One thing I noticed this last time I was traveling on the train was that Amtrak does a terrific job of identifying their customers enthusiasm for their service. You see, there are two types of train riders: Tourists and Commuters. Now when I say tourists I mean that these folks only go on the train every now and then, maybe once or twice a year. Commuters on the other hand try to take the train whenever they can. I’ve got about 325 hours logged on Amtrak travel this year because I choose to use it rather than flying or driving.

So to identify with its Commuters, Amtrak does many little things around the experience of their service to keep us coming back. I’ll talk more about this in a later post, but the thing I wanted to point out is that no touchpoint is too small for them. Here is a picture of a cup holder that tells the customer how good of a deed they are doing by taking the train. Love It!

Imagine what that would mean if you did the same thing for your organization? What if you had small touchpoints places where you come into contact with your supporters? Could it improve their overall giving experience? You betcha!

Image courtesy of amtrak_russ on Flickr.

Not sure what you can do with a Flickr account? Well check out our client Catskill Animal Sanctuary’s Flickr. They do a terrific job of updating it regularly with new pictures of their animals, supporters, and staff. By doing this they provide a personal side to whom they are as an organization and make them very approachable for donations and support in the future.

To apply just click on the corresponding link of the country your cause is in:

TechSoup
For organizations based in the United States or Canada, apply directly to TechSoup.

DonorTec
DonorTec provides technology information services to NGOs throughout Australia and is operated by Community Information Strategies Australia.

TechDonation
TechDonation provides social welfare services in Hong Kong and is operated by The Hong Kong Council of Social Services (HKCSS), an umbrella organization for 340+ agency members.

Charity Technology Exchange
CTX is a program of the Charity Technology Trust (CTT), an NGO that empowers British charities through the effective use of technology services and consulting.

Photo courtesy of bradleypjohnson on Flickr

Fortunately there are some techniques your business can use to make the most of your online presence. Social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the wave of the future, and it is important for companies of all sizes to use the power of these sites to grow their brands and please their customers.

• Think about what you are interested in and use that as the basis of your tweets.  Keep abreast of the latest developments in your organizations topic areas and pass that interesting information along to your supporters.
• Spread your tweets out among several different staff members and maybe even volunteers, rather than doing all the work on your own.  Having more than one person tweeting will also bring a number of different viewpoints to the table as well. You can do this easily with Hootsuite or Cotweet.
• Use Twitter to promote your blog posts, but be sure to provide some background information along with the link.  Make your followers want to click your links by providing interesting and useful content. Use a shortener service like bit.ly so you can get more room for your descriptions!
• Solicit the opinions of your followers, and don’t be afraid to let them ask questions.  You can learn a a great deal about how your organization is viewed in the outside world by interacting with your Twitter followers. If you want hardcore surveys check out Wufoo, it lets you create any kind of forms you want.
• Follow interesting people and companies, both inside and outside your industry.  Twitter is a great place to build your organization and your personal network.
• Tweet about non-cause related items as well.  While Twitter is a great place to promote your organization, it is also a great place to learn from the experiences of others.  If you find something interesting, tweet it to your online followers.
• Make your tweets useful, especially when you are promoting your own programs and services.  Make sure that the information you provide will be interesting and useful to your followers. Try to answer the standard questions like “who, what, when, and where”. Also if your so inclined answer the “why”.
• Share your organization’s human side, including any outside activities and cause marketing endeavors.  Encourage your staff to tweet about their personal lives as well as the business side of their lives.
• Resist the urge to promote your organization constantly.  It is fine to use Twitter as a marketing tool, but the site should be much more than just promoting your business. We can’t stress this enough because even though you probably have many passionate followers that love you, they don’t really want to only hear about you.
• Post interesting articles from both inside and outside your niche.  The people who are following you on Twitter will have many different interests, so be sure to tweet the things you find interesting.  Chances are good that someone on your list of Twitter contacts will find the information you post interesting and relevant.
• Share images and video. Everyone wants to see what your organization is up to. Make it easy for folks to then share those images and video with their followers as well by using an online service like Flickr, YouTube, or Vimeo.

Twitter is a powerful marketing tool for your cause, but it is much more than that.  The world of social networking has transformed the way we interact with one another, and smart non-profits who were able to get in on the ground floor of this new media sensation are already reaping the rewards. Overall, we’ve found that its really just laziness that gets in the way of most organizations following a content plan like this. Break that cycle now and if you need help feel free to get in touch!

Image courtesy of Twitter Buttons on Etsy

Of course this kind of thinking could be used in a professional as well as personal situation, but more importantly we think this is terrific food for thought when it comes to fundraising. Knowing the basics of human interaction like this is of course one of the basic requirements of success for any major fundraiser, so take the time and review this a little bit. You might be surprised at what elements you’ve forgotten about or perhaps become a little lackadaisical with as you age.

There are a number of things to keep in mind when you are just getting started with Twitter.  These rules apply whether you are using Twitter for business or for personal reasons, but they can be even more critical when it comes to business Twitter sites.

1. Avoid the temptation to read every tweet from your followers. It can be tempting to try to keep up with what all of your followers are doing, but the enormous size of the Twitter network makes this impossible.
2. You do not need to apply to every tweet you receive, even if that tweet is directed only at you. It is important to review each tweet you receive and choose the ones you want to respond to.
3. Be sure to use the one on one communication feature of Twitter for private conversations. There is no need for all your followers to participate in a conversation directed at only a single person.
4. Use the Twitter search feature to look for mentions of your organization. Twitter is a great way to keep track of what others are saying about you and how your business is perceived in the wider world.  Join the conversation about your cause when it makes sense to do so.
5. Use third party programs to manage your Twitter life. Twitter can be a complicated place, and applications like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck can make it a lot easier to manage your tweets and your follower community. You can even set tweets to go out at specified times in the future – awesomesauce!
6. Ask a few trusted employees to tweet on your organization’s behalf, but be sure those workers are getting their regular work done as well. Having more than one person tweeting on behalf of the organization is a great way to give an individual voice to your company while providing a varied point of view.
7. Post links to interesting news articles or blog posts, but always use a link shortening tool like Bit.ly to make those posts manageable.
8. Use Twitter as a marketing tool, but also use it for fun. Using Twitter to share fun or interesting stories will get you more followers and make you a more interesting Twitter user.
9. Be sure to comment on other people’s tweets on a regular basis. Commenting on what others are talking about is a great way to build a community of like minded people
10. Make your tweets interesting and useful. Whether you are working with your website or your Twitter account, it is still important to provide your readers with interesting and engaging content.  Twitter is a powerful tool for communication and marketing, but it is important to use this powerful tool the right way.

With an explosion of new media and social marketing opportunities, now is the time to take advantage of these exciting technologies or risk being left behind.  In a sense, your cause is at a crossroads, and seizing all of the new marketing tools can propel you to the top of your niche.  But the only way to do so is by having experts in the field guiding your marketing strategy, rather than struggling to understand and implement the technology yourself.

1. Even tech-savvy firms or personnel with diverse backgrounds can use outside expertise.  Outsourcing marketing functions will allow you to take advantage of the skills and experience of professional advertising and brand management specialists. These individuals are immersed in the world of marketing every day and can use successful techniques from other campaigns to benefit your organization.
2. Additionally, outsourcing your marketing to a professional firm can help you gain a broader perspective and identify any potential blind spots or biases in your marketing.
3. Another important advantage of outsourcing marketing functions is the insight and data that professional marketing firms possess.  Marketing firms have a wealth of research at their disposal and have the resources to perform evaluative analysis on target markets and the effectiveness of outreach techniques.
4. Experience and specialized knowledge aren’t the only ways in which outsourcing your marketing can benefit your organization, though.  Leaving marketing functions to the experts gives you and your employees the freedom to concentrate on what you do best.  Without the distraction of trying to tackle marketing, your organization will instantly be more focused on running your cause, not promoting it.  Because of this, you can pay more attention to your core competencies and put your resources into internal improvements, rather than worrying about your image.  This will give you a chance to streamline your operations, which in turn will give your marketing firm another thing to share with your audience.
5. In addition to freeing up your personnel, you can free up more money by reducing overhead.  Outsourcing marketing functions means you don’t have to worry about recruiting and training new employees or finding workspace to put together complex projects.  Marketing can be quite expensive, and there are a lot of fixed costs – between graphic design programs and subscriptions to research databases, the cost required to run one successful campaign on your own can reverberate for many quarters to come. Also, advertising and promotion professionals and “creative” minds often expect higher salaries, so outsourcing marketing can cut down on your costs as well.

In this new age of communications, the importance of marketing can’t be ignored.  With so many new methods for reaching supporters, a mass marketing campaign just isn’t effective any more.  Audiences are diverse and there are an astonishing number of channels of communication to consider.  Instead of diverting valuable resources to such a complicated area, why not reap the benefits of outsourcing marketing functions?

We’ve provided the slide below and you can also download an example marketing plan if you would like.

Feel free to follow me (@schutzsmith) or Mark & Phil (@markandphil) or send me a quick email (daniel@markandphil.com) if you have any questions or would like us to present a workshop like this in detail for your organization. (We’re willing to do it for travel expenses and beer! Not kidding!)

One tool we suggest to clients is to put together a marketing plan and start pricing out some of the marketing tools that they are going to need in the coming year. Then whatever number they come up with, double it. Seriously. We’re not telling you all of this because we want your money. Quite on the contrary, we won’t see most of your money because it will actually go towards vendors and goods that will be used to execute your plans. Its very important that you take the time to plan this properly otherwise you’ll find your organization struggling all year to make any real progress in its marketing and fundraising efforts.

Feel free to download our example Marketing Plan and let us know what you think!

Image courtesy of Toban Black on Flickr.

Strategy #1
Compile a database list of in-kind donations and prioritize items. Set deadlines for items and write effective (and short) donation request letters. Mail donation request letters eight months to one year in advance of events/campaigns. Do not expect in-kind donations overnight. Follow up with every contact on your master in-kind donation list. Divide companies and/or items between staff and/or volunteers (so it’s not as overwhelming).

Strategy #2
Target companies and sponsors that have the funding/resources to underwrite or donate items. Don’t lock companies into large versus small ticket items. Brainstorm and utilize resources from volunteers, staff and vendors.

Strategy #3
Ask for discounts from large vendors (such as rental or tent companies). Most vendors will give non-profit organizations partial discounts. Generous vendors will sometimes offer an in-kind donation of rental fees/tent usage. Create an in-kind sponsor level for vendors who waive fees and donate services.

Strategy #4
Take what you can get in this tough economy – don’t be picky. If a company can donate 200 flashlights (as opposed to 2,000), accept that amount. Approach other companies and ask them to match Company XYZ’s donation of “200 flashlights.” Company XYZ may be able to donate the rest of the items or similar items.

Strategy #5
Always follow up with phone calls and thank you letters after securing in-kind donations. Create a donor agreement letter and ask companies to sign (so they don’t forget that they agreed to donate and you have it in writing). If a company wants “acknowledgement,” offer a link to their website or a sponsor thank-you in the program. An in-kind donation is just as valuable, and should always be recognized along with monetary sponsors/donations.

But alongside the truly huge potential for viral growth is a very familiar situation – despite there now being the networks and technology for marketing messages to rapidly spread, most generate little attention and end up ignored. Some have blamed technology for the failure of manufactured ‘viral’ marketing efforts, but more experienced marketers have human behavior to look towards.

There’s a reason most manufactured viral marketing campaigns fail: most just aren’t good. Growth in marketing, particularly in an uncontrolled online world, is incredibly difficult to create. With the power of rapid growth resting entirely in the hands of users, delivering a marketing message that people aren’t interested in hearing is an impossibility. Simply put, manufacturing ‘viralness’ is hard.

There are examples to the contrary – Old Spice’s incredibly successful YouTube message campaign being one of the most obvious. But they’ve been less the result of specialist marketing and more the end product of great content. Most people would share the Old Spice videos regardless of their commercial affiliation, while few people would opt to share a video designed to create leads.

For marketers, it’s important to realize that viral growth is largely random and almost completely uncontrollable. Rick Astley’s ongoing comeback tour can be attributed almost entirely to his video gaining cult status amongst internet users and randomly spreading. Could another artist engineer a similar phenomenon? Unlikely. There’s an element of randomness to viral growth that’s organic.

So should a viral marketing campaign fail to catch on, don’t fret. The only way to control a random phenomenon is to create as many opportunities as possible. Old Spice didn’t win over YouTube with a single video – they posted several similar videos before one finally hit the mark. Let the random nature of internet growth control your success, and don’t try to ‘create’ something that’s organic.

Image courtesy of Microbes on Think Geek