According to Loren McDonald, "Email consumers control their destiny—choosing when to opt in and when to say adios." This means your unsubscribe page needs to be easy to find and easy to use. And, in a best-case scenario, making this option as user-friendly as possible might keep them from leaving at all. "Many of your subscribers who click the unsubscribe link just want some aspect of the relationship to change," McDonald explains. He suggests some options that might help them choose to stay:

• Offer an unsubscribe/preference page that allows subscribers both to opt out and change preferences. The functionality should enable users to change their email address and profile, along with frequency, format and channel.
• Offer a subscription to another newsletter that may have more relevance for them. Provide a list of those you offer, and let them switch if they’d like.
• Provide contact information that customers can use for the immediate resolution of problems like pages that don’t load, or error messages.

Finally, "an unsubscribe link in an obvious location should lead to a well-designed, branded page that explains exactly how to unsubscribe, thanks the user for his/her patronage, and completes the unsubscribe process quickly for those who really do want to leave," McDonald advises.

By showing you care to subscribers who want to opt out, you may just keep them.

And the DMA’s member guidelines require opt-outs that are easy to find, easy to understand and easy to act on. For details on the DMA’s Commitment to Consumer Choice go here.

MarketingProfs. Click to read the article.

Direct mailers -now it’s easy being green!

Nonprofits want to do the right thing for the environment while demonstrating to constituents that they operate with pro-social values, thrift, and integrity. Clients at McPherson Associates wanting tobe leadersin eco-mailing have inspired the Eco-Campaign, a new package of resources that helps nonprofitsmaketheir mail and their bottom line greener. Options here make the conversion simple, at attractive price points.

The Eco-Campaignprovides environmentally friendly, pro-conservation messaging and mailings that promote sustainability. There’s lots of good news about this alternative, including that as a growing number of organizations sign on, the costs of materials are dropping. Each nonprofit thatjoins this cooperative effort does a good thing for the whole nonprofit community, as bulk purchasing turns the bottom line greener for everyone. Prices from the start are quite competitive, but can end up significantly under the average cost of non-green materials as more buyersjoin this initiative.

Read more here.Discuss your needs, get a quote, or receive a package of green samples. Take a look at consumer-popular premium options that are available, like plant-a-tree and eco-totes. Mail package versions for add gift, acquisition, and lapsed/renewal mailings are among ready-to-customize-and-roll-out packages that are currently available.

Green mail is trendy, but here to stay, and you can still be part of the leading edge. Your prospects and donors now expect you to be green.

Editor’s Note: Watch the Nonprofit Federation website for a nonprofit environmental toolkit coming soon!

Tim Oleary,Vice President, McPherson Associates

"Fifty million people changed their email address last year," says Eric Groves. "How many of those are on your email list right now?"

…Not happy with your answer to that one? Don’t worry: Groves says a little regular maintenance can keep your list hale and hearty. Here are some of his choices for list-cleaning best practices:

Analyze bounce backs. Investigate why messages bounce, and remove any addresses with a hard bounce from your list. Also identify and correct typos like .con instead of .com.

Manage unsubscribe requests. If your email marketing service doesn’t process unsubscribes automatically, make this a top priority.

Monitor your "reply to" inbox. Because spammers have been known to use unsubscribe functions to verify an address, some recipients prefer to make the request by email. Check your inbox for them.

Re-engage inactive subscribers. Design a campaign for those who haven’t opened your emails for the last six months. "If this doesn’t work," says Groves, "remove them. Clearly, they aren’t interested."

Form one good habit. Set time aside after each campaign—or once a month—for analyzing data and tossing out bad addresses.

Good list hygiene pays off. "Your sparkling clean email list may shrink a bit, but will outperform your big, old, messy list any day," Groves concludes.

MarketingProfs. Click to read the article.

My son, Jake, and I just returned from a mission trip to the Czech Republic working with Roma parents and children (gypsies). We were developing relationships with a group of people who have been ostracized by society and have little or no resources. We spent four days sharing toys, children’s items, smiles, hugs, time, and love with people less fortunate than us. Yet we got so much more in return.

When the Romani people realized we were there to help them, they started giving back to us. The adults and children shared with us what little they had. Children would bring a bag of chips or candy and share it with the members of our group. Adults brought hot tea on a cold, rainy day. And on our last day they wanted to perform in costume their traditional dances for us.

And it all started because we first gave to them…asking nothing in return.

Is this the approach your organization takes? Giving comes first.

Do donors see your organization as one that gives or only asks? I know as a donor it bothers me that the only time I hear from certain organizations is when they’re asking for a gift. Don’t get me wrong. I’m in the business of helping organizations ask for money using direct mail and the internet, but we also have to give back to our donors.

A museum I’ve supported sends me free tickets to their exhibitions. A rescue mission invites me to enjoy a meal with the men they serve and see all the ways the mission is making a difference. Do you send your donors birthday cards or notes thanking them for being a donor for the last 2, 3 or 5 years? Learn what’s important to your donors and give it to them.

In their book, The Go-Giver, Bob Burg and John David Mann layout The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success for business people. These concepts of giving can apply equally as well to nonprofits.

1. The Law of Value – Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than what you take in payment.
2. The Law of Compensation – Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.
3. The Law of Influence – Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interest first.
4. The Law of Authenticity – The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.
5. The Law of Receptivity – The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving. 

Now do a little audit of your organization. Are you giving or taking?

One of the highlights of my trip was when 6-year-old David spotted me and ran across the dirt soccer field to give me a big hug. The day before I had taught David to play wiffle ball. Find ways to give your donors big hugs.

Scott Swedenburg, Principal, Mail Enterprises

Most urban legends persist, and it doesn’t matter that they are not true. If stories that don’t inspire, ennoble or (actually) inform us stick, why don’t stories that do? Why don’t stories about the important work done by nonprofits stay in people’s minds and then get passed along?

That is the issue faced by Chip Heath and Dan Heath in their book Made To Stick. Heath and Heath believe there are six principles that apply to ideas that do stick with people.

Those principles are:

• Simplicity. Find the essential core of an idea. Proverbs are a good model because they are both simple and profound.
• Unexpectedness. Surprise will grab their attention, but interest and curiosity will hold it. Systematically open gaps in their knowledge, and then fill those gaps. The surprise should be germane to the message.
• Concreteness. Explain ideas in terms of human actions, of sensory information.
• Credibility. Citing sources can be a great help, but sticky ideas carry their own credentials.
• Emotions. We can influence people to care about our ideas by getting them to feel something.
• Stories. Research shows that when we mentally rehearse a situation we perform better when it actually comes. Hearing stories acts as a form of rehearsal.

NPT Instant Fundraising, NonProfit Times

A less than stellar charity rating … getting blasted in a blog … or, maybe, a CEO that gets caught in a scandal. Any of these situations are bound to leave an organization’s phones ringing with calls from confused, frustrated or even angry donors.

How does an organization relax those donors, calm their fears and address their concerns?

Read more from the FRS Conference Roundup.

Melissa Busch, Associate Senior Editor, FundRaising Success

When you work in a specialized field for long enough, technical jargon and industry lingo start to sound like everyday words. You might start to take it for granted that everyone knows what you mean if you say something like “unsubscribe.” But Mark Brownlow warns that you could be talking to your audience with words they don’t understand.

For perspective, consider slang used throughout the entertainment industry. “Coverage,” for instance, is the concise summary and analysis of a screenplay for executives; “tenpercentery” is a common term for agencies. But the average person would be baffled by these industry-specific terms.

In the same way, Brownlow says you might inadvertently use marketing-speak when you communicate with your donors or members. For a reality check, he recommends finding five friends who are not “power users” of the web or email. Then:

• Ask them to “whitelist” your email address.
• Ask if they want the “HTML” version of your offer.
• Assure them your campaigns comply with “CAN-SPAM.”

“They will look at you like you’re speaking Estonian,” he argues.
And that kind of disconnect is bad for business. If your donors can’t comprehend a request or instruction, how can they react positively to it, or take the appropriate action?

Once you SpellCheck, remember to JargonCheck, too. Unless you’re targeting a special audience, leave out the lingo.

MarketingProfs - Email Marketing Reports.Read the full post here.

Ok, admit it, you also thought this was going to be about those little square fruity candies, didn’t you? Well, read on to see how "time horizon" affects behaviors. And while this report is more focused on the commercial sector, the findings are totally applicable to nonprofits.

Researchers have investigated how "time horizon" and the emotional versus rational appeal of an ad affect donors’ interpretation of a marketing message. It seems it all comes down to now and laters. Here’s what they’ve found:

When donors (or prospects) see their time horizon as expansive, they remember and feel more positive toward advertising that is rational.

But when they see time as limited, they are more favorably disposed to and remember advertising that appeals to their emotions.

Further study drills down even further:

• Donors who see time as expansive prefer ads that focus on achieving positive outcomes.
• Those who see time as limited are partial to ads that focus on avoiding negative outcomes.

Needless to say, the donor’s age plays into this as well: "We find that older adults generally prefer and have better memory for emotional appeals. In contrast, younger adults tend to prefer and have better memory for more rational appeals," the authors report.

…But only to some extent: "However, when time horizon perspectives are [presented as] ;short, all participants prefer emotional appeals, regardless of age. When… long, all prefer rational appeals," they say.

So focus on your "now and laters" when creating copy. Remember that donors and prospective donors basically want to avoid bad things now and approach good things in the future.

Source: "Age-Related Differences in Responses to Emotional Advertisements" by Patti Williams and Aimee Drole. Journal of Consumer Research, 2005. Click here for a PDF of the report.

You know donor segmentation. You know email fundraising. Now put them together.

Speaking at the recent DMDaysNY conference in New York City, Tamara Gruzbarg, manager of decision sciences-digital analysis at Experian, offered advice on utilizing segmentation to develop a relevant email strategy.

Although demographics, attitudes and channel preferences are important, they are secondary to Customer Value: who is spending the most, who is the most loyal who is the least loyal or even unprofitable?

Just knowing the age or income breakdown of the names in a database is not as useful in itself as knowing about the donating habits of those individuals.

The right combination of revenue, frequency, recency-related factors helps to come up with a Customer Value segmentation that is robust, actionable and easy to implement.

In other words, insights into demographic, behavioral and attitudinal segment profiles will help formulate effective marketing strategies driven by relevant content.

Gruzbarg emphasized the following points:

• To send relevant email communication, segment your customer base, considering customer value as the foundation.
• Overlay behavioral, attitudinal and demographic characteristics to inform your communication strategy.
• Evaluate your customers’ potential value by developing strategies for moving up the value dimension.
• Focus on in-actives. Think who can be brought back and how.

NPT Weekly Update, NonProfit Times

Anyone affiliated with a nonprofit knows that any attempt at fundraising can be met with a barrage of questions.

In fact, in his book The 11 Questions Every Donor Asks, Harvey McKinnon has encapsulated that barrage into 11 points. Being able to answer them can be crucial at fundraising time.

The first question McKinnon poses – or has donors posing – is “Why Me?”, and it reflects the tendency of all human beings to think selfishly at some point or other.

He points out that by asking this question the prospect is trying to situate himself in the world, or at least in the world of the organization asking him for money. It includes such concerns as: Do you really know me?; Do you care about me?; and, Am I important to you for reasons other than money?

McKinnon suggests that there are many answers but that the following are especially pertinent and helpful with respect to the Why Me? question:

• Because with your past gifts you have shown that you care;
• Because you have met so-and-so (a person the cause/organization has helped) and your gift can help others like her;
• Because you are respected and your support will inspire others; and,
• Because you know how big the need is, and your gift will help to provide solutions.

NPT Instant Fundraising, NonProfit Times