Michael Stein: Internet Strategy for the Nonprofit Sector

Donation usability: Increasing online giving to nonprofits

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen's has an excellent article in his Alertbox report on March 30, 2009.  He writes that user research finds significant deficiencies in non-profit organizations' website content, which often fails to provide the info people need to make donation decisions:

"Non-profits would collect much more from their websites if only they'd clearly state what they are about and how they use donations. Our new usability studies revealed considerable frustration as potential donors visited sites and tried to discern various organizations' missions and goals — which are key factors in their decisions about whether to give money. In 2008, non-profits got about 10% of their donations online, according to a survey by Target Analytics. Given the high growth rate for Internet donations, we estimate that they'll constitute the majority of donations by 2020. If non-profit organizations get their sites into shape, that is. Well-designed non-profit websites are particularly suited for attracting new donors and efficiently supporting small-scale impulse giving. Websites are less effective at sustaining long-term donor relationships. For encouraging customer (or donor) loyalty, e-mail newsletters remain the Internet tool of choice."

Read Jakob Nielsen's full article on donation usability

2008 donorCentrics Internet giving analysis

Target Analytics, a Blackbaud Company, released its 2008 donorCentrics™ Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis back on March 18, 2009. This was a follow-up to their groundbreaking 2006 report and provides insights into the online and offline trends of donors. The findings represent analysis of information from over 9.5 million donors and more than $747 million in donations to the nonprofits in the study.

Key findings in the report:

• Online giving continues to grow rapidly in 2007 and 2008, even in the absence of major disasters which fueled the growth of online giving for relief and animal welfare organizations in previous years.
• Over the past few years, online giving has become an increasingly significant source of new donor acquisition. These online donors give much larger gifts but have slightly lower retention rates than traditional donors.
• Online giving is not a strong renewal channel; every year, large numbers of online donors migrate away from online giving and to other channels, primarily direct mail.
• Donors to direct mail – the primary giving source for most organizations – rarely give online. In the relatively rare cases when mail donors do give online, they tend to give higher average gifts – both before and after their first online gift.
• Offline donors who have an email address on file, and who have no record of giving online, give far more per year and retain and reactivate at higher rates than those who do not have an email address on file.
• Donors in the southwest and mountain regions of the United States are disproportionately more likely to give online.

Read the full 2008 donorCentrics Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis

How much email is too much?

That's the question asked by Amnesty International USA's Steve Daigneault in an April 1 blog post on CARE2's Frogloop Blog. He writes:

"It's no surprise then that when I first joined AIUSA as the Managing Director of Internet Communications, we were sending out 2, 3 or more emails PER DAY. Yes, we segmented, but trying to build suppressions, queries and code emails to send 2 to 3 emails per day was a nightmare and not always effective. The online team at that time was primarily seen as a group of glorified tech-monkeys who would take copy and email it to our list. The quality varied from downright embarrassing to just OK, but still really wonky and dry."

His biggest lesson learned: "The biggest lessons we've learned on this journey is that emails that are highly opportunistic, that can clearly show the importance of the moment, in very specific terms, as well as a clear advocacy strategy, perform leagues ahead of other emails. My feeling is that every email needs to meet this bar, otherwise, email isn't the right tactic to achieve the stated goal."

Read Steve's article on the CARE2 Frogloop Blog

Average open rates and response rates for email appeals

A colleague of mine asked me today about the average open rates and response rates for email appeals.  For large email lists (50,000 and up) I use the benchmarks that are published in the Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmarks Index Study.

• The average open rate for email appeals is 14%.  There are some variances noted by different vertical, see the Study for details (page 16-17).
  
• The average email appeal response rate across all verticals in 0.07%.  There are some variances noted by different vertical, see the Study for details (page 18).

Oakland training on effective Websites and e-communications with John Kenyon: Feb 9

My colleague and friend John Kenyon is presenting an upcoming workshop on Effective Websites and E-Communications.  In an economic downturn, the need for nonprofits to attract support is more important than ever.  John will be conducting an in-person workshop on Monday, February 9, 2009, all about the cornerstones of effective online fundraising: Effective Websites, Email and E-newsletters.  He'll discuss excellent online practices and review real examples. You will learn how to make sure the foundations of your online presence are solid. Other important topics include driving traffic to your website and tracking metrics to gauge progress towards your goals. The workshop will take place from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm at CSU East Bay in Oakland and is hosted by The CBO Center.

Learn more about John Kenyon's workshop on Effective Websites and E-Communication

Beaconfire debunks the email open rate

I've written frequently about the issue of the email open rate which purports to show how many individuals have actually opened an email that has been sent to them by an organization.  Many organizations scrutinize their open rates after sending email newsletters, email fundraising appeals and email advocacy messages.  While reflecting again on how best to explain that the open rate is a pretty inaccurate metric due to the nature of how people use software to read their email and how the open rate is calculated, I found this useful blog post from back in June 2008 by Jo Miles at Beaconfire Consulting.  I'm a fan of Beaconfire and enjoy reading their blog regularly for its insightful and in-depth exploration of online engagement issues.  Here's Jo's final paragraph:

"Since your end goal is usually to have the recipient take a specific action (donate, sign a petition, etc), what you really want to know is how many people made it to that goal, and where others dropped off along the way. Different metrics will tell you different pieces of the story. Open rate suggests the successfulness of your subject line; click-throughs suggest whether recipients were influenced by your content; if you can pull in data on how many of your click-throughs actually completed your action, you can gauge the success of your landing pages. Each statistic gives you an idea of where to improve your campaigns in the future. Only by interpreting a range of statistics do you get the full picture what’s going on.  But if you’re looking for one quick measure of success, just take your open rates with a grain of salt."

The basics of email metrics: Are your campaigns working?

You already know the value a good email campaign can bring to your nonprofit, whether it is an eNewsletter, or email advocacy and fundraising appeals. But how can you tell if your electronic communications are actually having the impact you hoped for? Is the work you're putting in worth the effort? Email metrics can help you determine the effectiveness of your communications and fine tune them to improve their efficiency. This excellent article by Idealware (disclosure: I'm on the Board), explains how to use basic email metrics to understand how your constituents are reacting to your emails. It also talks through the data points needed to track email performance, the most common formulas for standard email metrics, what they can tell you, and how to use them to improve results.

Read Idealware's article on The Basics of Email Metrics

Jacob Nielsen on transactional email and confirmation messages

Jacob Nielsen is my guru of online usability.  He studies and tests all types of online usability such as website home pages design, navigation styles, e-newsletter design, landing page design, forms on e-commerce, to name but a few.  His latest e-update discusses transactional email and confirmation messages, these sometimes useful and sometimes annoying messages we get from nonprofits, e-commerce services, e-auctions, and others, delivering information about online transactions that have just occurred.  Nielsen encourages us to avoid or minimize message sequences, only tell users what they need to know, and to build trust through the transaction email.

His last sentence is powerful: "Confirmation email and other automated transactional messages are great for connecting a website with its customers and for closing the loop in e-commerce and other transactions. Just remember: Email is a user interface. Design your messages accordingly, aiming for maximum usability."

Email is a user interface.  I wish more organizations understood this.

Read Jacob Nielsen's article on transactional email and confirmation messages

Email appending: Risks and Rewards

Email appending is the process of adding an individual's email address to that individual's postal record inside your existing database. This is accomplished by matching the postal database against a third-party, permission based database of postal and email address information.

My colleague and friend Robert Weiner has a recent blog post on this topic, and he summarizes the issue this way:

The risks include being labeled a spammer, which can lead to bad relationships with constituents and could result in ISPs blocking email from your domain. The rewards include the ability to (re)connect with constituents who neglected to give you their (new) email address (similar to the post office's update services), saving money by using electronic mail instead of paper mail, and the ability to find your supporters' email addresses quickly and relatively inexpensively.

I don't recommend email appending and email change of address services to clients because I feel it doesn't meet the standard for permission-based electronic marketing.  If a nonprofit doesn't have their ducks in a row to stay in touch regularly with constituents or create enough incentive for constituents to update their own email addresses, then turning to third party email appending services is not a permission-based approach that respects the constituent's intent.  I encourage my clients to use permission-based techniques for keeping constituents' email addresses up to date.

Idealware asks: Should VerticalResponse be the default mass email tool for nonprofits

I'm circling back around to this interesting post by Laura Quinn on the Idealware blog in June 2008 which asks: "Should VerticalResponse be the default mass email tool for nonprofits?"  Laura writes:

The realm of blast emailing tools has been a pretty complicated one. Prices were complicated, features varied, and you really had to think through what you wanted in order to be able to effectively compare.

But with the announcement that VerticalResponse now offers 501(c)(3) nonprofits up to 10,000 emails per month for free, does that change? I think it might. VerticalResponse has been on our list of recommended tools for awhile - it's well designed, feature-rich, has strong deliverability, and integrates well with other tools (especially Salesforce). Even without nonprofit discounts, it's a very interesting option. At 10,000 emails for free, well, that might make it the obvious choice for most smaller nonprofits.

I've been taking a much closer look at VerticalResponse than I have before, to try to be able to answer the obvious question: when is it not the best choice?

There's two clear reasons why you'd want to look beyond. First, if you're sending considerably more than 10,000 emails a month - say, 20,000 or more - it's worth comparing prices with other packages. 10,000 emails free is a pretty darn big head start, but VR is considerably more expensive than some packages for higher volumes. Network for Good EmailNow (a stripped down package that's by far the cheapest mass email tool we've found if you're sending high volumes), is cheaper than VerticalResponse when you hit only about 15,000 emails per month.

Second, are you interested in a tool that will track all your constituents, take online payments, etc, in addition to emailing? If so, VerticalResponse is not that, so it makes sense to look instead to the world of integrated online packages.

Read the complete blog post