We’ve all received an email at some point that used our name. Regardless of how you personally responded, the data tells us that emails that use names stand out in the subscribers’ in-boxes as highly relevant emails that speak directly to them, and the response is better. And this is not just anecdotal evidence. Look at the supporting statistics:

• Personalization in the email body has a higher-than-average open rate of 29.95% and a click-through rate of 5.03% (GetResponse).
• 80% of customers (or donors) are more likely to make a purchase (or donation) when their experience is personalized (Epsilon Research).
• Lack of personalization may cost organizations up to $2.5 trillion in lost revenue (Accenture).

When people sign up for your emails, they usually provide a first and last name. Are you using this information to personalize? Programs like Mailchimp and Constant Contact allow you opportunities to merge these fields into your subject lines, email body, buttons, etc.

Next time you create a donor appeal, a marketing promotion, or really any customer communication, consider adding personalization using these built-in features.

• Subject line example: “Jane, you’d have to see it to believe it …!”
• Body text example: “The latest numbers are staggering. Matt, can we count on your support once again so we can send much needed resources to the field teams?”

With more and more organizations using personalization in their email marketing strategy, it is necessary to know how to do it effectively. Make sure you choose what’s best for your organization and target audience, and personalize wisely!

Let Infinity Concepts help you with all your fundraising needs.
CLICK HERE or call us today at 724-733-1200.

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Know Who You Want to Reach
You need to know who you want to reach with your podcast. Statistics show that podcast listeners tend to be younger (media age 34), more educated (27% have a 4-year college degree), more affluent (40% have an income upwards of $100,000 per year), white (63%), and male (51%). There is an incredible amount of diversity in podcasters and podcast listeners, but this is who the statistics tell us are primarily listening. Don’t let this dishearten you if this is not your target audience but recognize that you have hurdles to overcome if you’re looking for a different audience.

Find That Audience
When you look at the podcast landscape, it’s not hard to believe that your audience may have trouble finding you. As one observer claimed, “It’s not a podcast discoverability problem, but an audience discovery problem.” With Apple Podcasts offering 500,000 podcasts in over 100 different languages, standing out in that crowd can be daunting.

One option that has been recommended by some is to place your podcast on YouTube. In a recent survey, when asked where they first heard about a podcast they listened to, 50% answered YouTube, and 30% said Google. Apple Podcasts came in with only 2%. In that study, when asked why YouTube, 41% said it was because they were already using the service for other media. Thirty-five percent of respondents said they liked having a video component to their podcast.

Marketing Your Podcast
Although 23% of that same survey’s respondents said they most often use friends and family to discover new shows, you will still need to put in some effort to market your program. Statistics show that podcast listeners tend to be more active than the average person on all social media platforms. If you have a large social media following, that is an ideal way to promote your podcast, giving your followers one more way to connect with you. For example, you can send save-the-date emails and listening reminders to your followers. Other promotional options include banner ads, SEO, and blogging. For podcasters on iHeartPodcast Network, the network regularly blankets its 850 radio stations with advertising for its new podcasts.

Monetizing Your Podcast
Although annual revenues for podcasters are around $1 billion, compared to other media, they barely make enough money to rate a slot on the media formats list. While multiple revenue streams have been tried, including subscriptions, events, merchandise, content marketing, contracts for branded podcasts, and individual listener donations, the most common way by far for your podcast to earn money is through advertising and sponsorships.

Advertising usually takes one of two forms: the host-read ad or dynamically inserted ads. Hands down, host read ads tend to get the best response. They fit more with the nature of podcasts: more informal and more personal. A recent survey found that 64% of podcast listeners trust recommendations shared during a program.

However, dynamically inserted ads are becoming more popular. While it is estimated that only two percent of podcast ads are currently sold programmatically, these kinds of ad sales are beginning to shift a lot of buyers from putting a collection of podcast titles on their order to placing buys based on audience demos—or a mix of the two. This allows smaller podcasters who may not be able to find a sponsor for the “live” reads to share in advertising dollars.

Podcasting is a wonderful opportunity to get your message “out there.” But you must go into it with your eyes wide open. Knowing what to expect and planning in advance to deal with what you encounter will make your podcast venture that much more enjoyable and much more pain-free.

Let Infinity Concepts help you with all your podcasting needs.
CLICK HERE or call us today at 724-733-1200.

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In June at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced Mail Privacy Protection, a new feature in the Mail app that will prevent email marketers from using invisible pixels to collect information from recipients.

Let’s explore how Mail Privacy Protection works, how it will impact marketers, and how you can prepare for this new feature.

How Mail Privacy Protection Works
The new feature works by requesting and loading all images in an email, such as the invisible tracking pixel, from the sender’s email service provider’s (ESP) server. This causes the ESP to believe that the email was opened. Additionally, when a user does actually open an email the images will be loaded from Apple’s cache. This will impact other data typically collected, such as location and IP address.

Mail Privacy Protection will not be turned on by default when it is released as part of iOS 15, users will have to opt-in. They will be prompted to enable the new feature. However, based on opt-ins for Apple’s recent iOS App Tracking Protection, it is anticipated that most users (85%+) will opt-in.

For Apple Mail users who opt-in for Mail Privacy Protection, this feature will be used across Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc.) regardless of the email service used. Mail Privacy Protection will not impact other email clients and apps used by Apple users such as Outlook app and the Gmail app.

What Mail Privacy Protection Will Impact
With the release of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection many traditional email metrics and strategies will be impacted and, in some cases, will no longer be usable. Here are the most common changes:

• Open rates will be an unreliable metric and will skew significantly higher due to Apple fetching images from ESPs regardless of if the email was ever opened.
• A/B testing subject lines based on open rates to determine the winner, or to automatically send out the winner, will no longer work.
• Audience segments or targeting based on the last open date will no longer be useful due to false opens. Additionally, this will make it difficult for marketers to purge unengaged contacts.
• Automated journeys, campaigns, and conversion series that use open rates as triggers.
• Countdown timers, often used in email campaigns to convey a sense of urgency, may begin to show outdated times due to the emails being cached at the time of delivery.

• Send time optimization

When Will Mail Privacy Protection Be Released?
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection will be a new feature incorporated into iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 which is scheduled to be released on September 20, 2021. Mail Privacy Protection will be available for Apple Mail for macOS (iMac, MacBook, Mac Pro) when macOS Monterey launches in late 2021 (date has not yet been released).

How to Prepare for Mail Privacy Protection
While the release of Mail Privacy Protection will certainly cause major changes in email marketing, there are many ways to be prepared and thrive.

• Ensure your measure of success is focused on ROI and conversions.
• The degree to which each organization will be impacted by Mail Privacy Protection will vary. Take time to evaluate what percentage of your email list uses Apple’s Mail app to understand how significant an impact this will have on your email marketing.
• Update email automation journeys to trigger based on metrics such as clicks or conversions.
• Update A/B testing to be based on clicks or engagement.
• Utilize engagement metrics to help keep your email lists clean as opposed to the open rate metric, which has traditionally been the primary metric for list cleaning.

In conclusion, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection is forcing changes across the email marketing world, and organizations need to be prepared to adapt quickly. However, these changes will further shift the measurement of success to more vital metrics such as ROI and conversions. There is one guarantee in digital marketing and that is change. This is not the first major change to email marketing, and it will not be the last. But with a strategic focus and clear understanding of success, your email fundraising and marketing will continue to drive significant results for your organization.

Let Infinity Concepts use our expertise to develop your email marketing strategy!
CLICK HERE or call us today at 724-733-1200.

The post Understanding Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection and How to Prepare appeared first on Infinity Concepts.

Here are 7 tips to help your nonprofit get the most out of it.

1. Do not repurpose. Many churches and ministries take their regular sermons or radio shows and distribute them via RSS feed. That will make it easier for people who follow you to get your content and listen to it. You need to do that, so do it, but recognize that is not a podcast, it is a convenience for your existing audience. If you want a podcast, that is a different project. A podcast is produced for the medium. It is designed to be found and appreciated by a specific group of people who will become sharing raving fans. It fills a gap, meets a need, or scratches an itch.
2. Relationship, Relationship, Relationship. Podcasting is one of the most intimate forms of communication. It is personal, in-depth, and candid. People are predisposed to trust you and feel connected to you. Recognize that, nurture it, and be open and honest with your listeners. You may not reach as many people on podcasting as other channels, but you will likely reach them much more deeply.
3. Focus on your content. When it comes to podcasting, content is everything. And everything about the content matters. People listen to what engages them the most, specific subjects, specific messages, and sometimes specific speakers. They want in-depth content that is tailored to their interests. They want something specific, maybe answers, teaching, entertainment, mystery, inside perspective, etc. Match your mission to what your ideal audience is thirsty for and focus in.
4. Only have guests on purpose. Do not have guests just to have guests; people are not drawn to shallow banter. A guest should bring something rich and engaging that aligns with what your audience craves. If that is not the case, then it is better not to have that guest or as many guests. It is easy to get stuck on the guest mill and it can wear you out trying to find people. When that happens, your guests probably are not bringing enough to the table. Back down your frequency, focus on your content.
5. Go longer. A blog post is limited to a few hundred words before attention drops off. Even an online video is limited to so many minutes. But a podcast can be 30, 60, 90+ minutes. It is one of the only media where shorter episodes are generally outperformed by longer ones. People are hungry for rich content in the areas that most appeal to them. And because content is generally consumed while the user is doing something else like walking, running, driving, flying, or working, they are willing to give more time and listen more often.
6. Do not ask for money often or mechanically. If people think you are always pitching, selling, or asking for something, then you will not build as strong a relationship with them. You will appear less personal, less credible, and less interesting over time. But every once in a while, you can cash in on your bank of personal relationship and trust and ask for a special gift to do a very specific and special thing. Keep in mind, someone driving to work listening to your show really has no great way to give at that moment. You can seed giving but there needs to be another mechanism to make it happen.
7. Cultivate Indirect Giving. Podcasting is how you build relationship equity with people. Your content, your cause, your heart all work to build relationship. This should be a safe space for listeners. But you can use that relationship to engage people in other areas of your organization like your magazine, TV show, digital content, etc., where you can talk about giving and money more openly and regularly. Podcasting is a great way to cultivate indirect giving. You are not asking on your podcast, but by maintaining the strong connection with the donor here, you can ask via other channels.

Podcasting should draw and keep donors close to the heart of your organization so you can easily rally them to engage with other aspects of what you do.

The post 7 Tips for Nonprofits to Maximize Podcasting appeared first on Infinity Concepts.

One of the best ways that you or your organization can make a strong first impression is with a digital press kit. A press kit provides the media or any desired target audience with the most important facts and figures and clear definition of your overall brand and message. It is an opportunity to build trust and credibility and share the most important aspects of your message in one place.

Press kits are a common piece of the public relations puzzle and highly effective in overall PR strategy. A press kit allows you to highlight all the information that the media might want or need to develop a story or schedule an interview.

Your press kit should include the following items as they apply to you or your organization:

• Organization media contact information and/or spokesperson(s)
• Organization background/brief history (boilerplate information)
• Leadership bios and headshots
• Organization logo
• Social links
• Organization/product/service fact sheet
• Link to recent or important press releases
• Industry awards and noteworthy press coverage
• Video links to past interviews

Post the digital press kit on your organization’s website to make it easily accessible. It is also common practice to create a condensed PDF version of your kit to email or print as needed or requested. This can also be updated or tailored for a specific audience or to promote a special event. Keep your online press kit current and up to date by adding links to current coverage or interviews. Also, update leadership bios as staff change, highlight all upcoming events or new product launches, and keep current with your overall brand.

If you are interested in Public Relations strategy or consultation to help protect your brand, Infinity Concepts is here to help. Contact us today!

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The pandemic changed just about every aspect of our lives and entertaining ourselves is just one thing we needed to rethink. Subscribers have been abandoning cable TV for streaming alternatives at warp speed. According to eMarketer, in 2020 alone, over 6 million households cut the cord. Parks and Associates is predicting that 43% of all broadband households in the US alone will be switching to streaming services in the next 12 months.

Why ditch cable TV?

The number one reason people are ditching cable is the cost. Many complain that cable companies continually hike their rates year after year. Justifying paying for channels that are not being watched is another reason people are cutting the cord. Content was also another reason to drop cable TV, as the content that on-demand streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video offer are superior.

Cutting the cable cord can seem overwhelming, especially to ministry leaders who utilize cable to reach their audience. However, cord cutting doesn’t have to be intimidating, because with the impending demise of cable, a ton of streaming content options were born. Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, and Google TV are just a few where the audience is growing daily.

Using platforms like YouTube or Vimeo to distribute video content and adding video on-demand capabilities to your website are other ways ministry leaders can adapt to reach their audience.

Cord Cutting for many years was a myth, according to the cable industry, but it is now a real threat. As leaders, we need to adapt to take advantage of all these new ways to reach a growing audience. Infinity Concepts is here to help!

Let Infinity Concepts help you with all your media needs!
CLICK HERE or call us today at 724-733-1200.

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Joseph Campbell, a famous myth researcher, discovered that most human myths follow a set structure, which he called the Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is not just an outline for a story. It actually mirrors the stages of human growth. In our private lives, we see ourselves as the hero and believe that we too can overcome our obstacles and make the world a better place.

Here is a (very) simplified representation:

In fundraising, the donor is our hero and it is our job to help them on their journey.
First, we must set the scene by showing, illustrating, or describing the current landscape or state of things. Next, we present the challenge by building a strong case for support. Third, we offer hope to be found, in the donor! The call to action is the hero’s call to be the hope! Now that our hero has accepted the call, they must go on a learning journey. In fundraising, this means that they must be brought deeper into the cause by understanding how they specifically can help and what exactly their support will do to solve the challenge. The happy ending comes when your donor makes a commitment and hopefully becomes an advocate of your cause.

Consider ways to make the donor the hero of the story in your fundraising efforts. Emphasize how you need their help and how they can make the world a better place through their contributions and support. Every communication between you and your donor contributes to the quality of their journey and determines whether or not they will take that road again.

Let Infinity Concepts help you with all your fundraising needs.
CLICK HERE or call us today at 724-733-1200.

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Whether the person is right or wrong, you have a decision to make. What are you going to do?

Here are some guidelines learned from years in the trenches of social media.

Ignore or Engage

The first decision you need to make is whether you are going to ignore or engage with the comment (and the commenter). Unless you are an enormous organization that gets hundreds or thousands of comments every day, you don’t have the luxury of ignoring comments on your online platforms.

If you have a huge platform, ignoring a few negative comments won’t look bad. But if your platform is small, negative comments stand out to other people (customers or donors!) who may be checking you out for the first time. Ignoring a comment stands out like a sore thumb.

So, what should you do?

Delete or Hide

Your first option is to delete or hide the comment.

Deleting is the most obvious choice when you’re dealing with certain types of comments:

• Hateful, racist, or bigoted speech. Delete it. Full stop.
• Profanity or obscenity. On Facebook, you can change your settings to proactively moderate comments containing certain words. Click here for a “how to.”
• Obvious spam (for example: linking to an unrelated website or making comments that have nothing to do with the original post or replies). AKA nonsense.

In those situations, feel free to smash that delete button and laugh maniacally. Think of your social media page like your online living room. You wouldn’t let anyone spew that ugliness in your home. You don’t have to allow it in your online home either.

If the comment doesn’t fall into those sorts of categories, you may want to hide it. Hiding a comment deletes it from public view except for the person that originally posted the comment and people that are directly connected to them like their friends on Facebook. This is useful when you want to ignore (or respond to) a comment, but you don’t want anyone else to see it or engage with it. Use this feature when you want the person to feel like they were heard, but you don’t want anyone else to have to see it. This feature is particularly useful if you’re running Facebook ads.

Respond. Respond. Respond.

As much as possible, you want to respond. Every organization makes mistakes. When someone brings critical feedback, hear them out because maybe they make a good point (in a not-so-good way) or maybe there’s been a misunderstanding that can be corrected. Look at critical feedback as an opportunity to build a relationship.

So, what should you say?

Acknowledge the problem – An “I’m sorry we disappointed you” can go a long way to calm an angry customer.

Offer a solution – Explain the next steps you are taking to correct the problem and make sure that you follow through.

Correct misinformation – Provide factual (not emotional) information if needed, but don’t get into a back-and-forth. Which brings us to our next point …

Take it offline – If more conversation is needed, provide contact information for a real person for further follow-up.

Explain yourself – If the comment is about something that you can’t or won’t change, that’s okay. Skip the corporate speak and explain your position in real words. It’s fine to disagree, just clearly state your position and let it go.

And maybe the most important tidbit …

Remember Your Audience

The normal assumption is that you are responding to the person that originally made the comment. That is not true. You are responding for every person in the future that will ever read that comment. When you respond to someone, always assume lots of other people are watching. There’s a reason that the Michael Jackson eating popcorn GIF exists. People love to read the drama in the comments.

You could have hundreds of 5-star reviews on Facebook and a single 1-star review. You know what’s going to happen? Every person that goes to your review page will seek out and read that 1-star review.

Maybe the review wasn’t warranted. Maybe there was a major misunderstanding. Maybe the person was just having a bad day.

But the best thing you can do is to respond with grace, professionalism, and kindness so that anyone reading the review and your response, will see that you’re reasonable and that you did whatever you could to make the situation right.

Above all, before you respond, take a breath. It’s not personal and you are representing your organization. The quickest way to put out a fire of anger is with kindness and empathy.

Is it time to evaluate your social media strategies? A cohesive plan may be just what you need. Click here or call us today at 724.733.1200.

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In a 2014 report, podcast listening represented only 2% of all listening. So, in seven years that number has risen 300%! That’s a trend worth noting. As of April 2021, there were over two million podcasts in existence around the globe with approximately 48 million episodes available for listening. However, according to a June 2021 report, as of 2020, there were only 850,000 active podcasts with 30 million episodes in 100 languages.

And while 78% of the US population is familiar with the term “podcasting,” only 41% have listened to a podcast in the last month, and only 28% listen weekly. Finally, only 6% of the population consider themselves avid podcast fans. Interestingly, 65% of monthly podcast listeners have been listening for less than three years.

Now, here is where it gets really interesting. Nearly two-thirds of podcast listeners are younger than 45 years old, and almost 50% are younger than 34. Finally, almost one-fifth of listeners are 21 or under. Nearly two-thirds of Millennials and over half of GenZs say they use podcasts to learn about social issues, and nearly two-thirds of both groups feel that audio formats like podcasts are one of the greatest ways to tell stories. And 40% of Millennials and GenZs rank their trust in podcasts higher than in traditional media sources such as national TV news, newspapers, and radio.

Recently, the New York Times held its annual teen podcast contest, asking teens to create their own podcast on whatever topic they chose. Around 1,500 teens entered the contest. Of the 12 winners, four of the podcasts dealt with the subject of racism. One podcast was on internet “extremism.” Only one of the winning podcasts appeared to have a faith-based topic.

Podcast listeners are much more active on every social media channel. (94% are active on at least one channel vs. 81% for the entire population.) Podcast listeners are more likely to follow companies and brands on social media. And 69% agreed that podcast ads made them aware of new products or services.

Looking at revenue, as of December 2019, podcasting represented $1.1 billion worldwide in ad revenue. Compare that to radio at $42 billion, magazines at $60 billion, newspapers at $135 billion, and TV at $400 billion.

Podcasting is still very much in a nascent stage. But it is perceived to be a major player in the future of media. The statistics tell us that is a very real possibility, although it will take several years to become a reality. But the seed is planted. And it is growing fast.

If you want to become an influencer, especially reaching young minds with a biblical worldview, now is the time to start podcasting.

Let Infinity Concepts help you with all your podcasting needs.
CLICK HERE or call us today at 724-733-1200.

The post The State of Podcasting: Is It All Hype? appeared first on Infinity Concepts.

Many organizations could say that their cause is so universal that just about everyone is a part of their target audience. And while that could be true, a large broad audience will rarely be the most responsive group of people. The more you can narrow your audience to the most likely to embrace your message, the more efficiently can you spend every dollar used for advertising.

Here are 5 tips for targeting your digital fundraising ads:

1. Know your budget – Finding the best audience for your ads is directly connected to your budget. The size of the audience you can reach depends on how much you will spend on advertising. If your budget is small, then you can target the smallest and most niche audiences. If your budget is large, you will have to target more audiences to spend efficiently. This is a balancing act between scale and specificity.
2. Less is more – Bigger targeting is not usually better. Targeting 100 million people for a fundraising ad will usually produce poorer results than targeting 1 million people. That 100 million people may care about your cause, but because budget is always limited, we want to find the 1 million that care the most.
3. Find people who are active – It is not enough to target audiences and groups who are the right type of people, you also want to reach users who are active in the interests you are targeting. Say you are promoting a unique type of coffee to raise money for sustainable agriculture. If given the choice between targeting people with an interest in coffee and targeting people with an interest in coffee taste testing, I would pick the latter. Because that interest demonstrates activity. These folks are more likely to try the new coffee.
4. Trade good for best – Finding a good audience will work but push deeper and keep looking for the best audience. If you are promoting a women’s ministry, then it will likely be better to target women. Sure, there is a truth that men may refer the ministry to women, but women are more likely to take action on the ads. And since dollars are limited, we want to reach the best audience we can with the few dollars we have. Do not be afraid to eliminate good audience segments to focus on the best segments.
5. Targeting is learning – The more testing you do, the more you will learn about who responds to your organization and similar causes. The more you learn, the more efficient you can be when you start your next campaign. A mistake made today should be a mistake prevented tomorrow.

Need help with your targeting? Let’s talk!

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