“I Do!”Engaging in a Committed Online Relationship: Seeking Supporters to Opt-In to a Long-Lasting, Online Connection

presents:

Table of ContentsIntroduction 1

Maximizing the Digital Age 1

The Inbox as Vital as the Mailbox 2

Make the Email Address Ask 2

Attracting Engagement with Social Media 3

Social Media Magic 3

Seek Aligned Prospects 4

Lead Generation 4

Stay Pure 5

Find the Right Partner 5

Celebrate the Occasion 6

Act Fast 6

Content is King 7

Say “I Do!” 7

Make it Happen 8

Resources 9

INTROFlipping through your Facebook news feed on your smartphone, you see a posting from a friend who has a young child with diabetes. He alerts you that it is World Diabetes Day and urges you to call your congressional representative to advocate for diabetes funding. He shares a link to an advocacy group that will provide the phone number and information you need to make the call. Another friend, whose child benefited from organ donation, sings the praises of nonprofits that helped their family and adds links to donate to these groups. You click “like” and “share,” spreading the news to your other friends. You follow the two links because you know those two little children and you know what their families have been through. You read the agencies’ information and click to get alerts and newsletters. You’ve opted in.

MAXIMIZING THE DIGITAL AGEThrough online engagement, nonprofits can connect with donors and supporters through timely, impactful messages and active, grassroots participation opportunities like never before. Consider that an 18-year-old American can barely remember a world without the Web and Facebook. With the explosion of social media reaching across generations and the availability of online metrics and segmenting, there is no time like the present to grow an online supporter base. According to a 2012 survey by the Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com, nonprofits rank websites and email communication as very important, with social media ranked as somewhat important. Yet, 44 percent of those surveyed did not have a formal marketing/communications plan.

The easy part of online engagement is the technology. Integrated solutions, click-throughs, automation, list matching, measurement, reports, segmentation and many other services already exist and can release staff from being bogged down by process to instead focus on message. By harnessing the existing technical power, the challenge becomes finding a new way of thinking in order to creatively connect with supporters. The more connection you have with those supporters, the more likely they are to take action when you call.

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THE INbOX AS VITAL AS THE MAILbOXThough direct mail may have a place in your overall communications plan, it should no longer be your sole vehicle for corresponding with your supporters in an era where communications and donations are increasingly digital.

The advantages of moving your offline supporter database into an integrated online base are numerous. Instead of a one-way communication, you’ve opened an interactive dialogue – or at least the potential for one. If a hot-button issue occurs for your organization, you can communicate with your supporters immediately, avoiding the unbudgeted cost and delay of a direct mail piece. Increasingly, video, GIFs and photos can deliver a dynamic message of an organization’s purpose or need with potent impact unmatched by a one-dimensional brochure or letter.

Direct mail is also expensive in materials and time. Once a piece is mailed, it goes into an unknown void – how many envelopes were even opened? With email, you would know the answer.

MAKE THE EMAIL ADDRESS ASKTo grow an online base, you must constantly seek and invite supporters to join your online list. You can easily start by asking for email addresses on every piece of paper communication you currently use from pledge cards to newsletters. Every page of your website should offer an easy option to sign up and share with others.

If you need a jump start collecting emails for your current database, there are data append services such as Fresh Address that can turn your direct mail list into an email list. If you use this kind of service, your welcome email should include the choice to opt-out. Implied consent is not the same as permission.

Though no one appreciates spam, opt-in subscribers do appreciate email communication for several reasons:

• Online giving is simple, quick and actionable, with no need to search for a stamp or take a trip to the mailbox, nor to write a check or commit a card number to paper.

• It spares the environmental impact of materials and the carbon footprint of transporting those materials.

• Important messages can be easily archived and accessed if needed. • And perhaps the most valuable factor to your nonprofit – messages can be shared with a click of the

forward button.

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ATTRACTING ENGAGEMENT wITH SOCIAL MEDIAUtilizing social media for timely alerts, photos, videos and updates is an important tool to attract and engage people with an interest in your purpose. Turning a follower or a “like” into an active supporter is a different challenge. Surveys, petitions, contests, coupons, giveaways, newsletters and quizzes that lead to an opt-in page are all ways to gain email addresses and move the follower further along the continuum of communication. A new tool for nonprofits to use on Facebook is an app called ActionSprout. Through this app, agencies can engage supporters through actions such as signing a petition, endorsing or joining a group, moving beyond “like” and “share.” It is also possible to put a donation integration page right on your Facebook account. Though Facebook has become practically a generic form of social media, there are others including Twitter, YouTube, Linked In, Google+ and Pinterest that attract their own audiences. Blogging with WordPress, Tumblr and others is another way to engage dialogue. To be most effective, you need to know where your target market and opportunity groups are spending time.

SOCIAL MEDIA MAGICThe magic of social media is that you aren’t alone in promoting your cause. In any networking situation, peer-to-peer contact opens doors. In the opening examples, individuals used their Facebook pulpit to advocate for a cause and to fundraise for organizations they respect. The average Facebook user has 229 friends, according to a 2012 Pew Internet and American Life study. Every time one of your supporters “likes” or “shares” one of your posts, the number of contacts quickly becomes exponential. The same Pew study found that within two degrees of separation (friends of friends), users can reach over 150,000 additional Facebook members. Naturally, friends are more likely to read and show interest in a cause advocated by another friend. Even if they have no personal connection to the cause – organ donation, for example – their interest may be piqued because of the friend’s experience.

That viral power can be encouraged by knighting social ambassadors among your dedicated and tech/media-savvy supporters, volunteers and staff. Provide social ambassadors with suggested posts or action kits with prepared messages/art. Encourage them to be advocates of your cause through their tweets, posts and blogs. You can also empower some donors to host their own fundraising or event pages on behalf of your organization.

Protect Our Defenders

The same Pew study found that within two degrees of separation (friends of friends), users can reach over 150,000 additional Facebook members.

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SEEK ALIGNED PROSPECTSOnline databases provide a wealth of segmentation information, allowing you to separate by gender, geography, key words and much more. Social media giants Facebook and Twitter can provide detailed metrics that can give you very specific targets and intel on who is interested in you and who else might be. Companies such as Attentive.ly can analyze how your current database of supporters uses social media and what they are talking about.

With all the options for collecting data, you can target new supporter acquisition efforts with precision. Purchased advertising through Facebook, Google or others can be highly specific and relatively inexpensive. Sponsored emails through organizations with aligned customer bases are another strategy. Paulette Hodge, the director of Web and direct mail marketing for nonprofit Safe Horizon, was determined to be more aggressive in finding

the places online where new subscribers were likely to be. She used both targeted advertising and sponsored emails to locate potential supporters with a particular interest set. For example, they did sponsored emails with Mother Jones and The Progressive, both magazines with a liberal and activist readership. Combined with their internal organic list efforts, Safe Horizon quadrupled their email subscribers within a couple of years.

LEAD GENERATIONHodge also used a nonprofit social action group called Change.org. Groups such as Change.org, Care2 or LeftAction.org cover a range of nonprofit causes from animal welfare and the environment to human rights and politics. Through their networks and petition sites, they find people to opt-in to your advocacy campaigns. Your current subscribers, however, can be your best lead generators. Suggest and make it easy for your supporters to tell a friend about you. Frequently give your supporters the option to input a friend’s email address with an accompanying personalized message of invitation. Make it easy for them to post an invitation on their social network with just a couple of clicks and pre-written material.

Salsa Supporter Menu

Safe Horizon Petition

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STAY PUREWorldwide email traffic is expected to reach 507 billion messages per day in 2013, according to a study by the Radicati Group, a technology market research firm. To safeguard your process and keep your list effective, regularly review your email results. Tracking positive and negative engagement will keep your list clean and help to target your message.

Opens, clicks, replies, conversions and forward/shares will tell you what your subscribers are reading and acting upon, which can inform message and branding decisions. Monitoring and purging hard bounces and unsubscribes will remove the deadweight from your list. Also, tracking who is and isn’t responsive can provide for better segmentation, and possibly removing more addresses to keep the engagement quotient high.

Even if someone originally opted-in, but their lack of participation (indicated by unopened mail or other metric) shows a lack of interest, your organization may need to consider ending the relationship. Low spam and complaint scores are critical for successful email marketing, because the penalties could include having your email service shut down. Remember also that relationships go both ways – don’t overwhelm the opt-in supporter and drown their budding interest.

Putting a strong emphasis on an organic, voluntary list of your most active supporters may reduce your database raw numbers, but will increase your effectiveness from deliverability to conversions. Think quality before quantity.

FIND THE RIGHT PARTNERThough borrowed lists can be rife with issues, there are times when collaboration makes sense and can be mutually beneficial, such as with chapters and affiliates. National and global organizations that allow local level affiliates to manage their own lists often see dramatic list growth.

The Young Democrats of America is an exam-ple organization with chapters in all 50 states that are almost 100 percent volunteer-based. With an integrated platform, local volunteers can manage their own local events and expand the contacts list in ways unavailable to the sin-gle national database employee.

For organizations without chapters, other non-profits with an aligned or connected issue can make natural partners for certain efforts. When the Campaign to Reform Immigration For America (RI4A) had a crucial piece of legislation coming up with a short deadline, they

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CELEbRATE THE OCCASIONDigital events can have a valuable purpose – such as a Groupon Grassroots fundraiser or a free webinar with registration – but live events and meeting supporters face-to-face never goes out of style. Hosting volunteer projects, thank you events, networking parties, accomplishment celebrations, guest speaker luncheons, exhibits and any other local and live opportunities to bring out new prospects and recognize committed supporters are great ways to collect additional names for your list. Include web addresses and opt-in landing page information on all printed materials for the event (invitations, programs, flyers). Use a digital R.S.V.P. page. Put a fishbowl on the registration table for business cards and draw a prizewinner. Encourage participants to bring a friend and register those individuals. Have a staffed guest book at the entry.

Events are also a way to attract media coverage and publicity that may generate interest from a whole new audience.

ACT FASTWhen one of your methods brings in a new supporter, begin building that relationship right away with a thank you and welcome message (with an opt-out) as fast as possible. With timed or automated email messages, this follow-up can be extremely timely. Solidifying that new relationship quickly helps with donor retention and is also a ripe time to urge them to share their enthusiasm for your organization with their friends, particularly if you offer them an additional incentive to share your link to create buzz.

Next steps may be a very short survey to determine specific interests or an invitation to a local event or offering additional contacts for alerts or newsletters. Having an integrated action plan to move that supporter along the engagement continuum, perhaps segmented and differentiated based on how they became a supporter, is what turns a “like” into an action-taker.

Quick contact is important, but it is also important for your response to be proportionate to the supporter’s action. For example, if a supporter has made a large donation, a handwritten thank-you note is a courteous follow-up to an email response.

reached out to other organizations to help send an action alert to their supporters to fax Congress. Eighty organizations joined in, generating over 12,000 new sign-ups for RI4A, which they then shared back to the partner organizations that generated them. There are many ways organizations working on a related cause can support each other online and both gain supporters. A simple step is to like/follow/share with nonprofit partners on social networks. If there is a particular cause or project you are teaming up for or both have a vested interest in, working together on a media blitz or co-hosting an event may add leverage to your efforts and pull in new supporters.

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CONTENT IS KINGNow comes the hard part. Your content needs to be compelling to retain your supporter list and to harness their grassroots ability to forward and share. In messages and social media, your information needs to be creative, useful and impactful. The content should be relevant to the recipient and not just to the organization.

Also, posting-just-to-post is not furthering your connection and may actually turn off subscribers. For example, opening a Twitter account does not mean you need to tweet 20 times a day. Consistency is important, staying fresh is important, but saying something worthwhile is even more important. Brevity is also appreciated in email and social media. PDFs, videos, images and testimonials are all optional add-ons that can tell your story for those who are genuinely interested.

If your organization covers more than one aspect of a broad topic, it’s important to understand the interests of your subscribers. If someone signs up to be a volunteer tutor of a literacy program, they want to know teaching tips, event dates and successes, but may not be interested in political action or the book buying program.

The staff person or volunteer tasked with social media content should be well-versed in the core messages and represent the voice of the organization. You don’t want a youthful post full of text acronym slang unless that is your target audience who will be au courant with the references.

SAY “I DO!”The Internet and social media are not just a fad. Don’t get left in the last century without an integrated online communications plan. A full platform company, Salsa Labs can help you integrate your current databases and quickly grow your lists with detailed reports to enhance your ability to engage your supporters. Their expertise and community of users can guide you through the challenges and help turn your grand ideas into realities instead of notes on paper.

The Importance of the Opt-InA successful online program requires a quality subscriber list. An organically grown contact list where the individuals have “opted in” represents an immediate audience who chooses to associate with your cause or purpose. Collecting your own contacts who have elected to opt-in may take effort, but the organic list will perform far better than purchased or rented lists and keep you from be blacklisted as a spammer. A clean, voluntary list will both drive results and safeguard your reputation.

In the email world, it is detrimental to be labeled a spammer, a designation with potentially drastic consequences. Offering supporters opportunities to reinforce their voluntary participation or to unsubscribe is vitally important. To ensure that you are focusing resources on truly interested prospects, offer a double-opt-in, where a verification message allows people to validate their interest again in receiving your communications.

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Checklist for Developing Online Supporter Relationships:

MAKE IT HAPPENMake it Meaningful. No spewing! Keep your content rich, useful and intriguing. Take advantage of visual options and keep text brief.

Make it Immediate. Use automated and segmented responses to immediately thank donors and welcome new subscribers, offering an opt-in validation. Follow up offline as appropriate.

Make it an Occasion. In person or online, events pull people together and create buzz, publicity and new connections.

Make Friends. Look for affiliates and nonprofits with an aligned purpose with yours to take an “all ships rise” approach to online marketing. Co-host events, give shout-outs on your social media and work together to raise awareness.

Make New Friends. Ask your supporters to tell a friend about your nonprofit and make it easy for them to do so. Connect with lead generation groups to find new people interested in your work.

Make it a Social Network. Harness the viral power of the forward button, click-to-share and re-tweet. Peers sharing with peers open new doors. Recruit social ambassadors to enhance and encourage networking.

Make the Ask. Routinely and in all possible formats, invite participation online. Ask for email addresses and offer opt-in page links through printed materials, websites and social media.

Make it Effective. Monitor and track both positive and negative engagement to keep your list clean and to target your message. Cut the dead weight and focus on supporters who are genuinely interested.

Make it Possible. The technology you need to integrate databases, track metrics and make online engagement easy for both you and your supporters already exists. The experts at Salsa Labs can work with your unique challenges, goals and budgets to guide you to quick growth in your online base.

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