Email Marketing

Our methods of communication have shifted drastically in the past 5 years. These days, most of us are emailing rather than picking up the phone and calling work contacts, friends and family. And thanks to smart phones, we are emailing or checking email dozens of times a day while on the go.

For organizations, this means email is the most consistent way to update supporters. Sending out updates on important legislation, upcoming events, and fundraising opportunities are just a few ways nonprofits are using email marketing. But first, an organization has to decide on a solution for sending email. How can organizations customize mass emails? Will the emails actually get delivered? What kinds of statistics are out there for monitoring email?

Luckily there are lots of tech solutions out there for organizations to quickly and easily send great-looking emails, manage the list of people these emails are sent to, and collect data on the people reading and clicking through to act. One option is a full Consumer Relationship Managers like Salsa, SalesForce, or Campaigner. These systems will allow your organization to manage email and fundraising all in one place, but with all of the features they offer, they can also be pricey.

The other option is a simple email marketing service. These services offer guaranteed email delivery, customized email templates, and list management for  a monthly or yearly price. There are usually more affordable for a small nonprofit  and some even offer a certain number of emails for free if your organization qualified. But there are so many of these services out there, where to start!?

Based on your organization’s needs, you’ll want to prioritize what features are most important. Is your budget dictating what options are available? A service that offers discounts for nonprofits might be your best bet. Need lots of tech support? 24/7 customer service might be crucial to your decision.

I’ve found a couple helpful websites for comparing email marking services. The first is on Top10Reviews.com and they have scored some of the most popular services based on a number of features:

The second is from WeRockYourWeb.com, and instead of a ranking, they have drawn up this handy chart so you can see if a service offers the features you are looking for:

Once you’ve made the big decision and picked your email marketing service, it’s time to get crackin’! This guide by the National Network for Arab American Communities provides a lot of helpful information on effective email marketing. Over at Salsa, their blog has specific information about the Salsa CRM, but also information on best practices in email marketing. The Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blog is an amazing resource for all things tech in the nonprofit world. Finally, Nonprofit Quarterly is the be-all, end-all for nonprofit news and resources.

What email marketing services are you using? Are there other great resources for nonprofit email marketing I didn’t list?

Happy emailing!

Battle of the Bookmarks

Pinterest vs. LoveIt

In the category of bookmark curation sites, Pinterest has established itself as   king in a relatively short amount of time.  But there is a new kid on the block, looking to get on the bandwagon of visual bookmark curation- LoveIt.com. I found out about LoveIt through Klout, where I was offered the opportunity to use LoveIt in beta. The similarities between LoveIt and Pinterest on the surface are uncanny. The two have incredibly similar layouts and color schemes and the same idea of collections or boards of content chosen by their owners.  But there are some specific differences between the two sites which may influence which one you decide to use for yourself.

LoveIt

As I mentioned, LoveIt is a new member of the online curation/bookmarking scene and is still in beta so you can only sign up with Facebook at this point. LoveIt took the Pinterest model and added a few features that may enhance users’ experiences.  First of all, there are more customization features available for users’ collections.  Like Pinterest, these collections can be managed alone or with other users, but LoveIt adds the opportunity to make collections private, so you can hide your secret dream wedding plans from friends or boyfriends.  LoveIt also has a really easy Edit more for collections, which allows users to drag and drop images between collections and re-order collections on their profiles.

LoveIt has better tracking of original image links, available at the bottom of every image. When a user clicks on an image, they are directed to a new page with a larger version of the image and recommendations of similar content, similar collections, and users who have ‘loved’ the same content.

This makes it super easy to find new people and new content.  LoveIt will also recommend content on your feed by highlighting an image in yellow that based on your previous ‘loves’ they believe matches your interests.  Users can then ‘love’ these images or clear them from their feed by clicking an X on the image (or any image in their feed), helping LoveIt learn what they might like.

Pinterest

I wrote a whole post on Pinterest earlier this spring that you can check out here. In comparison to LoveIt, Pinterest is much more established, and thus has more users and more content.  For users whose priority is interacting with their friends and favorite brands, Pinterest is the obvious choice since there is a greater chance that people and organizations you know will have profiles. Also, Pinterest’s profiles (to me personally) are more visually pleasing and boards have cover photos that can be customized by users, so visitors have a better idea of what kind of content is included.

 But many of LoveIt’s features are correcting shortcomings in the Pinterest experience.  A lot of times, it is difficult to find the original source of an image, and LoveIt does a better job of preserving this information.  Also there is no Pinterest equivalent of LoveIt’s recommendations, but there are more opportunities to share the content elsewhere when a user goes to ‘pin’ the image.

The Verdict

Both LoveIt and Pinterest are great sites for finding new content and interacting with  bloggers,brands, and friends.  For organizations and brands, both offer an easy way of searching for new fans and customers in specific niches.  Pinterest is the clear choice in the latter, but if LoveIt continues growing, brands will be forced with a difficult choice.  I would liken the two sites as the difference between Tumblr and Blogspot.  There are different features on each site, but the general idea is the same so it is up to a user’s personal preference for which site they use.

Personally, I’ll keep my LoveIt account around because I have found some interesting content, which I have also ‘pinned’ on my Pinterest account because that is where I usually go to find content.  It will be interesting to see if LoveIt really takes off in the next year or finds a new niche that Pinterest hasn’t captured- male users perhaps?

We shall see…

Social Media- Deprofessionalization of Communication

Communications and media used to be the realm of professionals.  Men and women in suits communicated on our behalf to corporations and the same suits communicated back to us through the media.  The internet began to break down these suits by involving people in their news through comment sections and email listservs.  Social media and blogging has all but destroyed the wall of professionalism that used to define communications.  Everyday people are becoming producers of content and using social media as their outlet to disseminate the information they’ve found.  These citizen journalists are reinventing how the media and communications operate.

Since everyday people now acting as the voice of the news or an organization, it is becoming more important that we all learn about best practices for social media, in case we are ever put in the position of being a professional communicator on an issue.  Part of this is learning how to be authentic while retaining professionalism.  Entrepreneur posted an article on creating authenticity for a company’s online voice.  They suggest that language is very important.  For example, small companies can get away with abbreviations such as “gr8” but large companies should shy away from this practice.  And despite the informality of social media, correct grammar is still important.

Then there are best practices for content depending on the social media site.  Pinterest has been getting a lot of attention lately on Twitter.  This article gives some dos and don’ts for businesses creating a Pinterest account.  Brands are encouraged to have a presence on Pinterest and to post content that shows the brand’s inspiration, interests, and products. But like any social platform, followers will not tolerate over-posting and cross-posting the same content.

Social media practices also depend on who is using it.  A company’s strategy and practices will be much different from a nonprofit’s.  There are a lot of resources becoming available for nonprofit social media usage.  This presentation on SlideShare is part of a series called 50 Social Media Tactics and gives platform-specific tips and practices just for nonprofits.  Mashable also did an infographic displaying statistics on how nonprofits are using social media.

There is a wealth of knowledge on the internet about using social media no matter the platform or organization using them.  It is up to us as users and future professional communicators to be well-informed about these practices and strategies when our citizen journalism moment comes.