E-mail

Facebook and MySpace and Twitter, oh my! While I’m not the yellow brick road to lead you to the Emerald City of social-networking Utopia, I am a real, living, breathing, Facebook-surfing, Gen Y, nonprofit professional. My goal for this column, which will appear bimonthly in FundRaising Success’ Giving 2.0 e-letter, is to help nonprofits understand the who, what and why of Web 2.0. This medium shouldn’t be viewed as a frightening, unknown forest filled with predators, but a world of opportunity to share your message with new demographics in a plethora of innovative, creative ways. By breaking down the world of Web 2.0, I

There was no shortage of cyber chatter surrounding last month’s Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans. Here’s a sampling of some observations from bloggers around the country. For a more comprehensive list of blog entries about the conference, click here. “Observations on the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference,” posted March 26 by Kurt Voelker and Andrew Cohen, chief technology officer and project director, respectively, at Forum One Communications’ INfluence blog: Kurt Voelker and I (Andrew Cohen), traveled to New Orleans to participate in the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference. This was my fourth conference and the most useful and fulfilling. In addition our volunteering and presenting,

While a recent study by the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council found online retailers do a great job of honoring unsubscribe requests quickly, it also found they could improve their opt-out processes, such as by providing subscribers with alternatives to opting out or at least lowering the barriers to doing so. The study — EEC’s first Retail Email Unsubscribe Benchmark Study — examines the opt-out practices of 94 of the largest online retailers tracked via RetailEmail.Blogspot, EEC’s blog that tracks the e-mail marketing campaigns of e-tailers. Chad White, the author of the study and EEC’s director of retail insights, and editor-at-large and

[Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the October 2007 issue of FundRaising Success sister publication Target Marketing, and is written from a for-profit point of view. The solid tips hold equally true for nonprofit mailers.] Do you monitor your competitors’ e-mail programs? If so, you may note some appear to be addicted to frequency and often send several messages a week. Under most circumstances, this is a misguided attempt to keep in front of their e-mail list. Relevance always trumps frequency. Quantity does not equal quality. Successful marketers don’t push their messages. Instead, they strive to understand their subscribers’ needs, preferences and

In my inbox this week was an e-mail advertisement for a new, all-natural approach to dealing with hair loss. Fortunately, that’s one thing I don’t need to worry about.

The last thing any e-mail fundraiser/marketer wants to be associated with is that nasty four-letter word, “spam.” The Can-Spam Act of 2003 regulates unsolicited commercial e-mail if it is an advertisement or promotion and it is unsolicited. Nonprofit organizations can send unsolicited e-mails without violating Can-Spam laws, but there are some key things they should do to ensure that they stay “white-listed.” The article “Staying on the E-mail Up and Up: What Nonprofits Need to Know About CAN-SPAM” by GuideStar’s director of communications and newsletter editor Suzanne Coffman, offers advice to nonprofits about how to keep their e-mails Can-Spam compliant. The article recommends

The Convio whitepaper “The Basics of E-mail Marketing for Nonprofits: Using E-mail Communications to Build and Strengthen Constituent Relationships Online” is a 19-page, information-rich guide that covers the gamut of e-mail marketing, touching on everything from building an e-mail address file, performing list hygiene, gaining permission, offering opt-out options and executing a successful e-mail campaign. The whitepaper also addresses tips for creating compelling e-mail messages. First off, it stresses the importance the of “message envelope,” i.e., the e-mail header. The message envelope is made up of the “To” and “From” lines, the date and the “Subject” line. * Subject line — should be

E-mail blasts that ask constituents for donations aren’t the only way organizations can use e-mail to advocate and fundraise. Another, perhaps less obvious, way is by including e-mail signatures in all the e-mails sent by your organization’s staff, a strategy discussed at great length by Nancy E. Schwartz, president of nonprofit marketing and communications firm Nancy Schwartz & Company, in her article “Nonprofits’ Most Missed Marketing Tool -- E-mail Signatures.” An e-mail signature is information that automatically is added to the end of an outgoing e-mail that typically includes the sender’s name, title, company or organization, and contact information. Schwartz calls it an “online

Someone 20 years old, or 30 or 40 — even 50 — might never become a direct-mail donor. He or she probably will give online from the beginning. And there’s evidence that online donors might act quite differently than their direct-mail responsive parents and grandparents.

Through a program called Free is Free, e-mail security software is free for the taking for nonprofit organizations small and large that provide things such as food, medicine, shelter, emergency services and education to children in need.

The program is being offered by Newburyport, Mass.-based e-mail security company Declude. It was inspired by an encounter that Declude CEO Rich Person had with Pennye Nixon-West, founder of ETTA Projects, a Seattle-based organization that provides education, economic opportunities, food and health care to help Bolivian mothers feed their families and escape poverty.