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Ebroadcasting

Gigi won't let me forget Baltimore!


The absolute best mass communications tool is cheap, easy, measurable, and effective. Rick Schwartz/StraightTalk www.schwartztalk.com
I lived in Washington, DC during Jimmy Carter's administration (and Ronald Reagan's, but I don't talk about that much). Baltimore was a short train ride away, but I never felt the urge to visit. My loss. Baltimore has many of the attributes I still miss from my hometown of Pittsburgh: real neighborhoods, great old buildings (whatever Johns Hopkins hasn't torn down), down home eating, and a tough and friendly attitude. (The Wire is both my and Barack's favorite TV series.) Happily I've since visited Baltimore several times for conferences, college tours, a reunion with a childhood buddy, and some work for Gigi Casey Wirtz. Gigi (everyone should have a "Gigi" in his or her address book; it's so...exotic!) is the Director of Communications for the Baltimore Community Foundation. I don't get to Baltimore often, so I'm grateful that Gigi keeps me -- and several hundred other admirers -- informed several times a month with the push of a button. She ebroadcasts at least once every two weeks. Ebroadcasts are a perfect answer, but I have to beg my clients to use them frequently Go ahead, break my heart. Don't do annual reports. Don't meet with donors face to face. Never give a public speech. Don't collaborate with other nonprofits. Don't join your local Chamber of Commerce. Ignore the rules for good websites. Write boring annual appeals. But please, please, please: send frequent ebroadcasts. Remind me constantly that your nonprofit matters. Like Gigi does. Done correctly, ebroadcasts work, I promise. You will find that: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. your 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. powerful mission deserving clients innovative programs talented staff generous donors specialized knowledge. You'll add new friends every time you mail. (Some) people will do what you ask: take a poll, visit your website, call their legislator, watch a YouTube video, eat an extra serving of fruit, say 'I love you' to their children. People may send you money. I counseled a community foundation president recently to use an ebroadcast to eulogize a beloved donor. People sent unsolicited donations. You will strengthen your relationship by being in touch regularly. You will remind the reader that your nonprofit is special, over and over again.

You have plenty to write about, especially since you'll only write two paragraphs per ebroadcast about

Among those six topics -- and there are more -- your nonprofit should be able to send at least 18 twoparagraph stories a year. That's just three per topic. Under "specialized knowledge" you may write about free publications on college financing (www.edpubs.ed.gov), if you are focused on higher education; refer to Chicago Trib columnist Eric Zorn's blog on Rod Blagojevich's new book; or encourage attendance at an upcoming lecture on how wine, chocolate, and garlic helps prevent cancer. Under "generous donors" you may write a brief eulogy of a favorite donor who has passed away, a tip from the Wall Street Journal about the advantages of giving appreciated stock (lol), or an unusual gift your nonprofit has just received. Under "innovative programs" you can highlight something truly unique about one of your programs. Be specific, no generalities. You can announce new staff with their impressive credentials, clients who have succeeded beyond anyone's dreams, expanded office hours, new grants, revision of your mission, and so on. The national data and studies that regularly cross your desk are second nature for you, but news to me. You can simply share a couple paragraphs of your daily mail. For a sampling of Gigi's year of ebroadcasts, visit www.bcf.org/(includes other press releases too). Easy, cheap, measurable, effective, if you let it be You could make ebroadcasting complicated, onerous, time-consuming, and expensive. But that would be foolish. Instead, follow these five rules to keep life simple: 1. Write a fantastic 'subject' line. Don't write "From the Baltimore Community Foundation." Instead, write "Inside: the ten smartest people in Baltimore". Gigi says, "The time we spend at our communications meeting writing subject lines is often the most fun we have all week." 2. 3. Never write more than three tight paragraphs. Once readers realize your ebroadcasts are always short, they won't run in horror when they see them in their "In" boxes. Only one topic per ebroadcast. Do not create a newsletter! It's too much work, it's intimidating, and no one wants to read it. Have two important things to say? Great! Wait three days and send a separate ebroadcast. 4. Don't ask for money. An ebroadcast is (usually) not the vehicle for fundraising. Obvious exceptions are disaster relief, timely memorials, holiday giving, and very special opportunities. But if every ebroadcast asks for money, I'll start trashing them without opening. 5. Don't go nuts about design. Keep it simple (see Part 2, about email services). Lots of folks have images turned off for their emails anyway. That's it. Discipline yourself to send one at least every three weeks, more often if possible. Watch your recognition rise. If you want to make things a bit tougher on yourself To improve your ebroadcasting, I suggest two other valuable steps. 1. When possible, link to a resource on your website. It's great when those resources already exist. When they don't, you have to decide whether it's worth writing one. Get people to your website! 2. Measure. All the ebroadcast services will give you the basics: how many recipients opened your ebroadcast, how many forwarded it to a friend, how many had bad addresses. Some topics draw better than others. If you want to pander to the crowd, then figure out which ones. Test mail on different days of the week at different times of the day to find what seems to work best. (See "Which day to mail" in Part 2.)

Five last points about ebroadcasting Five more topics about ebroadcasting: 1. Using an email service if you're a newbie 2. Get people onto your mailing list 3. When is the best time to send? 4. Going overboard for the more intense
5. If ebroadcasting is so great, why aren't Twitter and blogging better?


I do NOT get a commission from Constant Contact (darn it!)

Truth be told, the only ebroadcasting service I've used professionally is Constant Contact (CC). I'm sure others are just as good. In fact, Top10REVIEWS rates it third of 17 email marketing services. Use your own judgment. I wanted "easy" when I first dipped my toe into ebroadcasting. I found these basics; you should demand the same from the service you choose. 1. 2. CC provided lots of support. Set-up was so easy, I hardly needed any. CC offered enough design templates to choke a horse (although that would be wrong). Each included easy-to-understand tips about the elements I should include (e.g. an "announcement" section, an "enrollment" section, etc.). Each section comes with a design that fits the overall template. 3. Mailing lists were easy to construct. You set them up; the service maintains them. You don't have to do a thing. (You should, though. See Five ways to build your mailing listbelow.) Yes, you will spend some hours for initial setup. But you shouldn't spend more than an hour or so every couple weeks writing two or three paragraphs per ebroadcast. That hour reminds hundreds or thousands of people why your nonprofit is so important to them. (It may take longer if you have a boss who expects to read the ebroadcast before it's sent. Try to avoid having a boss.) There are a dozen other nifty features that should come with your basic account:

A resend option

Detailed statistics of the "success rate" of each mailing (see Open Rates below) A list of the email addresses that bounce (and why) after each mailing Notification of new subscribers (yay!) and unsubscribers (sigh) An option to survey readers

A preview test to see if anything I've written is likely to excite someone's spam filter.

Not bad for $30 a month for up to 2,500 subscribers. (You can buy other plans.) (Just so you - and Constant Contact - know, I'm not wild about the lack of font size flexibility, its graphics library, or how to place graphics. But it may be me.)

Five ways to get people onto your mailing list

Moral emarketing services don't let you add names from purchased lists of non-consenting adults. That's to protect you and me from spam. (That 70% of my email is spam suggests something about morality, I suppose.) Here are five ways to build your list. Also read Want to go overboard? below.

1.

Start with your board, staff, and friends. Stand at his or her desk and don't leave until you have five email addresses. Repeat weekly forever. Don't ask for names, just email addresses. They'll feel more comfortable.

2.

Don't forget to add all the people who must read your materials: elected officials, government administrators, business leaders, and every media outlet in your context. All are easily available on the web.

3.

Postcards. Send them to everyone on your snail mail list. Ask them to email their approval; you'll have their email address. Address their fears in the postcard: 'We won't share your address, we won't deluge you.' And note the positives: 'We will contact you faster, offer you special opportunities.'

4. 5.

Flyers. If appropriate, post flyers with tear off signup URLs in public areas: college campuses, libraries, and supermarkets. An opt-in box on your website is the slowest way to recruit subscribers. Make sure you feature the availability of your "free" ebroadcasts in your newsletters, ads, every public presentation, and private meetings.

Open rates. When is the best time to send? The number of people who open your ebroadcast against your total mailing number is your 'open rate'. Which day and time is best to ebroadcast for the best open rate? Here's what the experts say: A study by ExactTarget in 2005 said Friday, but only 0.6% better than Thursdays. eROI, which measures day and time rates every quarter, says business-to-business email is best sent on Mondays and Tuesdays. Business to consumers is Wednesdays and Fridays. The MediaPost blog emailINSIDER reports that most retailers emarket on Tuesdays. Everybody seems to agree that Mondays aren't good, except for the experts who think Mondays are best.

Hope that clears things up for you. Rational people suggest you send an email based on what you want the recipient to do. Consumers buy on weekends, and that's when most people go to museums, too. Send related ebroadcasts on Thursday and Friday. Want someone to watch a television documentary? Give them one day's notice, no more, no less. Audience also determines the time of day you send. Businesspeople like to clear out their emails first thing in the morning, teenagers late at night. People who spend a lot of time in front of computers open emails all day long. A 10 or 11 a.m. or 2 or 3 p.m. "surprise" may be welcome. By the way, Gigi's "open rate" is between 30 and 40%. That's a higher-than-average figure. When she reaches 1,000 subscribers, a 40% open rate will mean that 400 people are reading about the Baltimore Community Foundation each time. Most of the other 600 will at least read the subject lines.

Want to go overboard? Here's an oar

If you want to get deeper into ebroadcasting, then I make my usual suggestion: look to the business world. Those folks are customer-oriented, just as you should be donor- and client-oriented. For example, you'll find little useful information if you Google "ebroadcast". Look under "emarketing" and "internet marketing". I like the free e-newsletter all about email, for example, which is from the Target Marketing Group. ExactTarget offers free white papers on virtually every aspect of emarketing, from building subscriber lists to designing pages. EmailUniverse.com must have everything, given its name.

If ebroadcasting is great, why aren't twittering and blogging better? If frequency with short text is the answer, why not twitter instead? Four words: Because my kids don't. Zoe, my 21-year-old soon-to-be college graduate and master of IM, will have no part of it. Leo, my 17year-old soon-to-be college freshman and text message wizard, thinks Twitter is "stupid". Now my web mentor Ann-Marie Harrington sent a tweet right up to the front door of The White House last summer. She was there to accept the Small Business Person of the Year Award from the Prez. (I assume they took her phone away at the front desk.) And according to The Twitter Book (review on my website, $13.59 at Amazon last time I checked), the service has more than 10 million users. I'll talk about Twitter some other time. Read the book. But far more people of all ages have one or more email accounts. The relationship between sender and recipient is more easily established and maintained. You can only say so much in 140 characters, then you're going to send an email or call or write. Sometimes the circumstances are right. Restaurants, Ashton Kutcher, and Shaq O'Neal are twittering. So are at least 90 foundations, including Gigi in Baltimore and my buddies at the Birmingham, Cincinnati, and Crossroads community foundations. In nearly all those cases the recipient of the message wants something from the sender: free dessert, good gossip, front row tickets, or grant deadlines. Again, I'm not diss-ing Twitter. Just have a good ebroadcasting system first and always. Blogging too requires great allegiance from readers, and great allegiance requires great writing. Frankly, something comes over nonprofit leaders when they write or approve the writing of others. All of a sudden your language becomes bureaucratic, safe, general, and/or sentimental. For some reason, you leave your epiphanies, your humor, your righteous anger, your eloquent calls to arms, and your poetry somewhere else. The proof is in the letters that start every nonprofit annual report. Bo-ring! A blog in the right hands is a great tool. Ebroadcasting is first, better, and broader.

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