queer ideas

Online donors have letter boxes too

Here's another couple of charts that Damian O'Broin from Ask Direct and I shared at IOF London on our international mystery shopping exercise.

It gives a few more insights in to how charities are integrating email and postal communications.

One of our most surprising findings was that relatively few of the charities we surveyed put a thank you letter in the post in response to an online gift.

Just 5% of British charities did. American charities came next at a little over 20%. Canadians were better at 40%, whilst Australian charities provided over half of online donors with a 'real' thank you.

And when it came to subsequent appeals, things weren't much better.

As you'll see from this chart (showing results just from the UK), emails were often flying thick and fast – though not in all cases. But what surprised me most was that many charities didn't send out any postal appeals in the six to seven months following receipt of an online gift (purple columns).

A number of people questioned this point in our session, asking whether it was appropriate to mail someone who had chosen to given online. And luckily we included a few recent studies on online giving that surprised a few people and demonstrated, once again, that DM is still alive and kicking.

The first is a piece of US research from last year that found that 14% of online donors gave an online donation in response to a mailing pack, whereas just 6% gave in response to an email.

And when it comes to preference, you'll see below that over a third of those surveyed were happiest using a charity website to give to DM appeals.

TNT found UK donors had similar attitudes in a study they also undertook in 2010. You can read more on this survey here.

I'll ensure that we have the complete presentation of the mystery shopping survey up soon.

Another reason why direct mail isn't going to die

How to judge a fundraising letter

One of the many great things on SOFII is Jerry Huntsinger's series of fundraising tutorials.

Jerry started writing fundraising letters in 1962 and over the years has probably written more of them than most people you could think of.

Every single one his tutorials can improve your fundraising, but number 30, might be particularly useful if you work for an organisation that struggles with the approval process, where deadlines slip and costs mount as growing numbers of your colleagues tweak, adjust and re-write copy in an effort to 'improve' your appeals.

Jerry has eight suggestions on how you can improve the process. You can read the complete version on SOFII, but here's a synopsis...

Give yourself some positive reinforcement

Remember, your donors actually like you and value your work. Supporting you makes them feel good. Why deny them that feeling?

Get your mind off the complaint letter that you received this morning

If you are angry when you read a letter, you are going to be on the defensive. The result is that you'll overlook what it should be doing in order to raise most money.

Don't try to edit the letter so it 'sounds like you'

If you write business letters and use jargon you'll come over as 'cold and sterile'. Donors want you to be warm, caring and positive. Let your writer use that style of language.

Trust your writer's technical expertise

If your writer uses short paragraphs, starts sentences with And or But, uses non-technical language and adds human anecdotes you should relax. They know how to raise money, so trust them.

Make sure your writer opens the letter with a strong beginning

The opening of the letter should be dramatic, emotional or personal. If you feel the opening could be stronger, don't comment any more. Send it back. A small change in an opening can have a huge impact on the entire flow of the piece.

Don't get hung up on the length of the letter

Some should be short, some should be long. Though people who really care about your work can't seem to get enough information (as long as it is interesting, accessible and relevant) sometimes a short letter can do particularly well. I've seen some very short reactivation letters that have achieved great results.

Be sure the letter asks for a specific donation amount

What you ask for will vary according to the donor's previous gifts and the work that you feature, but unless you tell the donor what you want, you leave them guessing and those guesses can often be well below what they can afford.

Don't pass the letter around the office for further approval, unless it is absolutely necessary

Keep the number of people who approve the letter to a minimum. And make sure that the people who do approve it are trained in the basics of editing a fundraising letter.

All others should only be allowed to change inaccuracies.

I'd add a few additional tips to Jerry's...

The first time you read it, hold the letter and nothing else

If you start making comments immediately, you are likely to miss the overall impact of the piece and might find yourself forcing 'important' matters into the opening parts of the letter when they are covered off later - this can really destroy the flow. So put down the pen and concentrate on the emotional impact of what you are reading.

Does the letter concentrate on telling the donor what they have done  – not what your charity is doing?

You should say you or your far more often than you say we.

Read the letter in a minimum of 16 point

I was given this advice years ago by a newspaper proof-reader. It really does help you spot typos, mistakes and poor phrasing.

Lessons from A/B testing

Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, recently shared some of his findings on on-line A/B testing on Quora that were reproduced on Random.Andrew.Warner.com.

They are worth sharing as they demonstrate that though we operate in an on-line world, people are remaining pretty much the same...

I once advised a friend to take his long-copy page and cut it down to be shorter. Conversions dropped by 50% overnight.

I learned that adding highly credible logos to landing pages generally doesn’t have as much measurable impact on direct conversions as you might think.

I learned that I can eke out an extra 5-15% from improving the subject line…or 500% from creating a better offer.

I learned that offering a time-limited promotion is incredibly powerful for conversions.

I learned that you should test prices carefully and often. I have a product that I charge 6x more than what I originally charged…and conversions are essentially the same.

I learned that if people are motivated and interested in your services, you almost cannot give them too much information. This flies in the face of the Silicon Valley belief that “If you build it, they will come,” but it works. And every direct marketer has known this for decades. For example, one of my sales pages is over 25 pages long. It converts very well. In another test, we emailed people twice/day during the final launch period, and open rates stay constantly high.

Finally, I learned that there are diminishing returns on A/B testing, but there are huge gains to be made from changes in strategy, products, and offers.

With thanks to Jon Lucas for the heads up.

Online donors are old-fashioned too

A particularly interesting report has just been published by Network for Good and Truesense Marketing.

It looks at online giving in the US. It's a massive study that covers $381 million in online giving through Network for Good's platform including 3.6 million gifts to 66,470 different nonprofits from 2003-2009.

But rather than recounting list after list of statistics, the paper is actually about the online relationship that charities have with donors. And every page says pretty much the same thing:

The better the relationship, the more a donor is likely to give.

It's as simple as that.

The paper is packed full of evidence that shows just how important builing an emotional connection is. Take, for example, the impact of giving directly through charity sites, giving portals and social networking sites like Facebook charity pages from Causes. The study shows:

• Portal donors gave smaller average gifts (25.1% lower) than website donors.
• While 10.2% of charity website donors were still giving on the third year, only 8.3% of portal donors were still giving – which is a difference of the best part of 20%.
• Social networking sites tend to generate the lowest value gifts. As the paper suggests, donors give through social sites because of a relationship with a friend rather than the charity or because it is convenient when they are in a receptive frame of mind.

As you might suspect, most donations are made in December and at times of disaster. What is amazing is just how many gifts are made on the 30th and 31st of december – 22% of all online giving in a year is made on the last two days of December.

This demonstrates how important tax is as a motivation behind giving (the 31st marks the end of the US tax year) as it dwarfs the peaks seen in the run up to Christmas.

It interesting to note that donors who give in December have a three-year cumulative value that's 51.8% higher than donors in the other 11 months of the year – perhaps because they are simply repeat giving to favoured charities each year when time is at a premium in the few hours before the tax year closes.

The paper also includes loads of other interesting nuggets of information, like this chart that shows online giving by time of day from 2008. It seems to me that the morning mail (both traditional and electronic) is a pretty powerful driver for getting people online.

It's a tremendous study and well worth reading. You can download the paper by clicking here (registration required). Though it is a report on the US market, a very large part is directly transferrable to what's happening in the UK.

Thanks for the heads up to The Agitator.

What happens after that mailing pack lands on the mat?

TNT Post have just released the results of a poll on the importance of direct mail for raising funds.

They surveyed 2,000 British adults and found that:

• One-third of people who give to charity are prompted to do so by receiving direct mail appeals.
• 57% of people who respond to mailing packs do so by mail.
• 87% of people who want more information about the charity go online.

It's great that another survey shows the continuing importance of direct mail, but what it really demonstrates is the importance of integrating online and offline activity.

An appeal pack might get people thinking about giving, but a substantial percentage of your supporters will turn to your website to actually hand over the cash.

This is nothing new. A 2008 study by Harris Interactive for the NonProfit Times found that 17% of online gifts were prompted by direct mail appeals.

Donors prefer to give in the way that works for them. You can see this in action by keeping an eye on your online giving. A mailing substantially boosts the income coming through your website.

And unless you take time to track what's happening, you might not fully appreciate just how important direct mail is to your online fundraising. You'll also miss out on the extra income that integrating online and offline activity can generate.

It doesn't take much work to raise more funds. These are just a few basic ideas that I'd recommend you try...

• Feature your appeal on your home page. If you are running a TV campaign, put the ad on your home page as well. It's an approach used commercially and it works for charities too.
• Configure your online donation form so it links with your DM campaign. Feature the same stories and photographs. Repeat the call to action you use on your donation form too.
  
• Can you extend the story? Video, more photographs, more information and up to date news can all be a reason to go online and nudge donors in the direction of giving.
• Can you offer auto-fill on your donation forms? Anything you can do to make giving easier works!
  
• An email reminder can add another 5% to your bottom line (and often more).
• And more importantly, a thank you / update showing how donations have been used, can generate a substantial second wave of donations.
• Don't forget to use your social media activity to support your appeal - videos work very well.
  

And if you think you don't need to worry about this because your old donors don't go online, think again. A study by Pew Internet shows older people are embracing the internet and social networking in ever greater numbers. You can read more about this here.

Update: details of another study on what donors are looking for when they go online can be found here.

Ten (eleven) best practices for online fundraisers

Sean Powell has just published a rather useful free e-book that will point anyone who isn't well versed in online fundraising in the right direction. 

His key points are:

1. Set up a listening post (I'd add samepoint.com to Sean's recommendations).
2. Re-purpose your content (what works in DM or on TV, will also work online).
3. Coordinate you mailings and your online activity (at a minimum, I'd recommend you test a pre-mailing email before the direct mail pack and an e-reminder shortly afterwards).
4. Benchmark, test and measure.
5. Offline techniques can also work online (matching gifts, donor focused subject lines, adding a PS are all worth using).
6. Email clients like Outlook and Gmail don't adhere to HTML standards like web browsers so get ready to test to overcome the quirks (or just stick to plain text which regularly generates the best results for us at Bluefrog).
7. Seed your email just like direct mail.
8. Collect email addresses at every opportunity.
9. Refresh and increase your list size at every opportunity (but remember the old adage, garbage in = garbage out).
10. Crowdsource your fundraising (supporter get supporter programmes work very well online - take a look at JustGiving).
11. People like video (mention it in your subject line and it increases open rates).

The e-book has loads more great information and links to very useful resources. You can download your copy here.

What should you do with newly recruited Haiti emergency donors?

There have been a number of posts in the blogosphere offering advice about what charities should do with donors recruited in response to Haitian earthquake appeals.

Traditionally, emergency donors are very hard to retain, often only surfacing during the next high-profile disaster.

So any advice on how to improve conversion rates is useful stuff.

Jeff Brooks and Steven Screen dedicate a whole podcast to fundraising around the Haiti earthquake. You can download this via itunes or by clicking here.

Jonathan Grapsas, recommends making the second ask very quickly. His colleague, Sean Triner, wrote a piece for Fundraising and Philanthropy Australia a few months ago that looks specifically at the issue of converting emergency donors. As well as advocating speed, Sean details a five point disaster conversion plan that is well worth implementing.

He refers to the advice of Leo Orland from Australian fundraising agency, Robejohn. Leo also sees speed as essential, recommending donors are thanked immediately. At the same time they should be promised feedback and told when to expect it. Excellent advice.

But I think it is useful to look at what exactly we should be saying in these communications.

With conversion, content really is king and developing the right strategy shouldn't be left to chance.

I've been doing some research on what strategies were used following the tsunami emergency in 2004 to see if there are any lessons to be learned. I've found a great piece by Tom Pope that looks at a number of US organisations and how they approached the loyalty building process. It's a long article so I'm highlighting the key points of each strategy and the results. You should definitely read it in its entirety here as it contains loads of interesting information. Additional material comes from Fundraising Success magazine.

International Rescue Committee (IRC)

Tsunami strategy

• Focused on the organisation rather than the emergency.
• Rather than create a tsunami based emergency recruitment pack, they used a long-standing control pack that focused on work in Sudan.
• They added an additional tsunami focused insert in the pack.
• New recruits were thanked and welcomed to the IRC.
• Feedback was provided by monthly online and DM communications.

Follow up appeals

• Tsunami donors were thanked for supporting the IRC's tsunami relief work and showed how their money had been used before new work was covered).
  
• Non-tsunami donors received the standard communication without the tsunami focused thanks and feedback.

Results (based on response to one DM appeal based on work in Sierra Leone)

• 8.6% response for the tsunami donors
• 4.6% response for non-tsunami donors

CARE USA

Tsunami strategy

• Focused on CARE's wider mission to fight poverty.
  
• New emergency donors were sent "preference cards" so they could control subsequent communications.
• Welcome materials with the message about CARE's wider mission were also used.
• Feedback was provided after 100 days and again at 6 months.

Follow up appeals

• Communications were focused on "Poverty is the silent tsunami".
• The strategy was to "...gain support for any poverty that makes people susceptible to a crisis".

Results (partial year communications only)

• Previous retention rates for emergency donors stood at 22% (compared to 42% for non-emergency donors).
  
• 8% of tsunami donors had made second gift against an expected rate of 9-10% at the same stage in the appeal cycle.
• Predicted 22% normal emergency retention rate would not be achieved.
  
• Adam Hicks, Vice President of marketing and communications thought their approach had improved retention...

"If we weren't doing those things, the responses would be much less".

Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

Tsunami strategy

• Followup communications told the donor "about the organisation as a whole".

Follow up appeals

• CRS had no online programme, so emergency donors were converted to a DM communication stream.
• Communications were revamped. They included:

1. A reminder for donors telling them how generous they were
2. Reports on how money had been used
3. Thank you calls (using a combination of live operator and taped messages).

Results

• 8% of tsunami donors made a second gift against a 'normal' rate of 32% - 33%.
• Second gifts were high with an average of $150 or more.
• Best responders were originally recruited from the web or through unsolicited postal donations.

American Red Cross

No detailed analysis but..

Steve Denne, Vice President for development operations says online donors were opting out at a far lower rate than in previous emergencies.

"They are staying connected with email communications with us more than in the past".

Direct Relief International (DRI)

No detailed analysis but...

41.000 were recruited at the time of the tsunami. Mainly from TV reports. Donors were given access to the standard communications programme of an online newsletter updated on a bi-weekly basis.

No second appeal results but things look positive. Many corporate donors came back to support work surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Over $2.3 million was received without any marketing support.

Strategy to convert online donors was to bond them to the organisation through...

"...direct mail, online strategies and reporting back quickly to them, an in the same way they reached you...when you ask them for a gift, you have to give a compelling story about why the gift is needed, and you have to recognise their help."

Oxfam Canada

Tsunami strategy

Created a separate monthly giving programme that focused on converting emergency donors by highlighting three emergency issues faced by the organisation – immediate response, reconstruction and emergency preparedness.

Follow up appeals

• One month after giving donors received a feedback postcard.
• After two months donors received an in-depth newsletter focusing on Oxfam's response to the crisis.
• After four months donors received a request for a regular gift...

1. Donors who gave via the web were emailed.
2. Donors who gave via the telephone were called.
3. Donors who gave via the web were called.

Results (conversion to regular gift)

• Emailed web supporters - 0.2%
• Telephone supporters who were called - 7.5%
• Web supporters who were called - 13%

So what does all this mean?

One of the ongoing themes of this blog is the concept of donor needs. By answering them, we can build loyalty and raise more money. 

One incredibly important need is for personal growth - in part, this means to reaffirm a donor's self-image. This can be answered by showing them exactly what they helped achieve. This seems to be what the IRC did.

All things weren't equal for charities or their donors, but the IRC found that more emergency donors responded to their first warm appeal than those who were recruited at other times. With an 85% uplift, that's quite astounding.

Other charities that chose to lead communications by telling new donors about the wider work of the organisation didn't do so well.

That's because donors care more about what THEY have personally done, rather than what a charity is doing.

Donors give through charities. Not to them.

It's far too soon to see how donors who have given to Haiti will convert to regular support, but some early data shows that it doesn't seem it will be any easier this time around.

The American Red Cross has done fantastically with their Haiti text donations. $26 million had been raised by Thursday the 21st of January. But only about 5% of those people gave the Red Cross permission to contact them again.

As for my recommendations? You know your donors better than anyone and will probably have your own programmes and tests results to draw on. But, for what it's worth, this is what I would do.

• Thank donors quickly.
• Ask donors what they want and how they want it.
• Update regularly with a focus on what the donor has done.
• concentrate on the benefit to a small number of individuals rather than recounting statistics about tonnes of aid delivered (there's a great piece on the power of small numbers over big ones here via @jeffbrooks)
• Use the web where possible, but make sure your emails are being opened.
• Use highly personal direct mail communications
• Show the donor you know who they are. Remind them of the value of their gift and what it has done in Haiti.
• In all future appeals, continue to write about what the donor has done rather than what you, as an organisation, have achieved.
• Use the telephone to convert donors to regular giving.
• Be creative in how you engage donors. If people aren't interested in setting up a regular gift for general work, offer them alternatives...

1. Consider setting up an emergency fund. Gifts to this will be used for reconstruction and for the next disaster. Feedback on the impact of the donor's actions will build loyalty. From there, conversion to non-earmarked forms of giving will be easier. (I've worked on programmes like this in the UK and they are effective).
   

2. If you have donors giving via direct debit who give to your emergency appeals, consider asking them if they would be willing to have a gift automatically added to their monthly gift the next time a disaster strikes.

Many donors who have given to Haiti might be making their first significant gift to any charity, if we show them the impact of their action and make the experience rewarding, we will do more than raise more money for one emergency.

We will expand the universe of people who give to charity, increasing the effectiveness of the whole sector.

And that can only be good for everyone.

And finally, this approach isn't just suitable for emergency donors. The same basic strategy can be used to convert all new recruits.

Benchmarking the success of your email campaigns

If you are looking to compare the performance of your email campaigns in terms of open, click through and delivery rates, Marketing Online has a regularly updated set of benchmarking studies.

As well as global and US surveys, it also includes reports on UK campaigns and specific studies based on the differences between the various public service providers – Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL.

Loads of statistics and charts are available. This is just one that shows the rather poor click to open rates of current charity emails in the UK...

You can find details of another charity specific (US) study here.

I'd also recommend that you take a look at this recent presentation from Bryan Miller and Jonathan Waddingham which also contains some great up to date statistics from Cancer Research UK and JustGiving (including some interesting data on the increasing importance of Facebook).

Finally, some in-depth and up to date benchmarking figures on e-campaigning highlighted by Rachel Collinson. There's an emphasis on UK and Canadian organisations, but internationals are included as well. The link will take you to a presentation and PDF reports - great reading.