by Matthew Sherrington of the Good Agency
(a bit patchy, sorry, short attention-span)
What do we want?
time, money and influence= change
We are all marketeers. marketing our causes. Understanding who you talk to, where they are at, how to speak to them, etc etc
BUT
people are changing
technology is changing
market is changing
organisations are changing
It's all about change.
Joining the dots - helping organisations make the link
Supporters are changing
- they are not interested in everything you have to say.
- they are old - what's going to happen with organisations between the time the new generation of supporters has been created and nurtured.
Older generation - fulfilling their needs - once basic needs fulfilled, spiritual needs are next.
- people's understanding of needs is changing.
Younger generation is more interested in political issues
(BM: REALLY? Who is obsessed with plastic surgeries, Xfactor and fame then? Majority aren't I'd say...
- motivation - guilt, belonging, compassion, inspiration - Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Technology is changing
Market is changing
- online banking, shopping, etc...
Sorry - got a bit distracted - it's all stuff that I kind of know...
People want to be inspired. We should email people more.
Organisations are changing
Organisations - They want to grow and they need the influence.
The key to orgaisaing people is to listen to what they say the issues are, and then either nudge them to live up to their own standards or get them to understand the source of their pain. Gregory Galluzzo, Changemakers
Donors who campaign
Greepeace US-30% of donors were exposed to actions.
House parties to save the whales. Bake-offs etc..
(BM: yes yes yes but this is Greenpeace! they are campaigners first, donors second. What about development charities ????)
Retention rates of donors approved dramatically with participation in campaigning.
Save the children gaza campaign is an example of a good fundraising and campaigning action, but it's a spur of the moment.
Business case
Silo-busting
Campaigners and fundraisers are both stats people so we should get silo-busting and talk to each other in order to get the funding.
We are not talking about campaigners or donors or activists - they are just people who want to engage with you. What's the best way of engaging people. And it's not just about online, it's offline too.
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Ecampaigning forum: Campaigning and Fundraising - Together again by Care 2
Notes from the eCampaigning forum. - apologies for typos - will tidy up later.
Help justify your ecampaigning expenses through fundraising.
Impact on fundraising
14% in online giving 2007-2008 (stats from Convio). More and more people giving online.
cross-over btw campaigners and donors
Donor Centrix 2008
11% of donor revenue is online
9% of donors have given 1 gift online
half online donors - new
online donors account for 16% of all new donors and 27% of NEW revenue
online donors migrate to offline giving
Acquisiton expensive - most budgets switched online,
Lifetime value is extrending. if the organisatio ins;t tracking, no way to make that case!!!!
Email is still the king.
Size of organisations' email list is propotional to the amount raised online
Online actoivists don;t need to be recruited online. Most successful conversinos thourgh direct mail, online marketing, other channels. is this because of the nature of Dm programmes which are tailoerd for print.
online fundraising programme needs a good offline fundraising programme. ecampaigning is a good lead generation.
Silo busting - who funds a message, who owns supporters?
Important to brek down the barriers. Data shows that talking to people with different messages makes them more committed.
It's not just about fundraisers having access to campaigners but also reaching out to donors for campaigning asks.
Email is The way of raising money online.
Social networks - revenue low:
Save Darfur - FB Caiuses raised $28,000 while email $415,000
What is working on FB is the birthday donation on FB.
On social networks need a social permission to ask for money - such as a challenge - bike ride, swim, walk. Otheriwse it doesn't work.
New Media gateway - really good graph showing what people do online -
eCampainging is the fastest way to grow your email list.
Video really useful but very hard to plan the viral effect.
IRC - online audience grew from 16,500 to 59,000 via online petitionsm viral growth - 25% from viral.
React quickly. Build the list for big moments.
advocacy email response rates are highest
Response rates:
fundraising - 0.7 - 0.6%
enews - 2-3%
advocacy 5.5-6.3%
eBenchmarking study 2009
People who have taken action online are 2.3x more likely to donate.
National bureau of research - Charitable Evidence from a large scale online experiment
Techniques for getting activists to donate.
- welcoming - sequencing of messages.
Soft ask - (p.s. in an email) donation ask after taking action
Online actions provide a context for asking for full contact information.
Converting donors into actions has been done but no data publicly available.
Demographics of the people giving online - younger than traditional. New generation of donors. The avearge age of direct mail donors is very old. Actions are a way to access this new younger group.
Challenge in boiling the campaigning issues down (as they can be complex and borinng - hence not a recruiter)
Segmentation - essential - sending specific messages to specific people - levelof knowledge/interest. We'll be seeing the increase in segmentation on ecampaigning emails.
Help justify your ecampaigning expenses through fundraising.
Impact on fundraising
14% in online giving 2007-2008 (stats from Convio). More and more people giving online.
cross-over btw campaigners and donors
Donor Centrix 2008
11% of donor revenue is online
9% of donors have given 1 gift online
half online donors - new
online donors account for 16% of all new donors and 27% of NEW revenue
online donors migrate to offline giving
Acquisiton expensive - most budgets switched online,
Lifetime value is extrending. if the organisatio ins;t tracking, no way to make that case!!!!
Email is still the king.
Size of organisations' email list is propotional to the amount raised online
Online actoivists don;t need to be recruited online. Most successful conversinos thourgh direct mail, online marketing, other channels. is this because of the nature of Dm programmes which are tailoerd for print.
online fundraising programme needs a good offline fundraising programme. ecampaigning is a good lead generation.
Silo busting - who funds a message, who owns supporters?
Important to brek down the barriers. Data shows that talking to people with different messages makes them more committed.
It's not just about fundraisers having access to campaigners but also reaching out to donors for campaigning asks.
Email is The way of raising money online.
Social networks - revenue low:
Save Darfur - FB Caiuses raised $28,000 while email $415,000
What is working on FB is the birthday donation on FB.
On social networks need a social permission to ask for money - such as a challenge - bike ride, swim, walk. Otheriwse it doesn't work.
New Media gateway - really good graph showing what people do online -
eCampainging is the fastest way to grow your email list.
Video really useful but very hard to plan the viral effect.
IRC - online audience grew from 16,500 to 59,000 via online petitionsm viral growth - 25% from viral.
React quickly. Build the list for big moments.
advocacy email response rates are highest
Response rates:
fundraising - 0.7 - 0.6%
enews - 2-3%
advocacy 5.5-6.3%
eBenchmarking study 2009
People who have taken action online are 2.3x more likely to donate.
National bureau of research - Charitable Evidence from a large scale online experiment
Techniques for getting activists to donate.
- welcoming - sequencing of messages.
Soft ask - (p.s. in an email) donation ask after taking action
Online actions provide a context for asking for full contact information.
Converting donors into actions has been done but no data publicly available.
Demographics of the people giving online - younger than traditional. New generation of donors. The avearge age of direct mail donors is very old. Actions are a way to access this new younger group.
Challenge in boiling the campaigning issues down (as they can be complex and borinng - hence not a recruiter)
Segmentation - essential - sending specific messages to specific people - levelof knowledge/interest. We'll be seeing the increase in segmentation on ecampaigning emails.
Monday, 18 January 2010
Technology will win next elections, not policy - debate notes
This evening I went to a debate with the above title organised by Henry Jackson Society and Delib agency.
Panellists were: Rory Cellan-Jones, Kerry McCarthy MP, Julie Meyer, Bruce Anderson & Rishi Saha, hosted by Danny Alexander MP
The discussion was interesting in a funny way - I felt like I was stuck in 2008. The panellists spent 20 minutes discussing whether enough people in the UK are online for digital to make a difference in the next elections. This is one of the typical arguments of why digital is not important. So bored of hearing it again and again - people in this country spend days online, just look at the Neilsen, Ofcom and other reports. Discussion over. Moving on.
Undoubtedly, political parties accept that they can not ignore digital if they are to engage the voters. The problem is though that they try to engage us in the same way with the same strategies they used to engage us pre web 2.0.
Panellists laughed at the fact that Cadbury's chocolate has more fans than a Labour or Tory Facebook pages. Well, those are your voters so you need to find the way to speak to them. Not with wonkery, but by addressing the issues that they are bothered about/enjoy/consider entertaining. And to gauge this - you go to social networks.
And yes, as Bruce Anderson said, this doesn't mean you do everything they say (like Obama didn't legalize weed just because that was the most prominent campaign on his Citizens briefing book website). It's just that politicians are so scared of openly debating/saying no because they think it'll damage their image. While it's more likely that people will respect them for standing up for what they believe in and/or treating lay people with interest in politics with respect.
So all in all I was disappointed with the level of the debate. Which at moments descended into party-political mud-slinging.
I really expected that people will start with the lessons of the Obama campaign and discuss what could work in this country, with our political parties.
Rory Cellan-Jones said in his 2-minute intro that he fears that the election 2010 digital campaign will result in a virtual Westminster Village. The discussion tonight makes me fear the same.
Stuff that could be of interest
PPCs (224) on Twitter: CON 38% LAB 29% LD 21%
MPs (111) on Twitter: LAB 57% LD 23% CON 14%
http://www.globalpovertypromise.com/home
Labour online community for the people who care about global issues.
www.edspledge.com/
Labour's climate change community.
Panellists were: Rory Cellan-Jones, Kerry McCarthy MP, Julie Meyer, Bruce Anderson & Rishi Saha, hosted by Danny Alexander MP
The discussion was interesting in a funny way - I felt like I was stuck in 2008. The panellists spent 20 minutes discussing whether enough people in the UK are online for digital to make a difference in the next elections. This is one of the typical arguments of why digital is not important. So bored of hearing it again and again - people in this country spend days online, just look at the Neilsen, Ofcom and other reports. Discussion over. Moving on.
Undoubtedly, political parties accept that they can not ignore digital if they are to engage the voters. The problem is though that they try to engage us in the same way with the same strategies they used to engage us pre web 2.0.
Panellists laughed at the fact that Cadbury's chocolate has more fans than a Labour or Tory Facebook pages. Well, those are your voters so you need to find the way to speak to them. Not with wonkery, but by addressing the issues that they are bothered about/enjoy/consider entertaining. And to gauge this - you go to social networks.
And yes, as Bruce Anderson said, this doesn't mean you do everything they say (like Obama didn't legalize weed just because that was the most prominent campaign on his Citizens briefing book website). It's just that politicians are so scared of openly debating/saying no because they think it'll damage their image. While it's more likely that people will respect them for standing up for what they believe in and/or treating lay people with interest in politics with respect.
So all in all I was disappointed with the level of the debate. Which at moments descended into party-political mud-slinging.
I really expected that people will start with the lessons of the Obama campaign and discuss what could work in this country, with our political parties.
Rory Cellan-Jones said in his 2-minute intro that he fears that the election 2010 digital campaign will result in a virtual Westminster Village. The discussion tonight makes me fear the same.
Stuff that could be of interest
PPCs (224) on Twitter: CON 38% LAB 29% LD 21%
MPs (111) on Twitter: LAB 57% LD 23% CON 14%
http://www.globalpovertypromise.com/home
Labour online community for the people who care about global issues.
www.edspledge.com/
Labour's climate change community.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
How can we make our supporters more active online?
Following the release of an UK e-campaigning benchmark study, Duane from fairsay asked a group of practitioners the following question:
"By now, many of you have dug into the 2009 eCampaigning Review (http://fairsay.com/ecr09). You will thus have noticed that there are a few areas where *many organisations are doing very poorly*. *Why do you think that is?*
50%+ of supporters had not taken any action in the last 18 months for almost half the organisations
70% of /active/ supporters had only taken 1 action in the last 18 months
The discussion on the list was interesting reaching from "the issue is capacity" to "the issue is strategy as well".
Below is my contribution to this discussion which was based on my experience in the past couple of years ...
--------------------
Due to the nature of Duane's research, we are in danger of falling into a trap of silo-ing people into 'Campaigners'. If we look at our supporters in this way, then yes, it is a problem if they only take ONE action in 18 months.
But we know that it is entirely possible that a supporter will engage in other ways over years - by attending an event, filling in an action card, donating, purchasing merchandise/virtual gift, running a marathon, donating in memory of someone, filling in an order form, etc, etc...
Now this points to few related and common problems in charity communications:
- no integration between online and offline databases - therefore no 360 degrees view of a supporter. In other words, one person could be interacting with an organisation online as well as offline. But due to the lack of integration between databases where this data is being held and/or lack of enough data to de-dupe records, that individual might appear inactive. Or that individual could represent two, three, four different people - depending on how many disparate databases their data is held on.
- due to the lack of a full view of how a supporter interacts with an organisation, it's hard/time-consuming to decide what kind of retainment strategy should be developed. Therefore we could be communicating to a supporter who has only taken one online action as if they were an 'inactive supporter' because we are unaware of their 'offline' or just non-campaigning online activities.
- silos in the organisation - in order to create an overall, corporate, supporter development strategy which offers people a number of ways to engage, different teams in an organisation need to collaborate on it's development. Which can be hard because every team feels a little bit that they 'own' THEIR Campaigners, or Donors, or Teachers, etc, etc - basically the fact that one supporter could be all three is hard to grasp.
- going back to e-campaigning - As Andrew said "Not every campaign is well suited to public mobilization". And we still do it because, in our lobbying efforts, we need to show that there is public/voter support for an issue. But sometimes we need to create campaigns with the sole purpose of engaging less active lists or recruiting a specific age-group or retaining very active campaigners. And not every Campaigns and Policy team buys into this.
These issues are much harder to resolve in bigger organisations and working in a small organisation could actually be an advantage.
"By now, many of you have dug into the 2009 eCampaigning Review (http://fairsay.com/ecr09). You will thus have noticed that there are a few areas where *many organisations are doing very poorly*. *Why do you think that is?*
50%+ of supporters had not taken any action in the last 18 months for almost half the organisations
70% of /active/ supporters had only taken 1 action in the last 18 months
The discussion on the list was interesting reaching from "the issue is capacity" to "the issue is strategy as well".
Below is my contribution to this discussion which was based on my experience in the past couple of years ...
--------------------
Due to the nature of Duane's research, we are in danger of falling into a trap of silo-ing people into 'Campaigners'. If we look at our supporters in this way, then yes, it is a problem if they only take ONE action in 18 months.
But we know that it is entirely possible that a supporter will engage in other ways over years - by attending an event, filling in an action card, donating, purchasing merchandise/virtual gift, running a marathon, donating in memory of someone, filling in an order form, etc, etc...
Now this points to few related and common problems in charity communications:
- no integration between online and offline databases - therefore no 360 degrees view of a supporter. In other words, one person could be interacting with an organisation online as well as offline. But due to the lack of integration between databases where this data is being held and/or lack of enough data to de-dupe records, that individual might appear inactive. Or that individual could represent two, three, four different people - depending on how many disparate databases their data is held on.
- due to the lack of a full view of how a supporter interacts with an organisation, it's hard/time-consuming to decide what kind of retainment strategy should be developed. Therefore we could be communicating to a supporter who has only taken one online action as if they were an 'inactive supporter' because we are unaware of their 'offline' or just non-campaigning online activities.
- silos in the organisation - in order to create an overall, corporate, supporter development strategy which offers people a number of ways to engage, different teams in an organisation need to collaborate on it's development. Which can be hard because every team feels a little bit that they 'own' THEIR Campaigners, or Donors, or Teachers, etc, etc - basically the fact that one supporter could be all three is hard to grasp.
- going back to e-campaigning - As Andrew said "Not every campaign is well suited to public mobilization". And we still do it because, in our lobbying efforts, we need to show that there is public/voter support for an issue. But sometimes we need to create campaigns with the sole purpose of engaging less active lists or recruiting a specific age-group or retaining very active campaigners. And not every Campaigns and Policy team buys into this.
These issues are much harder to resolve in bigger organisations and working in a small organisation could actually be an advantage.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Evaluating and Monitoring (impact of) digital communications
Monitoring and Evaluating Online Projects With online communications we can measure and evaluate a lot more than in offline communications. The trick is to understand what stats are relevant/useable, what they tell us and what we can learn from them.
What do we mean by 'impact' in the world of digital communications and how we evaluate it.
Metrics:
Open rates, click-though rates
Conversion rate
Page views
Visits
Email sign-ups
Referrers
What can we evaluate online?
-how many people came to the website
-how many times people loaded (viewed) the page
-where they went after they viewed the page
-where they came from, what they searched for to end up on that page
-we can even analyze the behaviour of a specific segment of people ( for example -everyone who visited a page, or came from a specific location)
-how many people successfully took a journey we’ve set through the website
email
-how many people opened an email (HTML)
-how many people clicked on the links
-how many people who opened the email finished the journey (for example, donated or took a campaigning action)
etc, etc
Based on this data we can get a good idea of how successful a specific content is, what positioning of elements on a web page leads to more conversion rates etc..
Impact
In order to be able to measure impact you need to be clear about your communication strategy and how this contributes to impact of you initiative.
So old-school comms planning is the key and I always try to do it in an iterative way with the teams I work with:
1.When you identify objectives (why are you producing a piece of communication) immediately think how you’ll know that you’ve achieved it. Can you measure this – do you have internal systems set up to do it? If not, have a think again.
So for example a typical objective would be “To educate our supporters about XYZ”. How will you measure this? By the number of email sign-ups? Number of packs distributed? Online survey of your supporters before and after? None of these answers is wrong, but they do clearly set out what would reaching a specific objective mean for your organisation.
By asking these questions you identify the RESPONSE you need from your supporters.
2.Who is your audience? What are they like? Are they likely to respond in the way you want them to respond? If yes, great, but if no, maybe you need to rethink your objectives and therefore your response?
How to set your targets?
The best way is learning from the past or from baseline studies.
Or you can just evaluate by monitoring trends – for example, “%increase” or “more of ….”. But then you need a baseline which shows what the current situation is – so you have something to compare to.
If no baseline, compare to same industry benchmarks (e-benchmarks study),
Baselines
E-benchmarks study - US http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/
Performance benchmarks - UK - www.fairsay.com
What do we mean by 'impact' in the world of digital communications and how we evaluate it.
Metrics:
Open rates, click-though rates
Conversion rate
Page views
Visits
Email sign-ups
Referrers
What can we evaluate online?
-how many people came to the website
-how many times people loaded (viewed) the page
-where they went after they viewed the page
-where they came from, what they searched for to end up on that page
-we can even analyze the behaviour of a specific segment of people ( for example -everyone who visited a page, or came from a specific location)
-how many people successfully took a journey we’ve set through the website
-how many people opened an email (HTML)
-how many people clicked on the links
-how many people who opened the email finished the journey (for example, donated or took a campaigning action)
etc, etc
Based on this data we can get a good idea of how successful a specific content is, what positioning of elements on a web page leads to more conversion rates etc..
Impact
In order to be able to measure impact you need to be clear about your communication strategy and how this contributes to impact of you initiative.
So old-school comms planning is the key and I always try to do it in an iterative way with the teams I work with:
1.When you identify objectives (why are you producing a piece of communication) immediately think how you’ll know that you’ve achieved it. Can you measure this – do you have internal systems set up to do it? If not, have a think again.
So for example a typical objective would be “To educate our supporters about XYZ”. How will you measure this? By the number of email sign-ups? Number of packs distributed? Online survey of your supporters before and after? None of these answers is wrong, but they do clearly set out what would reaching a specific objective mean for your organisation.
By asking these questions you identify the RESPONSE you need from your supporters.
2.Who is your audience? What are they like? Are they likely to respond in the way you want them to respond? If yes, great, but if no, maybe you need to rethink your objectives and therefore your response?
How to set your targets?
The best way is learning from the past or from baseline studies.
Or you can just evaluate by monitoring trends – for example, “%increase” or “more of ….”. But then you need a baseline which shows what the current situation is – so you have something to compare to.
If no baseline, compare to same industry benchmarks (e-benchmarks study),
Baselines
E-benchmarks study - US http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/
Performance benchmarks - UK - www.fairsay.com
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