2. Eli on the internet
• Email: eli@vandergiessen.ca
• Blog: http://blog.vandergiessen.ca
• LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/elijahv
• Twitter: @elijah
62. • Let no opportunity to build your list pass
you by - find a reason for your audience to
share valuable information with you
• Don’t be afraid of the data - it will guide
you
• Social Media isn’t a replacement for other
marketing channels and techniques - it plays
a support role
64. How to reach me
• Email: eli@vandergiessen.ca
• Blog: http://blog.vandergiessen.ca
• LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/elijahv
• Twitter: @elijah
Hinweis der Redaktion
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Hi, my name’s Eli.\nSometimes I live on the internet\n
By night I’m the organizer of Vancouver’s Net Tuesday, a monthly meetup that connects nonprofits with their allies in technology and communications.\nYou should join us. :-)\n
By day I work at the David Suzuki Foundation as the Creative Services lead.\nWe do the website, the email campaigns, and the social media work.\n\nOur name may be Creative Services, but at our heart we’re the marketing team for the Foundation. We support the scientists and campaigners in connecting with the public, and help build a constituency to support our work both financially and through advocacy.\n
If we do our work properly we should be invisible. Like gnomes.\n\n(A gnome created in support of our pesticide-free gardens campaign.)\n
First: Non-profit does not = no money. We need dollars like everyone else. We’re the same.. but different.\n\nInstead of profit going to the shareholders the dollars goes to advancing the cause.\n\nI come from the nonprofit world. The same and different as the corporate world. Just like in the corporate world we want people to do something, but instead of having a single core metric of success (profit!) we add in a broader world-changing mission too.. We want people to donate money. But we also want them engaged in advancing the core mission.\n\n
A double cross-out. \nThat’s serious!\n We need dollars like everyone else. But instead of profit going to the shareholders the dollars goes to advancing the cause.\n\nI come from the nonprofit world. The same and different as the corporate world. Just like in the corporate world we want people to do something, but instead of having a single core metric of success (profit!) we add in a broader world-changing mission too.. We want people to donate money. But we also want them engaged in advancing the core mission.\n\n
A disclaimer.\nI ain’t no expert. There are no experts.\nThere are no best practices.\nOh sure, there are people who are more experienced than you - but they don’t know what’s best for you/your product/your organization\n\nSo I’ll tell you what works for me. And hopefully you’ll find find some clues in here for what might work for you. But YOU MUST TEST!\nAnd then test again. And then keep testing.\nBut don’t worry. SOCIAL MEDIA IS EASY! There’s no magic sauce.\n
A second warning: The online world is cursed/blessed with data.\nIt could drown you. But it also gives you power.\nNo more guessing about what works.\nDon’t be afraid! - Let’s dive in!\n
What’s the goals for our work?\nGoals 1 and 2 require big numbers. More people = better chance of achieving the goals\nHeck, Goal 3 also requires big #s, because behaviour change theory suggests that one of the biggest barriers to change is the feeling that you’re the only one doing anything... in which case why bother?\nBut today we’re gonna focus on goals 1 and 2. Those are easier to measure! :-)\n
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Email was the cornerstone of our marketing work.\nUp until a year ago.\n
Now social media is a large part of the solution.\n\nPut up your hand if you’ve heard of “Mercora”... “Rollyo”? Congoo?\nNot many of you... neither have I. And neither have our customers and supporters.\n\n
But actually, most of the time, just Facebook and Twitter.\nThat’s where the people are.\nSee, it looked complicated. But it ain’t!\nI told you social media was easy!\n
So, my 1st goal is advocacy. That means lots of folks email, writing, calling... harassing our elected officials into doing their job. :-)\n\nThankfully Advocacy and social media are bosom buddies. I’ll show you how they’re connected and reinforce each other.\n
So, it’s a big looong form (sigh - those policy wonks fight for exact detail over sexy copy)\nIn November the senate vetoed the Climate Change Accountability Act (Greenhouse has targets) - doing something is contrary to the established tradition of the Canadian Senate. There was outrage!\nSo we sent our 32,000 supporters who have done advocacy work in the past.\n
So we sent off our action alert by email.\nPeople clicked on the link,bless their hearts. They’re a reliable bunch.\n
But what’s that in the #1 position?\nFor the 1st time Facebook has over-taken our email list as the largest driver of traffic to the action form.\n(All those direct/nones are either from our friends-asking-friends email or Twitter clients. (we’ll talk about that more soon...)\n
Even better, it’s not junk traffic. The red selected area shows the % of visitors for each traffic source that completed the action alert form.\nSo almost 60% of visitors from our email list completed the action.\nFacebook compares well compared at 40%... visitors from a link on http://www.DavidSuzuki.org perform badly and surprise guest Reddit.com, a social news site, which delivers a chunk of much more poorly performing traffic... perhaps because they didn’t have a prior relationship with us.\naction email: 8608*.6=4985\nFB: 15995*.41=6558\nDirect/None: 13888*.19=2638\nAnd Reddit brought 3227*24=774 completions\n\n\n
I guess it isn’t too much of a surprise.\nThere’s been steady growth on the Facebook Page for a long time now. \nBut sneakily Facebook has grown to be larger than our total email list. And it’s directing people to our web properties.\n
There’s some mad social media activity going on.\nHere’s the social media activity for the action alert.\n
Yes.\nBut you’ve also got to make it easy.\nBe SHAMELESS in asking folks to share. Give them every opportunity.\n
Trust me. I have a chart.\nAnd the Chart (via Neilsen) says that the most trusted form of advertising is a recommendation from your friend.\nWell, duh.\nAnd that’s what social media can give you. A way for friends to recommend you to their friends.\n
So, here’s how I shamelessly asked folks to advertise the action alert on behalf of the David Suzuki Foundation....\n On the confirmation page shown after the action is completed there’s an email form where you can enter your friend’s info.\n
And a Twitter “Tweet” and Facebook “Like” button.\n
Plus copy to forward in the Thank you email sent afterwards.\n
And even the initial email ask\n
This integration of social media into your website and email works wonders for growing your social media communities.\nFor those in the back the page has 2,268 Likes and 223 Tweets.\n
What happens when you click “Like” on a webpage?\nThe Like appears on the original webpage. \nIt appears in your Facebook profile (and is data that Facebook advertisers can use)\nIt shows up on your “news feed”\n
Here’s how that magic played out on DavidSuzuki.org\n This line graph of Daily New Likes in Facebook here’s a huge spike when we added a “Like” button to every page of our website last summer.\n
Just think how it’d do it we didn’t hide the Share buttons at the BOTTOM of the page.\nMashable is good and obnoxious about it.\nThat group of icons scrolls with you, so it’s always in the top left of the page.\n\nOooop! Better bring that idea back to the team!\n
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Which is a fantastic result, all other growth for the month comes to 600 sign-ups (event sign-up forms and website sign-ups)\nAnd for those “other” folk I don’t necessarily have their full addresses and a hint at their issue of interest.\n\n
For those keeping track at home that means 18,141 signed, 6000 new. 1/3 of folks using the form opted-in for follow-up communications.\n\n
It’s not just for nonprofits\n
“I agree that cable and satellite companies should pay for the signals they distribute.”\n\nNobody loves CTV... but they HATE their local cable company.\n
Citizens for Health is an industry group that supports the Natural Health supplements industry. Pushing for legislative change with the FDA.\n
Not always list-building for future sales with this corporate advocacy, but it’s the next step up from Cause-based marketing.\n
Who’s heard of the Pepsi Refresh campaign?\nThey’re giving away millions in nonprofit voting contests... and connecting folks to their brand.\n\n
Forbes has selected it as one of the Best-Ever social media campaigns.\nIt’s certainly made me think about Pepsi. Which I never did before.\n
Another Cause-based marketing campaign is Vancity’s “Change Everything”\nThe branding is much more subtle! \nIt reinforces Vancity’s “un-bank” branding by focusing on local community projects.\n
This articulation of your supporters values is powerful stuff. And it’s cheaper than regular advertising. Cause-based marketing is a place to start, but it’s even more powerful if you can directly work on the core issues that effect/or inspire you and your supporters/customers.\nImagine you run a company that sells beauty products that aren’t tested on animals.\nYour customers buy from you partly because of this. Don’t wait for them to create their own petition (there are thousands like this on the free The Petition Site)\nPut a petition on your website and ask your customers to sign. That’s an even stronger way of showing that you share their values.\nSocial Media will be how the petition is shared.\n
This is where my work is very similar to most other companies. We need to bring $$ in to keep the shop running.\n
What is Social Media Marketing good for?\nWell, if you’re a nonprofit I’ll tell you what is ISN’T good for - fundraising.\n
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Oh sure, there are exceptions - there are Twestival ($250,000+) or Kiva or Wikipedia but these are just that... exceptions. For the majority of nonprofits they aren’t raising real dollars online. Need proof of how awful they’re doing? Data is basically impossible to find! :-)\n\n
or Kiva (untold millions)\n
Or maybe Wikipedia ($16 million)\nNot sure how much came via web vs the share call-to-action made after the donation.\n
There’s Facebook Causes - it’s raised lots of money\n
BUT Facebook Causes has been a bust for most organizations.\nOnly a small fraction of the 180,000 organizations on Facebook have raised more than $1,000.\nThese have been seeded by existing major donors (think $100,000 gifts, or event, in the case of Aflac, the organization itself they donated $1,000,000).... these are publicity stunts.\n\n
So, if almost nobody is raising real $$ online, why are fundraising and development teams obsessed with social media marketing?\nBecause, trust me, they are.\n
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Social Media is the best, fastest, cheapest way to acquire new leads.\nBut if those supporters aren’t giving money why do the fundraisers care? Because those same people who won’t give via social media channels WILL give when asked via email or telemarketing. Sometimes even by mail!\nBut you don’t get mailing addresses, phone numbers, or even email addresses from social media. And they won’t share it with you if you ask.\n\n
Even if you ask really, really nicely. With a cherry on top.\n\nWhich, of course, brings us right back to that Climate Change Accountability Act action.\n\n
Our supporters gladly gave us their full addresses and email via the action alert form.\nAnd they had the opportunity to opt-out (there’s a limit to just how obnoxious you can be!)\n
And once we have this info we’re off to the races.\nTelemarketing works for us: the Foundation gets a 6-10% conversion rate to donor when we call a new lead acquired via an action alert.\nAnd email works too.\n
An example: David Suzuki holiday store\n
Email fundraising typically gets a 0.13% response rate (e-benchmarks study) We did better this time, but that’s good because we only net 50% on merch sales.\nVS. Facebook: 14 transactions over holiday season.\n\nFACT: a new lead who has completed an action alert is TWICE as likely to give as someone who came via other sources like a Suzuki lecture or newsletter sign-up form.\n\n
And so, like the circle of life. We return to the connection between fundraising and social media. It isn’t direct. But the Social Media helps build a relationship between the organization and once those folks are converted via an action alert they join Team Financial Supporter.\nHakuna matata. etc. \n