Breaking down the “my donor” mentality between direct marketing and major gifts

April 21, 2016April 13, 2016 nickellingeracknowledgment, cultivation, high value donors, major donor, major giving, mid major, newsletterLeave a comment

The first thing that many major gift officers will instinctively do when they see their donor portfolio is to shut down direct marketing efforts to those donors. After all, you want the donor to take your call and don’t want them mistaking you for a telemarketer.

Imagine if you tried this in any other walk of life. Imagine going to Jeff Bezos and saying “this person has been buying a lot of stuff from us on Amazon. Let’s make sure they never get another email from us, because I really think that I can sell them the Lladro Niagara chandelier for $100,000 (plus $4.49 shipping, which is either far too much for shipping or far too little).”

bond_villain He would laugh at you until he got stomach cramps. Or he would have an underling, possibly with a mechanical arm, throw you in a vat of piranhas while he stroked a cat. All depends on the mood.

Bottom line, it’s silly to take someone who has been donating routinely by one means and, by all available evidence, been satisfied with it and cut them off from that means in the hope they might give more. You should only change this if the donor asks you to (in which case, you should do so immediately, while smiling) or if you have a relationship with the donor to the point that there’s an alternate communication strategy in place.

That said, the major gift officer is right. You don’t want to treat a potential donor the same way as a potential $10 donor. This is not a defense of sending someone with the capacity to give a transformative gift the same 12-mail-pieces-and-a-cloud-of-dust approach that everyone else gets. It means:

A donor newsletter. You hopefully are doing this already. And you hopefully are basing it on Tom Ahern’s Making Money With Donor Newsletters. In case you aren’t, your donor newsletter should:

Focus on “you” — you being the donor
Focus on what “you” did — progress updates and impacts
Have short articles
Be written for skimmers — white space, bullets, and compelling headlines and images
Have a return envelope but not be as “ask forward” as a traditional mail piece.

This more cultivating newsletter will help you make money from these donors. But it also creates a holding pattern for your major gift officer. You’ve already made the segue to what impact the person can have, leading to a more natural conversation when the officer is able to get in front of the donor.

Higher-touch communications. This can be simple things like crossing out the impersonal salutation on a letter and writing in “Dear Nancy,”. Paperclips in your mail pieces show that the piece has been touched by human heads. First-class postage is a nice touch, as is expedited postage to get the mail piece to the donor. One nonprofit of my acquaintance has their CEO write a holiday letter in blue ink, then copies it on the color copier for a handwritten appearance. These are techniques that can segue naturally to higher-value communications with a major gift officer.

Higher-value communications. We’ve discussed the supreme value of exclusivity. A major donor may want to be able to get a sneak preview of your upcoming report or have an exclusive briefing call with your head of government affairs. These types of velvet rope communications can build to events where major gift officers can meet with them face to face. Once natural enemies, direct marketing can set up the major gift relationship.

Helping define the major gift portfolio: You are looking for one of two things: a long giving history with multiple gifts per year, increasing gift amounts, and participation in the mission or someone who makes an unusually high first gift. Usually the first group will be better prospects.

Thank extremely well. Have you ever heard a potential major donor consider not making a major gift because they were thanked too well or too often? Me neither.

Overall, you are looking to create a spirit of cultivation with these donors. And you should give of your donors to your major gift officers. By being a strong resource for them, you prevent them from trying the nuclear suppression strategy with you, allowing you to maximize revenue from these donors over time.

Revisiting social proof: does liking or doing matter more?

February 15, 2016February 6, 2016 nickellingercopywriting, influence, newsletter, persuasion, psychologyLeave a comment

One of my favorite Stephen Colbert lines is from the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner:

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“He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.”

Not only is it a great piece of writing, but it also is a nice indictment of a certain type of worldview. Evidence and continued questioning are the signposts along the path of ascent of our species, with willful ignorance its downfall.

So, as this week will contain my 100th blog post, I wanted to take a look back at some previous posts and bring new evidence to bear on them.

In December, I did a week on the principles of influence and how you can use them in direct marketing. Social proof — the idea that people tend to want to do what other people do — can be a large part of this.

But what makes for good social proof? The answer surprised me, at least.

An article in Advances in Consumer Research looked at whether we are more influenced by what other people like or what other people do.

My thought was that this is a slam dunk. We have the answer in maxim form: actions speak louder than words. But that’s not what the researchers found.

They took basic consumer goods (chewing gum, hangers, etc.) and had one person in a dyad either express her/his preference or take one of the two items. The second person would then choose an item for themselves. They were more likely to choose the same item as the first person when the person said what they like instead of taking one of the items.

The researchers then replicated this on Amazon and YouTube; when both preferences (ratings or likes) and consumption (sales or number of views) of other people were available, people were more likely to choose the item/video that related to preferences rather than consumption.

So what does this mean for us?

First thing is that a lot of us are doing social proof wrong.

And I should be the first to put my hand in the air for this.

I’ve advocated for putting the number of people that are subscribed to your newsletter on the sign-up as an inducement to sign up. But what if that read “Join the 146,233 people who enjoy our monthly newsletter” instead of “Join the 146,233 people who get our monthly newsletter”?

This also argues for more privileged places for testimonials and other forms of liking social proof. We talked about scope blindness and how people are more likely to donate to one good story than the story of several disparate people. Perhaps what we see in liking social proof is that there is also scope blindness — knowing that someone (who is like them) liked this content is enough to get them to engage as well.

Anyone out there have experiences with this type of test? I’d appreciate any insight because if you wait for me to test it, you may have to check back around my 200th post.

A direct marketing bridge to… major gifts

December 8, 2015December 7, 2015 nickellingerhigh value donors, lifetime value, major giving, mid major, multichannel, newsletter, segmentationLeave a comment

Direct marketing specialists and major gift specialists seem to be opposites in style and approach. One is impersonal, mass-market, with knowledge of the aggregate not the specific – the marketing equivalent of the Air Force; the other is all about personal relationships, forged one on one, with intimate knowledge of that one person you are pitching – the equivalent of boots on the ground Army or Marines. This can often cause them to be rivals in the same ways the service branches are; they can also work together to accomplish a mission together like the service branches.

As a direct marketer, developing a small budget to a major gifts program is part defensive. I once worked with a major gift officer who would mark a donor as no mail, no phone, and no email the moment they got on her radar screen. Not only did this deprive us of the only real source of revenue we had from these donors, but it also deprive the donor of the information that was tethering them to the mission and tugging at their heart strings. And when she left, we had no way of differentiating real unsubscribes from these unsubscribes of pseudo-convenience.

This is going to happen if you can’t create a positive experience for potential major donors in your direct marketing program. Yet it can happen and it can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for the nonprofit. There are only two reasons to stop communications with your potential major donors in this way: 1) if they ask you to or 2) you have a relationship with that donor to the point that there is a substitute communications strategy and ask framework in place.

So your role in direct marketing is to build the relationship with the donor over time. This doesn’t necessarily mean a slower cadence; rather, it means different types of pieces, including a donor newsletter telling them about their accomplishments – the true impact of their giving. It can also include higher-touch, higher-value communications – handwritten notes or cards, invitations to special events or briefings, or the like. These can enter the communication stream gradually as your relationship builds.

Direct marketing is also a great vehicle – in fact, a primary vehicle – for identifying those donors who may be receptive to a major donor ask. While some amount of wealth is certainly a necessary condition for a person to be able to make a major donation, the more important thing to the organization is the tie to the organization. People often forget this. If I had a nickel for every time a nonprofit brainstorming potential targets thought of hitting up Bill Gates or his foundation because of a friend of a friend, I would be blogging about what yachts are the most fun to waterski behind.

If this man is your major donor strategy,
you do not have a major donor strategy.

What you are looking for is:

Giving history – long, repeated, multiple gifts per year, and increasing gift amounts
Participation – telling a story, coming to an event, volunteering
A clear passion for at least one aspect of your mission either from his/her giving history or participation

The one exception to this is people who make unusually high (whatever this is for your organization – probably between $100 and $1000) first gifts. This is probably a person who has been interested in your cause for a while or has an important reason to start giving now – they may be ripe for personal interactions as much as your loyal long-term donors.

Looking at this compact list, you can see that you can not only help solicit major donor prospects, you can help create them. This is by incorporating upgrade strategies into your communications. If you have well-defined recognition for different levels of giving (and you should), you can make those aspirational, especially for those on the cusp of reaching them, by making the ask for the next highest level of recognition. Those recognition levels should also be a prominent part of your mail, phone, and online communications, as well as your acknowledgments for these donors.

Finally, remember to thank extremely well. If you are at lost as to how, check out 50 ways to thank your donors. Some are usual, some are a bit nutty, but they may spark some ideas to giving your major donors and potential major donors the love they deserve.

Next steps in direct marketing

October 10, 2015October 31, 2015 nickellingeracknowledgment, cultivation, multichannel, newsletterLeave a comment

Hopefully by now you’ve tried out some free ways to stay in touch with your supporter base and attract new supporters and you are ready to test out spending some money on direct marketing. I’ll start with your existing donors.

Acknowledgement

Often, thank yous are an afterthought or a legal requirement. In reality, they are a great way to deepen a relationship with a donor. Every donor should get at least one thank you, generally in a similar format to how they gave the gift. That is, if they mailed you a gift, mail them back a thank you note; if they gave a gift online, make sure they get an email receipt.

Please note I say “at least one thank you.” Gratitude is something to be practiced throughout donor communications largely for its own sake, being the right thing to do and all, but it can also be profitable. A way to dip your toe into the mail water is to start sending thank you letters to online donors of a certain amount or more.

What is that amount? Whatever you are comfortable with to start. You can dial back if the mailings get too onerous (a nice problem to have) or expand the program once started.

This mailing does a couple of things. It conditions the donor to expect things from you in the mail and that those will be good things. Also, just as it is better to be a bit overdressed instead of a bit underdressed in everywhere except the tech sector, it is better to be just a little bit more appreciative of a gift than your competitors other worthy causes.

Donor mailings

To keep your early losses to a minimum, start your mailings with a few tried-and-true pieces. Some that generally work well are:

Membership pieces. Even if you are not a membership organization, creating a supporter club or whatever name you feel comfortable with gives your donors a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves alone, which is great, because they are. Also, you then have a reason to ask for renewals each year.
Holiday giving, especially end of year. Online end of year will be its own topic at some point (incidentally, I count nine topics I’ve promised to talk about after only six posts; I may be creating a monster), but during the holidays works well for mail as well, where a holiday spirit generally increases response rates. It’s also a good time to thank your donors and wish them well in the New Year and with whatever holiday(s) they choose to observe.
A newsletter. While traditionally a cultivation device, you can write ones that will more than pay for themselves. We’ll talk more about that in another post (ten!), but if you are champing at the bit, I strongly recommend Making Money with Donor Newsletters by Tom Ahern. You get what’s on the tin.

So that’s what to do with current donors. How do you talk to potential donors without breaking the bank? We’ll (try to) cover that Tuesday.

Sending your first email

October 8, 2015October 7, 2015 nickellingeremail, newsletter, online, personalization, startingLeave a comment

Now you have an email client. And I have a print version of what I’d like to send. I can just put it in a PDF and attach it, right?

No. An effective email is not:

An attached PDF. PDFs limit interactivity and frequently exceed attachment limitations on emails, which limit deliverability.
An email asking someone to click to go to your newsletter online. Every click you add adds friction to the process and increases the likelihood that people will abandon your newsletter, especially when you don’t have the space to explain what you want them to do.
An email asking someone to download your PDF newsletter. All of the disadvantages of a PDF with the additional friction of an added click.

This brings up the question of what it is. A good email is:

About the person receiving it. “I” is bad. “You” is good. Me Tarzan. You Jane. Seriously, though, you want to be talking to donors, volunteers, and other supporters what they are doing through you. You are the tool that good people use to do good things. You should brag about yourself about as much as an Allen wrench brags about those Hemnes dressers it made.“We” is controversial. My perspective on it is that it depends on the use of “we.” If “we” is your nonprofit, it’s bad. If “we” is the community of people dedicated to making a cause come to pass, and you can clearly delineate it as such (this is hard to do), it can be good. “We” in the sense of Queen Victoria expressing her lack of amusement: awesome.
About a discrete topic. Frequently, email newsletters try to be all things to all people, instead of telling a compelling story.
About an interesting topic. This sounds like it would be self-evident, but you would be amazed about email newsletters that talk about the check presentation that just happened or the award from the local Chamber of Commerce the nonprofit received. Most bad topics fail the first test of whether they are about the person receiving it, but some other bad ones are about the person receiving it, but forget that that person is a person and thus is both self-interested and not immortal (thus not having ultimate time to read your newsletter).
Equipped with what you want people to do. You do not want to wind up your audience and not have them know what they are supposed to do with their new information.

If you are just starting out, try a few different types of emails to see what resonates with your audience. A few to try:

Thank you emails, whether it’s for donating or volunteering or simply being an email subscriber. People generally complain as much about being thanked too often as they hate being too handsome or too rich. Or so I’m told by handsome and rich people.
Urgent! Email is the perfect medium to get out timely communications. I’ll talk about ways to take advantage of this with things like matching gifts, but an urgent email is usually a good one.
Other ways to support. You will eventually be asking for money by email and if you are doing it right, you will be doing it often. To lay the groundwork for this, be sure to mix in other ways to support your organization that don’t involve a credit card. This can be volunteering, advocating, telling friends about something important, taking a pledge, giving your more information about their preferences, engaging in a cause-related marketing campaign and more.
The inside scoop. People love to get exclusive information, to feel like they are inside the velvet rope. One great example of this was chronicled in The Audacity to Win, David Plouffe’s account of the 2008 Obama campaign. In it, he reveals that offering people the opportunity to get the VP pick texted to them increased their mobile subscribers by 1500%. It can work for you too.

These learnings can be the background for your entire direct marketing campaign. Now is the time to find your voice and the issues that work for you, before it costs a lot of money to get that message out.

These are the basics. Now, you need a list. We’ll start that discussion tomorrow.