails sent in 2008. Average return per email sent was $8.16  But-. average website return per email was $18.37.ISSUE:  How to differentiate whether email sent brought the money in or the website brought the money in? That is to be addressed. Most orgs aren’t sourcing if email drove the donation at the point of site.

(A side note: bulk of email campaign responses should be within 48 hours of email sent! However, it could different by audience, as an audience member notes. This audience member notes one of her clients receives the buik of return after two weeks! So there are exceptions.)

Median amount dollars collected as a result of email marketing is $1,000 (including those that don’t collect any money).

Median ROI from email marketing is 53%

Median amount collected from orgs that collect at least $1 from email marketing is $10,000.

NOTE:

• Only 18% of organizations credit positive ROI on email programs, but 63% of organizations with positive website ROI say they send email campaigns. Question is are they tracked properly?
• Orgs with positive website ROI who sent email campaigns brought in 2.8 times the website revenue -takeaway is that targeted asks might be more effective than just having a donate now but’ont.
  
• Orgs that have 6 – 10 events “a-thons” a year averages $60K in online event revenue. All other orgs averaged $39K. Implications? Maybe affected by size or client reach of the organizations.

The amount of revenue earned TRIPLES if an organization engages in email campaign versus just offering the “donate now” button on the website.

Online Event Benchmarks

Only 15% of orgs offer online participation in an “a-thon” or “friends asking friends” type of event. But arts/cultural orgs are more likely to hold them. Median amount raised is $11,000 online.

Blackbaud additional data from its clients:

• friends asking friends  (FAF) emails have a 90% greater open rate.
• Average online gift size is $59.40.
• 32% of FAF emails resulted in a transaction.
• average participant sends 27 emails.

Social Media ROI

Remember: about half of those surveyed use social media. 17% of them put money into using the networks.

• Of the 17% investing resources in social media, 63% reported positive ROI.
• 92% participated in Facebook, 44% use Twitter, 33% use Linkedin, 29% use MySpace, 13% use other networks.
• Of organizations participating, they averaged participating in 2.4 networks each. Of those participating in only one network, all but one use Facebook.
• Median ROI was 125%, median dollars raised was $200, and AVERAGE revenue raised was $41K from those reported raising money.
• Orgs connect with a median of 600 individuals through social networks.
• Average value of networking individual was $1.60

Social Networks = Free Donors? (Clinton O’Brian from Care2)

The purpose of today’s session is to look at the monetary value of social networks, but we recognize there are other values.

Facebook Causes Report just published March 2009.

25 million users reached through FB Causes. It has raised $7.5 milion in 2 years.

179,000 causes participate. 46K participate. # people who have donated = 186K (.7%)

Only two nonprofits have raised more than $100,000 through Causes.

Average gift =$ 40.54. Less than 50 nonprofits raising more than 10,000.

From 2007 to 2008: Average money per user donated has increased from $.21 to $.31. Average amount per cause has increased from $31.25 to $41.

List of several case studies: Susan G. Komen Foundation, Save Darfur, and Birthday Causes. None of them raised a lot of money.

One interesting tool to help you figure out ROI of Social Network Investment is the Care2 tool. (Their blog is www.frogloop.com which engages with nonprofit professionals and share best practices.) It asks user to provide inputs on their social newtowrking and email investment and gives ROI for outputs, along with four-year ROI projections.

Commentary by Care2′s Clinton O’Brien- most organizations aren’t going to see a positive ROI from this calculator. The thing you need to think about is the opportunity cost by investing employee time in social networks. Question: What aren’t you doing?

Audience question about choosing among the different social networks:

Answer: MySpace is for a younger group, Facebook has the numbers and users, and a good activ base. One audience member offers that alumni groups are using Linkedin very effectively.

My Takeaways:

1. Email campaigns (and email related activities for raising funds) are still the most proven and effective investment an organization can make.

2. Don’t rely on social networks for fundraising, but they may very well drive people to donate on-site.

3. Track where every person comes from and why they decided to donate on the website. Are they a network member? Could this have raised their awareness and encouraged them to donate on the website?

image by KhE

I’m at NTEN’s 2009 National Technology Conference. I’ll be live blogging this session on Mobile Advocacy and Fundraising. I’m starting now.

Session presenter: Matt Wilson from Mobile Commons.

Now 250 million active phones in US (in context of a little over 300 million people in US now!)

Technology is changing voice advocacy.
Example: AFSCME Union

1. Builds an email list.

2. Asks them to make a phone call through an email ask.

3. Submit mobile phone number, email and zip code on a form, and an automated phone call is sent to a legislator. How does this happen: An API code snipped sends a call to an automated voice through mCommons – redirects the call to their legislator.

Example 2: Human Rights Campaign

1. HRC sends a text action alert.

2. Asks them to dial a number. Hear a recording with audio talking points and

3. Auto-routes to legislator.

Participation industry standards:

1. Email requests return 8 to 20% online advocacy action.

2. But with mobile SMS, we see 20% response rate within 20 minutes, and 40 – 50% response rate within 24 hours.

Example 3: Planned Parenthood

1. Asked people to input a mobile cell number as soon as the Global Gag Rule was overtuned.

2.People received text messages that it was overturned. Individuals were asked to text back thank-you messages to Obama. 500 people replied back with a thank you within 20 minutes. Averaged out to 20% reply rate.

Takeaways:

- got people used to acting differently: use mobile text for the organization

-captured mobile cell numbers for the organization

Question: what should be the length of broadcast text message to individuals?

Limit is 160 characters. The simpler, shorter and quicker the call to action the better.
Question: What is basic set up cost for Mobile Advocacy?

Some vendors will price per text – about $.10 per text message plus setup fee. Other will offer ongoing monthly fees plus setup fee. Rule is about $.10 per outgoing message for simple solutions.

Question: Are campaigns targeted differently for those people with smartphones or iPhones?

Haven’t really seen this yet. Not sure what we would learn yet from this type of segmentation, and don’t have enough info yet.

Question about worldwide customers.

mCommons only works with US customers at this time.

image courtesy of mGiving

State of Mobile Fundraising

1. Mobile Giving Foundation: ability to bill $5 increments to constiuents’ wireless bills.

2. Email acquisition. Acquire emails at live events.

3. Integrated campaigns.

Can we increase lift on online and direct mail campaign with text to reinforce donation is a big questions.

Ask people to text to pledge or fulfill plecges online. Send them to online pages is an idea.

Mobile Giving Foundation

Any 501(c)3 can apply to be a provider. One approved, can ask constituents to send $5 donations to their wireless bills on behalf of the organization. Mobile Giving Fdn distributes funds within 60 to 90 days. Wireless carriers pass thorugh entire donation. Vendors have different pricing models.

Question: Do nonprofits get all the giving info from the constituents at the end of the transaction with add-on requests at end of text giving? No. Problem is that nonprofits can’t get that info. The one exception is that once you get a list of email  ????

Case Study: by Watershed Strategic Consultants. Jenn Smith, presenter.

Think back to last fall and the economy taking a dive. Tried partnering with the Humane Society of the US to try something different. At the time HSUS had a 12,000 phone list. Urged 12,000 to give via phone on December 30th as last-chance push for year-end giving. A “hey, give now, tax deductible, do it now” type message.

Send “Last chance email” December 26. Sent last chance email again Dec. 29. Send text to give December 30th. Everyone got anothe last chance email on the 31st.

The Plan:

1. Partnered with a telemarketing firm to set up an inbound call center to accept donations.

2. Set up an internal donation form telemarketing reps could complete donations while taking calls.

3. Suppress donors on mobile list. If gave in December, didn’t use their numbers for the mobile campaign.

4. Created a control group of people who did not receive text message.

Text message they’d received: “HUMANE: 24 hrs to make your tax-deductibel gift for animals. Call 800-680-8313 from 11-8 EST or reply “CALL” now to give to the Humane Society.”

What happened?

NOTHING.

However, a few people made some test donations who were already on the team.

Silver lining: control group who didn’t get text message.

BUT the people who got text message AND then last chance to give Dec. 31st email to give donated .55%, which is higher than average for email solicitations.

People who did not get text but only email asks donated .31%

Increase in fundraising was .77%.

Takeaways:

Year end using text messages to boost email response is good. Control groups can save the day. Keep testing. Must build mobile strategies inot campaigns.

What went wrong with original campaign?

Not sure but thoughts are:

1. Mobile is a a cultivated file. Takes time for people to get used to it.

2. Mobile file had not been asked to enage that frequently.

3. Perhaps issue with timing, people on vacation then.

What has changed for Watershed’s clients?

1. Creating unique strategies per channel, not just replicating them onto each channel. So, if you want to grow a mobile program you have to build a list same as how you built your email list, and think about it as a new channel that need new strategies.

2. Off mobile promotions are still important for mobile complementaries.(Flyers, signs, other platforms, etc.)

Question: how about opt-out?
Answer: every text message has a click to opt out message, within the 160-character limit.

Question: how do people know the number really does lead to a credible organization, or is the Humane Society that texted them?

Answer: technically, with a mobile short code people couldn’t do that. But, there are issues with people’s comfort with mobile that this speaks to. Always have the same handle for text message starts such as HUMANE and all broadcast messages come from the organization with the same short code telephone number. Frequency is also important – if people sign up for a text message then send them one soon enough so that they don’t forget.

Another example: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force hate crimes advocacy campaign.

1. Ask people to take action.

2. Send them to a Mobile Commons page to enter cell, zip, click “connect me” and they get to talk to a legislator. Primary goal was to get people to call in.

3. Then ask them to opt in to mobile list.

4. Facebook app to enter mobile phone number to act now against hate crimes. (integration)

The future:

Increase partnerships with Mobile Commons. Think beyond email. More testing with clients. More work with Mobile Giving Foundation.

Next presenter: Grace Markarian, from The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS)

Mobile Program:

Launched in 2007. Grew list slowly. Initally for Canadian anti-seal slaughter campaign.

Use Mobile Commons now. Their program lives within their Online Communications team. About 17,500 subscribers on list.

Use mobile channel to complement other channels. Try not to bother people unless it is urgent or fun. Also “get out the vote” actions.

In-house: daily 9-minute meetings with entire External Affairs team for updates on integrated campaigns.

How we offer signups:

part of every campaign.

send welcome email after people sign up for HSUS to ask for mobile cell number.

Facebook signup and donation app.

Future mobile plans:

Twiter bundling, aggressive recruitment through email, incorporate with print media, billboards, etc.

Real campaign: Save the Canadian Seals from HSUS

1. while people are watching and documenting the seal slaughter, they text to people about what they are watching.

2. People on list are affected by these texts and reply to Grace about it, so it works to raise awareness

3. Ask people to reply back and begin conversations.

4. If peole respond to text, then they get anautomated reply to act on anothe platform (website page). This was a lesson learned from being innundated by reply texts.

Question: how really engage with mobile text and reply to them? (my question)

Answer: I have a mobile commons inbox where it is aggregated and I can reply to their quesitons. Also, people can go to a site or a page where they can begin discussion on a non-mobile site.

Other thoughts from Grace at HSUS: people do seem to notice paper flyers and information and act mobilely.

HSUS Learning Curve:

State of the art tools change quickly.

Developing niche content can be challenging.

Database integration is hard.

Could be a full-time job!”This is email and web all over again!”

Before you start a mobile program:

1. Research audience, peers, database integration

2. Figure out goals: reach existing members on a new channel? Reach new members? Send content? Etc.

3. Sketch a plan for mobile recruitment and your first campaign.

4. Get “buy in” from the top of the organization.

5. Think about how you will integrate with all your online communications.

6. Identify core staff who will be responsible, and time they will allocate to this.

image by borman 818

Attending NTEN”s National Technology Conference Session called Best of the Best: Integrated Fundraising Case Studies. Presented by Jeff Patrick by Common Knowledge. I’ll be live blogging this event.

Overview: a medium-sized national veterans’ organization test campaigns. Which type of appeal will be most effective? Ran a controlled test.

Used three types of fundraising appeals for three test groups: divided into Direct Mail, High frequency Email and Low Frequency Email groups with same number of people per gorup. Direct mail group received mail in home at about same time as the email groups received mail in their inboxes.

Organization worried about asking too much and worried about exhausting the recipients. But not true – can cultivate donors and do a “soft” ask. Plus, email cost is minimal.

High frequency email group donated more money than any other group! $32,000 vs. $26,000 from low-frequency email appeal. Because asked more often they got more funds. Low frequency group only asked monthly. But if ask more, you begin to get less and less return. Low frequency appeals outraised the high frequency each time low frequency group was asked to donate, but the difference is that the high frequency group also donated other times they were asked.

One Takeaway: if you ask less frequently online, you will get more per email.

Average open rate: higher with low-frequency group. They also clicked through more often but conversion rates were the same as low-frequency group. Average gifts were 9% lower in the high frequency group. But, total revenue was 23% higher in high frequency group! Average rate of unsubscribers was slightly higher than the in the low frequency email group, but this rate was more than offset by higher revenues. Why? If you cultivate people and give people meaningful information at same time then they are interested in getting your mail.

The Takeaway: You can raise more money from donors if you contact them via email more frequently.

Who would have thought?

Big Takeaways:

Asking more often is fine as long as it includes donor cultivation.

Average gift stayed the same.

Total revenue went up.

Unsubscribers went up a bit, but not enough to offset total value of campaign.

Audience Question: can you get rid of the paper direct mail appeal?

Not if your demographics are 65 and over, which represents cutoff of when people didn’t use computers at work.

Consider it if you are an organization as part of the cost of fundraising and build email list as you are going. Get rid of direct mail with testing, and slowly “dial down” the direct mail. Possibly think about shifting to telephone solicitations. Think about sustainable giving.

Anyone over the age of 38 has a higher tendency to donate via direct mail. Source: Craigslist bootcamp. There is a podcast entitled “Dirty Sexy Money” you can listen to about this.

I’m live blogging the 2009 NTC session Best of the Best: Integrated Fundraising Case Studies at the NTEN National Technology Conference, April 27, 2009. Jeff Patrick, President of Common Knowledge will be presenting.

image courtesy of Common Knowledge

Two things to remember:

1. If integrate across multiple channels, you raise more money.

2. This presentation goes beyond email and direct mail!

Common Knowlege has been around since 2002. Theme today is integrating social media with fundraising.

Case Study 1: Alliance for Lupus Research – Event Fundrasing (online and offline) and using web 2.0

A classic voluntary health organization focused on lupus. They think about fundraising via events. Examples: 5K walk events in 30 citieis, no registration fee, $100 fundraising goal (which is typical), and use Convio Fundraising technology.

Offline fundraising tools, letters, printed donation forms, printed registration forms, team building tips, phone and online customer support.

Chose Convio TeamRaiser tool. Typical event site with promotional tools: donor recognition, gift thermomenter, get teams together, etc.

BIG DIFFERENCE: decided to use Facebook Fundraising Tools: decided to integrate it because has typical lupus donor demographic profile. Intuition that their donors are on Facebook.

Used Facebook Innovatively: created a badge = point of presence on person’s profile.

Objectives: Offer participants and donors a home base within FB. Seamless integration with Convio. Link participants and donors within and across events. Leverage individual’s social map within Facebook. Raise more donation.

Common Knowledge tried to figure out how people could automatically get a badge when register through Convio for the event and automatically display on the FB profile. (COOL!)

Branding the event via the badge: personalized badge (e.g. language on badge “I’m doing it on behalf of my sister”, “my goal is $,” “I’ve raised $$,” contribute today button). displays on profile, brands event, fundraising focused, personalized giving results, personalized donation form link, tabbed navigation, progress meter.

Created a Fundraising dashboard and registrants’ dashboard within Facebook using a FB application. Called it “moving the event INTO Facebook.” (Really cool idea #2.) Can use it to communicate and drive donations. “Have to live in Facebook if want to succeed within it.”Dashboard shows names and photos of helping friends,total contributions, info about what’s new, etc. This is different than Facebook Causes.The big difference here is that the organization can own the information if it creates the dashboard vs. FB Causes which owns the application. FB has partnered with Network for Good and takes a chunk of change. If you have a large scale, then you can create your own FB app, use a different online payment processing and management system, which will take a lower % of fees.

Seamless integration of dashboard with Convio application.

Link participants and donors within and across events was an objective also. Some people bring lots of friends and others don’t, but it happens along natural offline social networks. Thus, this can happen online as well. Causes doesn’t understand the inherent org and participational heirarchy within Facebook online. Can capture these “TeamRaiser” ideas on Facebook. Example- friends in San Fran can help other friends in San Diego hook up with others in San Diego, for example.

Every person who registers using Convio software gets their own dashboard and badge.

REAL TAKEAWAY: Facebook is a place to tap into people and their networks.

So, tapped into that with a way for people to send messages to friends through Facebook.

Also, from FB dashboard, you could press “send message to friends not on Facebook” button and this will take you back to your Convio-based dashboard to send an email note to friends outside Facbook that is facilitated via Convio.

Also, created  a Wall exclusively created for event participants that mimics the wall we know called “Progress Report” (tell your friends how it’s going)

.

Convio’s software sent out a status update out every time a participant reached a certain fundriaisng goal or other preselected goal.

Thus, through Facebook, there are three buttons to: reach out to people within Facebook you know, those you know outside FB, and other event participants.

So one can send an update to friends through the Progress Report “Wall” or I can add a note to the unique Wall set up just for participants.

Note, Humane Society of US ran a campaign with FB and created a widget for FB and raised 60% more on Facebook than offline. Someone in audience offered this to the session.

Where does Facebook fit? Within word-of-mouth or “buzz” marketing!

FB Analytics: have a deep set of demographics for Facebook (gender, age, activities, networks, etc.) for fan pages. Offers automatic reports to page owners.

There is an activity feed also for the event – exposes participants to each other.

Menu bar for the dashboard with many different tabs such as “about ALR” and “Invite” and “Fundraisers” etc.

Best practices for Integrated Fundraising:

1. Offer multiple channels: donors will choose.

2. Maintain consistent brand and message across channels.

3. Integrate technology to smooth out transitions. (example integrate APIs etc)

4. Social media accents other channels; also drives fundraiasing directly.

What is the ROI of our communities is a common question? Now we can know – look at this event. Thinks nonprofits can bust that question wide open.

That’s it for this best practices case study.

image by paul young

I’m at the podcasting seminar of the We Are Media learning sessions for NTEN’s 2009 Conference. I’ll be updating this page every 10-20 minutes.

Speakers: Kate Stahnke and Brandon Buck from CauseCast.org

More info will be available on the wiki at: wearemedia.org/NTC+PODCAST

Agenda:

motivations for podcasts

creating

editing

posting

US basic stats about podcasting: Edison research study: overall podcast consumption up 22% over last year. Demographics: under 30 is largest consumer of podcasts, age 30 to 60 is growing, and household incomes over $70,000 (20% growth). Study from 2006-2008. Indication: older, more affluent users are consumer, probably donors.

Podcasts are tied directly to a program/initiative, and report on its progress are beneficial to donors. Donors want updates as to how money is spent and this helps donors convert to become repeat donors. Plus, podcast audience is growing.

A podcast is a blog that attaches rich media. Unlimited possibilties.
What you need:

good microphone: more you pay is the better your voice will sound

video: from about $170 for a flip phone, or HD for about $230.

Most popular podcasts today, however, are people in front of webcams with inexpensive mic. CONTENT IS KING.

Free programs:

AUDACITY - record audio, open source, free

LEVELATOR – stabilizes audio once you drag audio into it

QUCKTIME (comes with iTunes) but Pro version allows direct recording to computer. Can record straight to video using Quicktime.

(live demo)

A lot of audio formats:

MOST IMPORTANT AUDIO: MP3 – universal, everyone can play it

VIDEO: MOV and MP4 – universal formats

First step: actual recording (video or webcam for video image) if just audio – use audio recording (like Audacity) to record, then apply Levelator to smoothe out the voice. Levelator is free, and a good step, but optional. There are no free video editors.

EDITORS: imovie for Apple, Final Cut Pro, and another (will update lator). There are low end and high end options. Can get high end through Tech Soup as well.

Point is that podcasts are, by nature, more mobile and video is mostly used for when connected to internet. However, increasingly video formats are going to become more mobile.

Best practices in podcasting:

News, updates and interviews.

Recommend: go to iTunes’ “Top Podcasts” and see what lessons you can learn from them. Top one is “This American Life,” which indicates that content is king.

Frequency is important. Consistency is important, e.g. “Wednesday night at 9pm is new podcast update time.” Users will look forward to this.

Incorporate constituents in podcasts. People like to be referred to, talked about, and included. Show is only as good as audience so they will propel the show forward with their own ideas, if they are already engaged and included.

Now we are learning how to record something:

1. Download Audacity program (check! did it!)

2. press green button. Talk.

3. Press stop (yellow button)

4. Press play (green button) to hear the recording.

Note: at top of audacity there are two bars (left and right) then don’t let the audio exceed the level 0.

You can combine the clips, change the order. You can combine them and it will play left to right. You can create a “staircase” to play them left to right, but if you want to have voice over music, for example, you put them on top of each other to play at the same time. See “staircase” example below.  To do that, select double-sided arrow at top left, then drag a recording.

Audacity recording "staircase" image

This is what a voice over recording will look like:

To change volume:

1. select track

2. choose effect

3. find an effect – select “amplify” – don’t exceed (-0.2)

4. drag option. It will prevent audio from causing distortion by default.

One other note: very cool effects to choose from, such as “fade in” etc.

Next Topic: Publication

You want your podcast to be on iTunes as well as other places (individual websites, etc.) One idea is to add links on site for downloading in different formats (MOV, MP3, MP4) and of iTunes.

If using Audacity, we export to MP3 and save on computer with a name.

iTunes:

If you go diirectly to iTunes, then tell iTunes where to locate the file is on the web, and describe the podcast. iTunes creates a directory for it.

If your org has a server or website, create the MP3 file and put it on that server. If you don’t have a server, or not understand how to get to it, there are free tools that let you put it onto a webserver, which is Blip.tv for both video and audio. If stick file on website, people have to download it and it could crash the site. Blip.tv will prevent that from happening by dealing with bandwith for you.

Recommend using Blip.tv.

1. Create Blip.tv account -free. Pro account converts to other formats.

2. Choose “Upload” at top of page.

3. Create Title

4. Create description

5. Take file you’ve created and give them the link.

6. Upload tags in the Categorize section.

7. Distribute/Publish section – will inform you of option.

8. It will take about an hour to upload.

Then click the upper right corner, which is your user name, and you’ll be taken to this screen.

showing your list of podcasts

The arrow is pointing to the RSS feed. If you click on the RSS feed, you see how poeple can add it as a feed.

Now, COPY THE URL WITH THE RSS FEED and paste it into Feedburner. com. So my RSS feed looks like this: http://communityorganzer20.blip.tv/rss

Paste it into Feedburner. Now you have a Feedburner link.

If you go back to Feedburner and look at “My Feeds” you can choose a feed and look at the stats. If you click the RSS icon next to your feed at Feedburner, then THAT is the link that you want to submit to iTunes. By default, the Feedburner URL will always link to iTunes and iTunes will automatically find and upload your podcasts.

More information on the wiki: http://wearemedia.org/NTC+podcast including tools, “how to” and other notes.

Listing in iTunes: (for when podcast listeners are looking for a new podcast) – the Yellow Pages of podcasts.

1. Go to iTunes store.

2. See “Submit a Podcast” in the middle.

3. Paste the Feedburner URL: feeds2.feedburner.com/title

4. Sign in the publish your podcast.

Other Directories

Search for “podcasts” on Google and find other directories for listing your podasts. Others are Podcast Alley and Odio, among others.

Complementary content

Direct people to complementary content (e.g. “if you enjoy this content, go to…” or “if you’d like more information, go to…” or “if you’d like to see the series continue, donate now at…” So, think about calls to action – comment, donate, take action.

Best practice to post complementary content at the beginning and end. Think about what’s in it for the audience and direct complementary content in that direction. What will they find useful?

Link to new podcasts on other social media such as a status update with link on Facebook, etc.

Sponsorship and Donations

Duke study on Cause marketing: for profit entities associated with nonprofits had tremendous results with lift, recognition and purchases. Thus, corporations might be interested in partnering with nonprofits to sponsor the podcast. Sponsors want to be at the beginning of the show. Best practice to also say a few words about the sponsor and urge listeners to visit sponsor’s site.

At CauseCast they are creating a white label donation portal for video also.

View the new donation button at documentary.causecast.org.

If you go to documentary.causecast.org/node/5 you can see all the different video formats.