How a Museum Re-Branded Itself to Boost Visitors by 600%

As an art-loving New Yorker, I've visited the New Museum of Contemporary Art many times over the years to see its provocative shows, but hadn't visited in several years. After all, there are so many New York City museums competing for visitors and supporters.

Frankly, my attention and support, and that of most New Yorkers, was pulled elsewhere by museums that more effectively raised their voice over the NYC cultural scene.

So I was struck, hard, by the creative marketing and extensive media coverage around the re-branding and concurrent re-opening of the Museum in a striking new building. It was the startlingly succinct mission statement that first caught my eye.

Read this comprehensive case study to learn how the New Museum leveraged the attention and excitement around its new building to launch a definitive new brand.

New Museum. New building. New brand. New level of attention, awareness and support.

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Web 2.0 is Hot, but Email is Where It's At, Finds 2008 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study

A new study released recently measured 2007 internet fundraising and activism of nonprofits and highlights the continued importance of the Internet to the sector. The 2008 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, co-authored by M+R Strategic Services and Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) adds new depth to 2006 benchmarks findings with additional data on the importance of major donors and 'super activists.'

Here's the essence: Email fatigue is here -- open and click-through rates are down -- but it remains far more effective than Web 2.0 strategies and annual gift size is increasing.
The report includes many benchmarks you can use to gauge the success of your nonprofit's e-marketing and e-fundraising. Other key findings (and related tips) include:

• Finding: The total amount raised online increased by 19 percent from 2006 to 2007
  • Tip: Keep focusing on your online presence and fundraising.
• Finding: The average nonprofit sent over 4 emails per subscriber per month in both 2006 and 2007.
  • Tip: Don't take a break from your email schedule. Keep the schedule you've promised to your readers. Weekly is great; more often if warranted; monthly ok; less than that not advised.
• Finding: Email open rates, click-through rates and response rates have fallen from 21.3 percent to 17.6 percent, and click-through rates have dropped from 4.9 percent to 3.8 percent.
  • Finding: The average advocacy email response rate in 2007 was 7.5%. The average fundraising email response rate was 0.13%.
  • Tip: But more emails are being sent out, for a net:net that's not bad.
• Finding: 'Super activists,' taking six or more online actions in a year, made up just 5 percent of the total email list size but accounted for 42 percent of the organizations' total actions.
  • Tip: Find these folks and make it easy for them to take frequent action. It's likely their great donors, or giving prospects, too.

Put these findings to work in crafting your marketing and fundraising plans.

P.S. The NTEN/M+R team has done a stellar job of marketing the report with its report-focused mini-site, webinar and coverage on both of the org's Web sites. True multi-channel marketing!

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Mercy Corps Gets My $ for Chinese Earthquake Relief Effort -- Here's Why

Once again, like in last week's lightning response to Myanmar's cyclone Nagris, Mercy Corps was out there first with a program in place to provide relief to survivors of the earthquake in China.

With more than 12,000 already reported dead, and the count climbing by the minute, it's clear that the scale of devastation is huge. Immeasurable relief aid needed for their survivors -- most without shelter, clothing, food and livelihood. Unfortunately, the challenge of raising relief dollars is going to be harder than ever, with last week's disaster in Myanmar leaving many prospective donors feeling tapped out.

Here's how Mercy Corps communicates its ability to help, and quickly convinced me that I should direct my donation to them and ask friends and family to do the same:

• Highlights the earthquake relief effort on its home page, with text and a photo, and a link to...
• Provides a full-page description of how Mercy Corps is already working with its longterm partner org in the region (China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA))
  
  • These partnerships, with orgs with established relationships in and understanding of regions, are a hallmark of how Mercy Corps does it work, and a real differentiator.
  • Even in the context of a crisis like this, Mercy Corps brand shines through.
• Offers a donate form that let me direct my gift to the China earthquake relief effort.
  • I couldn't find another org that gave me this option when I donated this morning at 10am est.

With this impressive, on-target communications approach, I wasn't surprised to receive a prompt thank you email "from" founder Dan O'Neill. Dan thanked me for my gift, and reiterated the way Mercy Corps works and how my donation will help (generally). Also, he tells me that via donating I've subscribed to their e-newsletter (good approach) and directs me how to unsubscribe should I so desire. Only addition I'd like to see is a relief-effort-specific paragraph, and a promise to keep me informed on Mercy Corps work in the China earthquake relief effort.

But most importantly, I urge you to give now to aid the hundreds of thousands of survivors, left without family, shelter, clothing, food and livelihood.

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Some Moms Hunger for More than Attention -- Another High-Impact Mother's Day Fundraising Campaign

I was struck by this high-impact Mother's day fundraising campaign from City Meals featured in a full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times. The woman at left could have been my grandmother.

City Meals educates readers that "70% of our meal recipients are women. Many no longer have spouses, siblings, friends or children in their lives. That can make for a lonely Mother's Day. Send meals in your mother's honor or memory to elderly New Yorkers who would otherwise be hungry and alone.

Mom taught you to care for others. Show her how much you learned."

Beautifully done, Citymeals-on-wheels. They get the empathy and the guilt pumped, and they motivate the desire to please with the encouragement to be your best, as mom taught you. Hokey but it works.

What makes this campaign truly effective are the supplementary components that make giving a real participatory experience including these e-cards for your mom (you "purchase" the card, that's your donation) and the campaign mini site.

C'mon and give. Show mom your true colors.

PS I love that Mother's Day has become a focal point for campaigns to help others, which is exactly what mothers do 24/7. Seems much more authentic than the Hallmark version of the day.

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Honor your mother. Send a net. Save a life. -- Mother's Day Campaigns Better than Ever

My husband received this highly-effective email from Nothing but Nets this week, just in time for Mother's Day.

There's probably no better holiday to leverage folks' humanity, love and guilt (yes, mothers are known for that, whether its articulated or not) than Mother's Day. And nonprofits are doing a great job of it this year, especially those who can capitalize on a natural link to motherhood (focused on children, seniors, etc.).

Here are just a couple of the powerful campaigns I've seen:

1) The Nothing but Nets email campaign, which opens with this hard-to-resist pitch:

In the first few years of our lives, our mothers held our hand, picked us up when we fell, and rocked us to sleep. They provided a healthy, happy environment and kept us safe from harm.

Nothing But Nets works to give mothers in Africa the chance to do those same things, by providing them with insecticide-treated bed nets so that they and their children have the opportunity to realize their full potential too. Pregnant mothers and children under five are the most susceptible to contracting malaria. Protective bed nets allow mothers to enjoy the simple pleasure of caring for their children, as our mothers cared for us

2) The Families of Children from China(FCC) Mother's Day appeal for assistance to Chinese orphanages is another winner. Most members are, like us, families who have adopted children from China, so the interest in the welfare of the orphans still in China is already very strong.

It's hard to resist when asked to "keep our promise to the children who call the orphanage home."  Tie that to a focused email campaign on how donations can help provide "grandmas" in the orphanages, or more foster care, and bingo. I forwarded this email twice to my husband, with a strong request that this be my Mother's Day gift.

Any other great Mother's Day campaigns out there? Let me know by clicking the Comments link below.

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Help Cyclone Survivors in Myanmar -- Donate Right Now

It's shocking to hear the current count (estimated at 50,000100,000) of those dead from last weekend's fierce cyclone (most from the low-lying delta region), and dismaying to learn that over 40,000 are still missing and almost 2-3 million more (that's the population of the region hardest hit) wounded and/or without food, water, shelter or fuel. Here's the latest from The Times (UK).

Worse yet, as you've heard, the military junta has been slow to allow aid agencies in to help, only yesterday giving the heads up to these agencies whose staff are still waiting for visas. This delay will only increase the severity of injuries, dehydration and starvation, and the need for help. Even when aid arrives in Myanmar, it will take time to get it distributed in this destroyed rural area.

The Federation of International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is already on the ground in Myanmar, and UNICEF and World Vision are en route to provide emergency relief. Help them do as much as possible as quickly as possible to help cyclone survivors in this devastated country.

Donate today to:
UNICEF
World Vision 

Photo credit: Luisrene

Who ARE You Trying to Reach? -- Create Personas to Bridge the Gap with Target Audiences

I'm a big fan of developing fully-fleshed-out fictitious characters (aka personas) to understand your base and other groups your org wants to engage. As Wikipedia so aptly puts it, "a user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of your [target audiences]. Each persona is captured in one to two page descriptions featuring behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to bring the persona to life."

Shaping personas is a practice that enables you to "know" your target audiences far better than simple audience segmentation, which is limited to demographic definition in most cases. Most importantly, personas are a great lead-in to audience research, and a useful ingredient in product/program/service development and testing. Use them to hone your approach as precisely as possible before you dive in with pricey and hard-to-find focus group participants or testers.

Learn how in my just-updated guide to developing personas that will increase the impact of your nonprofit marketing.

PS While you're strategizing how to get to know your constituencies better, read Getting Great Audience and Stakeholder Feedback, at Little Cost (Case Study)

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Make it Easy for Bloggers to Cover Your Org -- Update

Update: May 2, 2008

I registered at the WE site and received an email confirmation, but not untill the next day. I would have loved to hear from them within an hour (easy to do with an auto-responder) while they were still on my mind. Lost opportunity for WE.

One more suggestion for WE -- the email I received was 100% generic, not reflecting any of the infromation (beat, interests, other sources) I submitted to them. I wish the org had taken the same kind of time I did to customize its response.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Just do what the WE Campaign does in its online press room, a model for nonprofit press outreach and one you can follow for your nonprofit, even if you didn't just launch.

1) Reach out to bloggers along with the traditional press. I'd include social media folks (who talk about you on Facebook, YouTube, etc.) as well but this is a good place to start.

2) Make it easy. Get a sense of press/bloggers interests plus contact info. Then let them know when there's relevant news.  The WE Campaign asks bloggers for basic contact info (email, name, blog name and URL), frequency of posts, topics covered, news sources, political orientation, take on the Campaign's mission and an open-ended response on how WE can help. This a great way to build relationships with the folks that matter most, but WE should do the same for other press as well.

3) Offer other means of staying in touch. WE invites press to subscribe to email distribution of its press releases and to a "releases plus" feed via their blog readers.

4) Follow up. Nothing's more annoying than a great system never implemented. The jury is still out on the WE Campaign. I submitted my info last week and am waiting to hear. I'll let you know when I do.

Any other ideas for nurturing relationships with the right bloggers? Please share your strategies in Comments below.

Learn more about crafting a satisfying online press room here.

Photo by Steve Rhodes.

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New NetSquared.org Home Page Strong Model of Easy to Use Design for Diverse Audiences

Take a look at the new NetSquared home page for a useful model of user-friendly site design.

As I stress repeatedly in my writing and training about writing for the Web, effective communications is all about making it easy for the user. This holds for offline communications too, but most important online with trillions of choices available to online readers at the click of a button.

One vital way to make it easy for your users is ensuring they quickly find what they need online. For  organizations reaching multiple audiences on multiple programs and goals, this is a real challenge. One approach I've seen is providing pathways for various user groups by job title/position. That might seem like a natural but research has found that people don't self-identify primarily as a "fundraiser" or "policymaker."

Instead, online readers come to a site to focus on what they want to do there -- register for a conference, absorb some information, or share a comment. NetSquared does a beautiful job of inviting site visitors to step into clear action paths (join, build, share) that make sense for one-time visitors and return audiences who want to pursue various modes of involvement over the course of multiple visits.

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New Research Unmasks the Wired Wealthy -- Connect Better with Middle and Major Donors

What makes people give online, and how can you motivate them to give to your organization?  Convio, Sea Change Strategies and Edge Research recently answered these questions via an in-depth study of some 3,400 wired donors who make four-figure or higher gifts to one or more causes. And get this -- "or the nonprofits who shared data, this segment of donors represents just 1% of their active donor file, but 32% of their annual revenue," says Convio founder and Chief Strategy Officer Vinay Bhagat.

The results, available here in full, offer some useful guidance on closing the gap between your org and your donors and here are just a few of the findings you can use to refine your strategies. The wired wealthy are:

• Very generous givers
  • Give an average of $10,896 eachyear to various causes, with a median gift of $4,500
• Notably wealthy
  • More than twenty-five percent (25%) have household incomes above $200,000 per year. More than half have annual household incomes above $100,000.
• Mostly boomers (born between 1946 and 1964)
  • With the center of gravity falling right in the middle of the baby boom cohort.
• Extremely wired
  • Have been using the Internet for an average of 12 years
  • Online an average of 18 hours per week
• Give online and via other channels
  
  • Like the speed, efficiency and instant gratification of online giving
  • Will be shifting more giving to online over next few years.

Clearly, you have to be online in a sophisticated way that engages boomers to succeed in this competitive arena.

Here's another vital finding: There are three main ways in which these donors want to relate to orgs they give to -- all business; relationship seekers; casual connectors.

"The three clusters offer some important clues about what kinds of communications your wired wealthy constituents...value, and might also help temper organizational expectations. Moreover, [the clustering indicates] that most organizations have a long way to go to fully satisfy even the most modest donor demands and expectations. And, it argues strongly for implementing some sort of psychographic segmentation so that you can cultivate relationships with the very different, yet equally valuable...clusters."

You'll find lots more data to guide your marketing and fundraising efforts in the full report.

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