happy donors

Nonprofit email efforts have come a long way in this century, from feeble to generally very good, largely due to the incorporation of the tactics and techniques of postal paper mail.

Overwhelmingly, organizations’ email approach is essentially mini-magazines, with lots of images (ideally captioned and clickable) and text topped with subheads and ending with “read more…”

The alternative is mini-letters. In a prior post, I try to make a case for further testing this now little-used approach. Here’s an additional slant on what we’re really doing in email…

In yet another earier post, I ask that you think of fundraising letters as an auditory, rather than written medium. Fundraising copywriters know this and write accordingly. It’s what works.

Direct marketing tests tell us what works but never why. I think it’s safe speculation to say auditory writing works because it simulates fact-to-face selling/fundraising.

Another factor is that, beyond all of our mail solicitiations, paper letters have largely been replace by telephone calls. Since, oh, 1940, people have transitioned away from letters into phone calls for most personal communication.

Some mistakenly think that email has replaces paper letters.

No. Email is replacing phone. And …

… an email communication is conceptually identical to making a phone call and leaving voice mail.

The good news: good fundraising copywriters have a conversational writing style in their DNA. When web and email were relayed from the tech folks to the direct mail copywriters, style went along.

The result? Almost all emails I receive from nonprofits read like conversation, whether they’re on minimag format or the rare text-only.

A good thing. And getting better.

Like tens of thousands of other people, I wasn’t a donor to Partners In Health until the Haiti earthquake.

I say that with confidence after reading that PIH gained tens of thousands of donors via online giving within a month after the disaster.  And I’ll wager that they have many thousands of “multis” (multi-gift donors) and more than a handful of pretty dedicated supporters thanks to fundraising efforts that do pretty much everything right.

Their emails have been informative, VERY emotionally compelling, and frequent enough to keep my attention.

They were appropriately focused on Haiti relief for quite some time.  Then a few days ago I received an email that demonstrates and excellent approach to moving a donor from an emergency cause to the organization’s broader mission.

First note that Partners In Health does not consider themselves an emergency relief organization.  They’ve said this on several occasions in their own communications, also picked up by relevant media.

They received wide attention after the Haiti disaster because they had plenty of people on the ground before the event.  Word got out.  Then they earned broad attention and respect for their remarkable relief efforts, including designation to run a key hospital early on.

So now, six months later, they’re still doing great work in Haiti, but they likely don’t want donations to continue to be focused strictly on Haiti, due to the limitations of designated use of funds, discussed in Happydonors some weeks ago.

Thus the email under discussion, which opens…

Dear Dan,

I write to you from Rwanda, where I have come for the first time since January’s devastating earthquake in Haiti. Many of us have been consumed by efforts there–efforts made possible by an outpouring of support for Haiti from partners new and old.

Ok, I’m already hooked into this transition, reminded of the reasons I supported this group for disaster relief…

When I arrived in Rwanda last week, I was very proud to see the PIH team working together with the Rwandan government, the Clinton Foundation, and thousands of people from the local community to put the finishing touches on what will soon be one of the largest hospitals in East Africa–a world-class teaching hospital that will offer (and teach) the high-quality care we believe all patients deserve.

Now I’ve been connected with full relevance and sympathy to Rwanda … same mission, different place, then to the broader mission worldwide…

In each of our eleven partner countries, projects like Butaro are realized by communities committed to working together to tackle the issues of poverty and disease. You are part of those communities. Just as in Haiti, the people we serve in Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, Peru, Siberia and elsewhere depend on your support of our global efforts.

The email continues (yes, it’s long!) with a compelling message that these other programs have been willingly sacrificing so that funds would be available for Haiti emergency relief.

Now it’s time to help THEM out.

Great messaging for the moment.   They merit the gift for that as well as their great work in the field.

An effective oddity: the subject line and donate button of the email urged me to “make a gift before June 30th”.  This is good marketing.  Putting any date forward creates some urgency, even when the date is not really a deadline, i.e., no negative consequences for missing that date.  On the actual donation site, I’m urged to make my gift before the end of their fiscal year on June 30.  Not a great reason for immediate action for a donor.  But no matter.  It was effective in the email itself, got me to the donation url.  Mission accomplished.

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P.S.  The gift acknowledgment email also addresses designated use of funds:

Your gift of $XX will help us further our mission of serving the poor in places that bear some of the heaviest burden of disease.

If you designated your gift for Haiti, your donation will help bring medical assistance and supplies to areas that have been hit the hardest and support long-term recovery efforts in Haiti.

I didn’t notice the option of designating a program on the donation site, so this may just be an all-purpose acknowledgment for gifts off this and other giving urls.

Probably relevant only to my fellow “Mid-Atlanteans” (within a two-drive of Washington DC) but:

The “Bridge to Integrated Direct Marketing and Fundraising” conference is coming up on July 26-28.  This is the fourth year of a joint endeavor by the Association of Fundraising Professionals DC Metro Area Chapter (AFP/DC) and the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW),  again at the Gaylord in National Harbor.

This marriage started rocky.  The first year, it seemed like all the AFP people wanted was major giving/bequest sessions, while the speakers were largely small donor mail.  The DMAW folks are mixed fundraising and for-profit consumer or B2B.  Not enough overlap of content or audience that first year.  But things started to merge, meld and get MUCH better ever since.

Second year the fundraising middle ground got covered with strong sessions on cultivation … how to move donors up the giving ladder.  Plus more of the major gift people I met in subsequent years were sensitive to the fact that bequests most often come from the small-gift donor pool.

This year they’re offering plenty of tracks for all involved.  Check ‘em out if you can attend.

Big bonus for fundraisers:  I’m a fan of Michael Johnston, as I’ve written here before, and he’s doing a full-day pre-conference workshop. Attend if you can.  You won’t be disappointed.

In my previous post, I described a recent bad experience trying to stop credit card debits resulting from an inadvertent sustainer gift.   The organization apologized and promised to resolve problems that led to my frustration.   If you haven’t read the last post, please do so now, so what follows here will make sense.

I’m a happy donor again, but now look back at the dynamics of this sour experience:

– Fatal web usability on a fundraising site. The first order of usability is preventing donor frustration.  An odd thing about the web:  when people can’t achieve something, they say “I’m stupid” instead of “you’re stupid.”   Better if they faulted you, because blaming themselves dramatically heightens the negativity of the experience and the damage done to the relationship.

The must hurtful issue I encountered was a string of web cues that all made sense, lulling me into a feeling that all was well and “I’m good”.   Then a big “Oops” when I hit a huge disconnect between what I was told I could do and what I could actually do.  I followed the path, hit the snag, though to myself “What did I do wrong?” … followed the path again … and again, with my frustration ramping up with each pass.

The email told me I could click through for info on my account.  The account info page told me I could change status.  A “help” pop-up told me exactly how to end my sustainer status, step by step.  But the last step was “look for the ’stop payment’ button” when that button did not exist.  I did this four times.

So my initial irritation was moving toward rage.

The folks at this organization told me they were addressing this.  Hope they’re quick about it.  Turning a sustainer into a nondonor ain’t the direction we’re looking for.  Then there’s …

– Meeting donor expectations. That frustration headed for the stratosphere in a week due to a mix of expectations unmet and promises unfilled.

This wasn’t a website problem.  It was a disconnect between my expectations of service on a website and response time.  When I sent emails to the membership office, I didn’t hear back for four days.  In 1980, when snailmailing a question or even phoning in, a four-day response time might have seemed fine.

No more.

A separate issue: phone message that promise “we’ll get back to you soon.”   Most donors will take any indication of when you’ll get back as a promise.  You gotta keep those promises.  And “soon” means “today” or certainly “within 48 hours.”

This is largely about expectations, and today the bar is pretty high.  If you’re ever unsure about your response time, you’d be far better off loudly disclaiming any promise.  Or consider making promise that would be unacceptable by most standards …but a promise you can keep.

– A possible solution: Under-promise, over-deliver? A couple of weeks ago I had my wallet pinched in Sevilla, Spain, losing my passport, a debit card, and 200 Euro.   I stopped transactions on that debit card with one email.  Cool.

When my back-up debit card (from a different bank) didn’t work, I suspected that they’d lost my memo about travel to Spain, so the vigilant fraud division was blocking transactions.

With no mobile or other reasonable way to change this status, I went to this bank’s web site.  Sending an explanatory email to the general customer service @dress, I got a bounce-back promising action “within three days.”

Whoa!  This card was my only means of getting cash.  Three days was very bad news.

I found a different bank @dress within a secure, customer-only part of their site, but got the same discouraging promise.

Angry and a bit desperate, I was wondering if the embassy would cash to only paper check I had.

Imagine my delight when, in about 24 hours, I got responses to both emails acknowledging the problem, apologizing, and assuring me that my card would now freely transact in Spain’s ATMs.

With their feeble under-promise, meeting reasonable expectations suddenly had a “wow” factor.   Under-promising and over-delivering made me an even happier customer.

If this organization’s phone banks were totally slammed, and there was little chance of a quick response to an inquiry, why not say so  … with an over statement that “we might not be able to back to you even in a week, but be assured that we WILL answer your question and address any problems.”

If the organization had lowered my expectations, I wouldn’t have had a week of rising bile.

Yes, good direct-marketing fundraisers are always writing to an individual.  At least in one sense.  As you compose a letter, it helps to have an individual in mind, and to write in a manner that “talks” one-on-one to a single person.

But face it, a whole lot of people are going to read this letter, with any luck.  So while we’re writing TO a reader, we’re also writing INTO a readership.  Consider then…

… You’re writing to a group of people with certain dispositions.  If you have the right mailing list, they are all disposed toward you appeal.  They believe in your cause.  They agree with you.

… You’re NOT writing to people who have no idea what you’re talking about.  So don’t over-explain.  Do tell them who you are.  Write to them knowing that they know who you are.

… You’re NOT writing to people who actively DISAGREE with what you’re saying.  You’re not seeking converts … you’re preaching to the choir, so don’t try all that hard to convince them.  They already believe in you.  Play to your shared understanding … and cause.

… You’re generally writing into a general LIFE STAGE.  These people are all of a certain age.  They share some history.  You can talk to that history and they’ll know what you mean.  Talk out of it and they won’t.

… You’re writing into a donor level.   A letter generally goes to a group selected for their giving patterns, their highest previous donation / most recent donation range.  You should think about what you’re asking FOR and elevate your appeal accordingly.  A big gift is a very personal ask, to someone who REALLY knows what you’re talking about and REALLY shares your goals.  Feel free to acknowledge this and write into such a mindset!

And you’re writing out of and into a broader world situation, as it pertains to your cause.  Maybe something in this environment triggered the appeal.  If it didn’t, I wouldn’t talk about that broader world, lest that be a digression or distraction.   Or worse, a reminder of some other cause or a reason not to give to your organization today.

I’ll never forget one session I attended when Steve Froelich, ASPCA Director of Analytics, likened a donor’s first gift experience to a one-night stand … “excited, but uncertain if it was a one-time thing … remorse … used or cast aside … uncertain about the future.”

Without pushing the metaphor too far, he pointed out that “it’s not a relationship unless it happens a second time.”

His recommendations for getting that critical second gift are sound:

– Say thank you quickly

– Use a donor invitation phone call within the first 3-4 months

– Suppress the donor’s name from list exchange for the first few months.

Great, but not enough. The most powerful and cost-efficient way to gain the second gift is a survey in the welcome kit.

Most organizations can attribute most of the mailing to education, quite rightly. But a survey asking new donors to rank priorities is a proven way to engage and get a quick second gift.

Save the Children adapted this proven technique to the web. A web donor gets a friendly Thank You email that includes a link to a survey, which also offers the donor an opportunity to give again.

Yet another tactic is a stream of mailings that are sent instead of the current appeal kits … each a proven package.

Many groups have “evergreen” appeals … packages that work so well you can pretty much remail them without change every year. Try making one of these the NEXT appeal a new donor receives, no matter when they join relative to the mail stream.

Some organizations have four such mailings … a series of contacts that are each proven evergreen response drivers.

A petition. And urgentgram. Another survey. Rapid Response. Whatever works for you.

Get ‘em while they’re hot, with a second-gift CAMPAIGN.

Digging through the archives recently, I came across a good article by Jerry Huntsinger, the self-proclaimed “Dean of Direct Mail Fundraising.”

In “You’ll Have to Excuse Me, I Got Ds in Grammar” Jerry offers many useful tips.  For now, I’d like to address #5:  Be careful with periods.

Jerry says “A period brings a thought to an end, and that’s what you want to avoid, unless you want to merge into a new thought.   Notice I use the word ‘merge’.  You must always keep your letter moving.”

True all that.  But I’ll take this counsel a step further.

Outside the USA, a period is often called a “full stop.”   And that’s they risk I see in periods in many positions.

On a carrier teaser, I’d NEVER end with a period.  

The “full stop” essentially tells the recipient to STOP READING.   This is not the visual cue we want to deliver!

In a letter overline, let’s not tell our reader to come to a “full stop.” 

If memory serves (and it doesn’t always) David Ogilvie preached avoiding periods in space ads.  He advocated a single line of copy and a huge graphic image.  But when the line ends in a period, the reader is NOT encouraged to continue.

The “full stop” risk is why God gave us ellipses … which Huntisinger mentions in #10 in the aforementioned article.

An ellipsis tells the reader that something more is coming.  Our species seeks closure.  An ellipsis leaves us hanging … lacking closure … until we read on to find out how this ends.

So, I always end carrier teasers with an ellipsis.

Ditto overlines (AKA Johnson boxes).

And, like Jerry Huntsinger, I often end the opening paragraph of a letter with an ellipsis …

… buying that next ounce of readership that pulls the donor along to the next engaging thought.