Why emails are sent out

This is the chart of the week on marketingsherpa.com. The marketing objectives are ranked by importance on the chart.

I thought it was interesting to see the similarities (or what I think would be the similiarities) between this chart--which was made for for-profit companies and nonprofits.

Definitely the most important for both nonprofits and for profits would be to retain existing customers/constitutents. In one of the posts yesterday, I talked about how 8 out of 10 donors do not donate again. Keeping existing donors/customers/constituents is very important for a nonprofit, since it has already worked hard to gain the supporter in the first place. By communicating with this in mind will help to ensure that the donors know how their funds were used and why it is important to continue donating. This doesn't necessarily mean that it has to come through email (although that is clearly the cheapest method).

I would think that for the building brand education would be higher on the list for nonprofits as some email communications are made specifically to educate about what the organization does.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this--and how you think that this would be amended for nonprofits.

A little rant or What not to do to your donors....

I love my alma mater. I hope to one day have a scholarship named after me there. However, because of the economy and other competing interests (like the cost of going there), the scholarship will need to wait.

I am on the committee for my 5 year reunion. Our contact person has asked all of us to make a donation to the college's annual fund. Completely understandable, I get it. I would expect that the people on the committee would be one of the first to donate. So, last night I got some money together and made my donation online.

Now, let me tell you this. My alma mater is a warm and fuzzy place. They are smiling people, a small college where everyone knows everyone and you feel good about yourself for going there. I made my donation pretty easily online. No big deal. Then I waited for the thank you email after the confirmation that I was sure would come. This place is warm and welcoming and they thank everyone all the time, so I was sure that a thank you would be on its way.

Immediately after I made the donation, I received an email. I will copy and paste it because it is that unbelievable.

From: xx_prod@infinet-inc.com
Subject: Standard Notification
Date: March 18, 2010 11:25:29 PM CDT
To: Molly Heinsler


Molly Heinsler,

A credit card payment in the amount of $51.00 was approved on 03/19/2010 at 00:25 AM.

The confirmation number is 124870.

Regards,

QuikPAY Online Services




this is the only thing that I have received from the college. I received a "Standard Notification". It doesn't even have a thank you.



Please do not do this to your donors.

In this economy, with my lack of a "big girl" job, I had to sacrifice to make a donation. And all i got was a standard notification.

Ouch.

Communication Personalization

As part of research for a job interview, I signed up for multiple email campaigns. I wanted to get the experience from the user's point of view, and to see what things are good about an email campaign and what aren't. So my inbox has been inundated with emails from these nonprofits.

I wanted to see what the sign up process was like--how it easy it was to find on the website, whether there were options for which communications to receive, etc. Some of the websites were incredibly easy to use and there were others that took a bit of hunting to find. If an organization wants to get new supporters, advocates and donors, it needs to be easy to find!! I know that everyone blogger says this, but it is really important!

Most of the organizations that I signed up with sent an immediate confirmation email and I began receiving emails immediately. This was great--i signed up and while I was still feeling passionate, I was given the tools to do something about it!

However, one of groups that I signed up with took over a week to send me a confirmation! Everyone today wants immediate gratification, and taking over a week to start receiving emails made me question whether or not I wanted to support this organization that takes that long to send a confirmation!

I think the moral of the story is that nonprofits should have an immediate response or confirmation to strike while the iron is hot for their supporters. Nonprofits should also have an "outsider" try to use the website and give feedback on its ease of use. Sometimes we get so familiar with our own websites that we forget what it's like for someone on the outside, so asking a volunteer to investigate it will help to get another perspective.

8 Steps to Designing a Reactivation Campaign - ClickZ

8 Steps to Designing a Reactivation Campaign - ClickZ

I thought that this article was really interesting. It's geared towards for-profit companies, but I think that there are some great things that can be taken from this. One thing that is overlooked all the time is the 2nd tip--make sure that you identify a goal. This is so important! Is the organization just looking to get people volunteering again?, to reactivate a donor? or to get them to become advocates? Identifying these goals BEFORE you start designing and implementing an email campaign is crucial to its success.

Another thing that I thought was a really great point was figuring out why these people have left/stopped donating/etc. Were they receiving too many emails? Were the emails that they were receiving not interesting to them? This could be a reason to implement a "communications preferences" portion to the website so that you can hear from the constituent how often and on what topics they want to hear from the nonprofit. This information is important for designing future email campaigns!!!

Nonprofits and why they need email campaigns NOW

I had a really interesting conversation this morning with James, who works at a local (and great!) CRM company. We were discussing how some nonprofits are resistant to investing time and money into email campaigns and social media campaigns when they still receive a major portion of their donations via direct mail campaigns. These direct mail campaigns are targeted towards the demographics with the most money, those who are older (about 50+). In the next few years, people who are more familiar with email and online transactions (donating, shopping, etc.) will become this coveted age group. There will be a drastic shift from receiving direct mail donations to receiving email donations. Ensuring that nonprofits have established effective email campaigns will ensure that the infrastructure is in place for this shift. Nonprofits will be able to tell what works and what doesn't work for email campaigns and will be able to process donations online.

So many nonprofits have a short-term view. They have to--they can't be sure of where their funding will be coming from or if it will continue for the long term. Convincing these nonprofits that they need to invest in these email campaigns NOW because it will have such an impact on the future is a challenge that the companies (like James') face daily.

The shift from direct mail donations to online donations may be drastic, so those nonprofits that aren't on the ball may miss out on a lot of this money!

I would love to do more research to really crunch the numbers on this (sorry, it's a lot of ball park-ish), because I think that many executives would have to see the evidence in black and white to really jump on board with the email campaigns.