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Check for a pulse
If you use an e-marketing service provider such as Emma or Constant Contact to send your e-mails, use its response feature to determine which addresses have been dormant for six months or more. Send these subscribers an e-mail with a click-through message that confirms their interest: “Click here to ensure you continue to receive our mailings” will do.
Reviving the undead
Take a good look at your subscriber list and determine the average open and click-through rates. Consider how often you send a mailing, and determine the percentage of subscriber activity that you find acceptable. This will allow you to identify your low and inactive responders so you can decide whether or not they should receive a confirmation e-mail or a nail in their coffin.
What sealed their fate?
Once you’ve identified your dead subscribers, analyze the data you have from your e-marketing service to look for any similarities. Look for the date your dead subscribers signed up, what prompted them to sign up (i.e. a special offer?), their industry and/or any other information that may have caused them to lose interest. Brainstorm ways to revive them, like if someone subscribed because of a good offer or incentive, consider offering another.
Mourning your losses
Seeing your subscriber list shrink is hard, but chopping off the dead weight will ensure you’re mailing to an engaged, interested audience who really care about your message. Learn from your mistakes and brainstorm ways to keep subscribers opening and engaged.
1. Be reader-centered, not writer-centered
All too often, brochures, Web sites and direct mail from nonprofits focus on how great their organizations are. A better and more effective approach is to focus on what your service can do for your potential customers. Consider your customers asking, “What’s in it for me?” Putting yourself in their shoes will help you write what they want to hear.
Instead of: Our volunteers work with underprivileged children.
Try: As a volunteer, you’ll work with children who need your time and attention the most.
2. Focus on the benefits – not just the features
The fact that your program offers many great features is a given. If it didn’t, it probably wouldn’t be around for very long. Focus on the benefits. Before you start writing, profile your target audience, think about what they need and write to appeal to those needs.
Instead of: Our organization offers a wide variety of low-cost healthcare options.
Try: Enjoy peace of mind at our clinic, where you can be sure your family receives the best healthcare options, all of which are affordable for you.
3. Draw audiences in with can’t-miss headline
The first line of your copy can alone determine its success or failure. There are many ways to grab attention with a headline, but it's safest to appeal to your reader's interests and concerns, while still keeping it both short and sweet and reader-centered.
Instead of: Nonprofit Leadership Center Offers Grant Writing Seminar
Try: Learn to Write Award-Winning Grants for Your Nonprofit
4. Use engaging subheadings
Subheadings help readers quickly understand your main points and make copy "skimmable." To start, determine your main promotional points within each section; then summarize those ideas to make your subheads. Include action or sales elements to make them most engaging.
Instead of: What our organization accomplished in January
Try: Meet three students who raised their grades with your help
5. Be conversational
Write to your audiences like you talk to them. Don't be afraid of using conversational phrases when appropriate, such as "So what's next?" or "Here's how you can join today." Avoid formality and use short, simple words. Even if you think your copy can't be misunderstood, there will always be a few people won't get it or take the time to decipher it.
Instead of: Anyone who’s interested in signing up to be a volunteer should contact John Smith at JohnSmith@nonprofitorg.com.
Try: Interested in volunteering? E-mail JohnSmith at JohnSmith@nonprofitorg.com.
1. Following money instead of your strengths
If you don’t completely believe in your product or service, others won’t either.
2. Reacting to your competition instead of finding your own niche
Figure out which services aren’t being met with the other guys, then specialize in it.
3. Having only one revenue stream
In today’s economy, you can’t depend on only once source of revenue. Own a fitness center? Offer evening classes for non-members. In real estate? Conduct seminars on buying your first home. Be creative!
4. Marketing your business from your perspective
Always focus on the benefit your customer will get from using your company, not how great your company is. People will respond much better when they hear how you will fulfill a specific need.
5. PR: don’t wait for news to happen—create your own!
Most times, reporters will not be knocking your door down for an interview. Stay visible to the media by sending regular news releases to announce recent staff changes, awards or other newsworthy company bulletins.
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Custom Web Site |
Web Site Template |
Design |
With a custom design, you can ensure that your Web site will match your current corporate identity – right down to the colors, graphics and fonts – and that no other company’s Web site will look like yours. |
Many times it’s difficult to match a template site to your corporate brand and its “fixed” design elements limit your ability to make the site distinctive and unique. Unless you pay the “Exclusive” price for the template, the template company is going to keep selling that same template to anyone that comes along. Also, even with the “Exclusive” option, there are others who have bought the template prior to you who still have the right to use it, and the better the template, the more people who have probably already purchased it. Some templates are laid out very specifically, which means incorporating your own graphics or including extensive content could cause the template to break. Also, if the Web site template uses antiquated coding, it might not work in all browsers. |
Statistics |
With built-in statistics packages available with custom sites, you can pull detailed information at any time to track your site’s visitors. See exactly when people visit your site and use that information to measure the effectiveness of your marketing tactics (i.e. checking for a spike in Web site traffic after running an ad or getting positive PR coverage). You can also track which pages people are visiting the most, see the keywords people are using to find your site and capture visitor information with the a built-in contact form. |
Statistic packages are not built into template sites, meaning you’d be creating your site with no way of tracking its effectiveness. |
Content Management |
With a content management system (CMS), you can make text updates on the fly. Add a new employee or service, announce your latest news and promotions and make other desired changes without consulting (and paying) a programmer. |
Without content-management, which isn’t included in most template sites, text cannot be changed or updated easily. You will need to pay and wait on a programmer, or learn to code the site yourself to make changes. |
Optimization |
How the background coding of your Web site is done will influence how easily potential customers can find you through a search engine such as Google. Search-engine optimization during programming is necessary to ensure your site appears when someone searches for it online. It’s an important step that many companies skip, and is often not available with a template site. |
Template sites include little or no search engine features. Without Web site coding knowledge necessary to take your site live on the Internet, you will have to either spend the time and money to learn how to code a Web site or hire someone to help you. As explained above, it is important how the background coding of your Web site is done. If not done correctly, it could hurt your marketing efforts on the Internet. |
How many hours does the average person spend online?
The average person spends 63 hours and 30 minutes online, logs 50 sessions and views 2,238 Web pages during one month. This number is high, and is steadily increasing, making it more important than ever to be Web savvy and use new media such as e-marketing, blogging and social networking.
What are people doing online?
- 91% visit search engines
- 86% search maps and get directions
- 78% check the weather
- 71% read the news
- 80% look for health and medical info
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