by Steve Peterson

eMail Marketing: An Important Part of Your Social Media Mix

Social media isn’t just about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the myriad of other social platforms. It’s all about the right mix. When you think about your social media and business strategy, your website (and your SEO posture), Google My Business, Bing Places for Business and other considerations need to be taken into account in order to leverage a coherent business presence and message. eMail marketing, thought by many as passe´, is actually one of your most potent weapons. Here are a few statistics and pointers on getting your email marketing act together.

Email is a potent tool in your marketing arsenal

If you are thinking, “It’s just email. Why spend time and money on it?”, think again. eMail’s ROI is a whopping 4300%, more than double your other internet channels. Plus, you have a captive audience. These are customers who have already opted in and are open to receiving and sharing your message. Leaving them out of your marketing mix puts you at risk of losing them for good. Let’s face it, we’re all addicted to email. Workers check it on average 30 times a day, making it the number one internet activity. The Direct Marketing Association’s statistics indicate that 66% of online customers have purchased because of an email they received.

Unlike social media channels, your email message is invited into a potential customer or supporter’s inbox. Clicking on a link in an email is a much more participatory activity than clicking like or share. Besides, you’ve worked hard to acquire that email address. There’s a cost associated with that acquisition. Not working to make it pay off is ignoring core business principles of service and value that separate you from your competitors.

Breaking through the email logjam

We’ve all heard it. “I get hundreds of emails every day. I don’t have time to pay attention to everything.” True. That’s why providing timely, targeted, relevant and – here’s the important part – helpful information to your audience is the key to getting real results. If you are doing it right, you are not selling them something; you are providing a service that solves a problem. If you flood their inbox with a constant stream of irrelevant messages they’ll tune you out faster than a teenager being explained the merits of their curfew.

This means I can stop all my other social media activities, right?

No. eMail should be an integral part of a comprehensive digital marketing plan. As social media has matured many platforms are geared for business. Don’t mistake your personal Facebook page for a carefully managed business page and Facebook ads (highly targeted and customizable and available at a very low cost). eMail augments your overall efforts but doesn’t replace existing tools.

Getting your act together

Here’s a few helpful tips once you’re ready to get serious about your email marketing.

  1. Love your list. Your email list needs care and feeding in order to be effective. If your list is too small or is stale, freshen it up with a campaign to get existing clients re-engaged and redouble your efforts you capture new clients. Offer them something relevant and of value for free and have them sign up to get it. It doesn’t have to cost much to do this. Don’t send them a free pen. Create a downloadable pdf with timely, helpful advice that is relevant to them. If you are reading this blog, then you get the picture. This message can just as easily be turned into pdf PowerPoint slides and sent to them after they sign up for it at your website.
  2. Learn or work with an agency and use a professional email management tools. eMail marketing Services like Emma and Constant Contact specialize in creating and measuring email marketing campaigns and will provide reporting that will give you important data like opening, forwarding and click through rates for each campaign. They also provide valuable split messaging services that allow you to see the relative success of two similar messages in the same campaign so you can choose the better performing message for the remainder of your recipients.
  3. Follow up, follow up, follow up. Did I forget to mention follow up? Once a new or existing customer has responded to your message thank them. They entrusted you with one of their most prized digital possessions; their inbox. Make sure they know how much you appreciate and will continue to honor their relationship with by providing timely, relevant, helpful messages.
A little bonus for reading the entire blog

Here are 10 stats that all good email marketers need to know provided by the good folks at Emma. If you want more information, feel free to reach out to me directly. steve@petersonsocialmedia.com.

by Steve Peterson

The Intersection of Technology and Marketing Fuels Competitive Advantage

My client engagements over the past few weeks continue to underscore the importance of an increasing interdependence between marketing and technology.

Competitive advantages in today’s economy are fueled by understanding and leveraging technologies that best suite your needs and working with consultants and partners who can help drive them. Recently Steve Peterson & Associates has:

  • Worked with a grant writer for nonprofits on a remote access solution that allowed her to work on documents on her home computer while on a train form New York to Richmond. Without this solution in place she would have missed an important deadline for a grant for one of her clients. With remote access in place she was able to submit the grant two hours before the deadline, positioning her client for success.
  • Worked on analysis for a video production company that will allow more robust email management, shared calendar and video storage solutions, three pain points that when implemented will solve their speed to market and company communication/scheduling challenges.
  • Submitted a proposal for a medical association management company for training in social media marketing and management that will increase their Association Manager understanding of best channels, best practices and how best to execute on a social media agenda.

While it’s true that at least two of these endeavors fall well outside the bounds of our firm’s core work in social media management, the fact that a solid technology footing fosters further discussion and makes social media campaigns possible by removing technology distractions is a benefit that can’t be underestimated. Besides, we love doing this stuff too! To tell clients we’d rather not share our 30 years of technology experience in start ups, mid-sized and fortune 500 companies would be a disservice.

And when technology wins, people win. Technology manages the nuts and bolts, nits and gnats of your marketing efforts. People, who possess endless creativity when not bogged down in technology, are what drive great campaigns. Remove technology barriers that allow an organization’s collective brainpower to flourish and you’ve got a winning formula on your hands. Technology gets out of the way and people are happier for it.

Social media marketing consultant, yes. Technology advisor, absolutely! When the technology solution requires more firepower Steve Peterson & Associates has a great partner that understands and is entirely focused on nonprofit IT management.

Bring your challenges to the table. Our inner geek awaits.

by Steve Peterson

Running a Committed, Social Media Savvy Nonprofit Means Getting in and Staying in the Game

The core symbiotic relationship between nonprofits and donor/members – shared vision coupled with financial and volunteer support – is what propels successful organizations forward. In the brave new digital world, staying on top of your social media strategy with a solid game plan will ensure that you continue to cultivate and foster those relationships. Our research reveals three dominant themes; 1. Get committed and start moving. 2. Experiment with a mix of different platforms and strategies. 3. Position your organization for the future.

Exploring these themes in a little more detail can help you go forward confidently. Here we go!

Get Committed With Your Social Media Vision and Plan of Attack

Beth Kanter and Allison Fine have co-written a solid book, The Networked Nonprofit, which aligns with our philosophy here at Steve Peterson & Associates; specifically, get in the game, be diligent and experiment with social media. Experimenting helps you identify what works and what doesn’t, which in turn allows you to fully explore different digital channels and make mid-course corrections that inform new strategies. With some judicious – and here’s the important part – persistent tinkering, you’ll hit on a handful of winning strategies that can drive successful social media campaigns and in the process both increase donor and member loyalty and help you garner new members.

The importance of commitment and persistence cannot be stressed enough. Spinning up a Facebook page or Twitter profile without both a committed strategic direction aligned to your organization’s goals coupled with a plan on how to execute and measure your efforts could result in a healthy dose of sand dumped directly into your donor engine. Creating an online presence just because everyone else is doing it, only to half-heartedly and inconsistently manage posts, replies or promoted events clearly signals to your constituents and potential donors a dearth of digital sophistication. This is an especially egregious oversight when factoring in the increasingly affluent, digitally skilled and socially cause-conscious Millennial and Gen-Xer populations, a combined 126-million strong.

The Future Is Here: Learn and Adapt

Changes in how and when donors engage with nonprofits are forcing organizations to rethink old strategies and quickly apply new ones.

An article published recently by Arjuna Solutions underscores the increasing importance of leveraging social media and technology strategies as they relate to fundraising and member engagement. Their five-point plan includes:

  1. Get online payment processing tools in place now.
  2. Position your organization for the future by focusing a portion of your efforts on capturing and fostering conversations with the burgeoning Millennial market, a group that on average donates $481 per year. The challenge is engaging them on their platforms of choice, all of which are digital.
  3. Leverage multiple online platforms that support your campaigns.
  4. The shift from annual giving to year-round efforts, further emphasizing the importance of a persistent, managed social media presence.
  5. Analytics and reporting, specifically predictive analytics that allow organizations to tailor precise donation ask amounts.

Getting your social media act together doesn’t mean everything has to get done at once. It does, however, mean that the journey should start now. Instead of being dragged kicking and screaming into the perceived digital abyss, lean into unknown digital spaces and your own discomfort, work with partners that can support and supplement your efforts and hire digital savvy associates whenever possible.

That whooshing sound you’re hearing is the digital revolution in full swing. Get in the game.

Click here to learn how to create a PayPal charitable donation button for your website.

by Steve Peterson

What’s The Score? Get Your Nonprofit Social Media Scorecard

In my previous post, Social Media Marketing a Must Do For Nonprofits, I referenced some solid work done by The Marketing Support Network and Dunham+Company that provides data and reveals the work that non-profits need to do get get a hold on their social media marketing efforts.

For those of you interested, the full report can be downloaded by clicking here.

Enjoy, learn and contact us to assist with your social media marketing efforts!

by Steve Peterson

Social Media Marketing A Must Do For Nonprofits

As we enter 2016 social media is all grown up or is at least past their pimply-faced teenage years and is fast-moving toward energetic young adulthood. While businesses have picked up and are running with that ball, non-profits appear to be somewhere between searching for the field and, once in the game, trying to put together a team that knows how to play.

The numbers don’t lie. Global social network ad spend was projected to reach $25.14 billion in 2015 (source emarketer.com) – or to put it into terms we can all understand, about 18 times greater than Wednesday’s Powerball lottery winnings. Businesses are not only tightly focused on investing in platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn but more importantly they are driving timely conversations with engaged customers from those channels, assisted by links from their websites.

For profit businesses on average responded 81% of the time to Twitter posts and 80% of the time to Facebook posts or questions.

Conversely nonprofit engagement, responsiveness and innovation on social media platforms is much lower. A recent survey of 161 non-profits by marketingsupportnetwork.com revealed some sobering insights:

  • 40-85% of organizations are not linking to their social media channels from their websites
  • 76% of nonprofits don’t let donors share their donation experience on social media
  • Although users on many of the most popular platforms like Facebook and Twitter said they expect responses within 30 minutes (32%), 60 minutes (42%) or same day (67%), surveyed non-profits didn’t respond at all to 49% of Facebook questions and 55% didn’t respond to Twitter questions.

Nonprofits similarly received low scores in post-donation comments and social sharing in general.

So what does this all mean?

  1. The market isn’t going to wait for nonprofits to catch up. Forward-thinking organizations should be assessing their positions, creating a social media marketing strategy, executing on the timely and relevant release of content based on the strategy, and monitoring their channels to measure performance.
  2. As younger donors who are highly conversant on social media platforms mature, they expect your organization to be there with them. If you’re lagging behind, engagement with them, rich conversations about your mission and services and resulting donations will continue to be moving targets on which you’re likely not capitalizing.

What can you do about it?

Change your thinking and change with the times. View your social media connections as the vital platforms they are; marketing channels that give you new ways to connect donors to your organization and engage them in conversation.

Put your money where your mouth is. Apportion a segment of your administrative budget to fund social media initiatives and follow through.

Steve Peterson & Associates can do that for your non-profit organization or next artistic pursuit; insightful assessment of your current social media platforms, partnership to craft a strategy tailored to your organization, content management/messaging and timely reporting and analytics that will measure your progress. Check us out at our website and give us a call when you’re ready to get a solid handle on your move to meet donors on their social media platforms of choice.

by Steve Peterson

What Generational Differences Tell Us About Social Media Marketing

A lot of my social media management consulting engagements lately have centered around standard marketing channels vs. social media and web advertising platforms. This conversation can be sliced and diced in any number of ways but one fact is loud and clear; as Gen-Xers and Millenials continue to exert their influence, buying power and philanthropic footprint across the cultural landscape, organizations poised to leverage digital channels will give themselves the best chance to win the hearts and minds of their existing and potential customers, donors, members and fans.

A revealing and detailed chart provided by wmfc.org that breaks down generational difference into a many fascinating dimensions (influencers, core values and work life balance just to name a few) provides solid evidence of the impending change. Irrespective of the obvious profound shift to digital media channels as marketers move from Traditionalists and Baby Boomers, who have recently embraced more digital devices but remain a distant third behind Gen-Xers and Millenials who live their lives on them, are the sheer numbers. 80 million Baby Boomers, long regarded as the 800-pound gorilla, are dwarfed by the combined 126 million Gen-Xers and Millenials, a whopping 75 million of which are Millenials.

“This young audience, spanning 21-43 year olds, are sophisticated and adept digital consumers, able to sniff out a non-responsive web site, failing form submission button or digitally naive organization in a heartbeat and likely never to return.”

Getting a handle on your digital footprint, deciding on the channels that can best facilitate communication with your core audience and consistently executing on your social media marketing plan will continue to be key differentiators that will separate the haves and have nots. The time to start assessing your current position, aligning it with your organizational goals and both executing on your plan and measuring your results it is now.

This philosophy, a comprehensive suite of social media marketing and management services provided by Steve Peterson & Associates, is what we’re all about. We can plug in when and where you need us; digital media effectiveness assessments, strategy, execution and reporting. When you’re ready, we’re here. Let’s get started!