When Less is More

I was sent this e-newsletter recently. In many ways it is great to read, this organisation has so much going on, so many great ideas. But unfortunately I say the above as a fundraiser and someone who really likes new ideas.

From a potential donors perspective I think that this e-newsletter has, sadly, got it all wrong.

It’s clear that the fundraising department are incredibly excited about all the things they have going on and want everyone to know about it. But that shows incredible inward thinking.

Who is the target audience (well its not 100% clear) it looks like its most likely corporate. So lets think about that….someone in a company (in recessionary times =  really busy) gets this e-newsletter. What are they going to do? Take the 10 minutes to read through it all clicking on all the links to read more about every story… I dont think so.

They will at best scan this (that is if they dont just delete it). If they scan it they will pick out 2 maybe 3 pieces of information. There is so much going on in this communication that they would be hard pressed to pick out 1.

Its a case of  Less is More (if you want to know more about this check out Barry Smith’s Paradox of Choice).

In my opinion this e-newsletter would have been more successful if:

1. It was targeted.  A school would be interested in Holly, or the Big Sing. A parent would have been interested in the santa letter and a company would have been interested in cards or gifts. The organisation should have taken the time to work its database properly and not just mass email.
2. It was focussed:Pick one thing and focus on it, let people know where they can find out more if they would like, but decide on your target audience and help them by focusing the mind. If you have 10 things to choose from you will find it hard, if you have 1, well then its easy to decide what to think about. I wouldnt mind but it starts by saying that there would be communications every couple of weeks, so why not change the focus each time?
3. It did some other things:there are other things that could have worked well. Nowhere is there a case for support made, so I have no reason to believe that they need my help. Wouldnt a short video story have worked well? The letter should have been signed…not with a squiggle, but tell me who that squiggle is from. Talk to me….dont tell me about you and how great you are…tell me how great I can be.

I go back to my original point, there are some fantastic ideas contained in this piece and congratulations on all of them, but remember who the audience is and talk to them not at them.

I know the above image is hard to read (thats coz it was so big) so check out the newsletter here

A little reminder….don’t spam

So we all know that we shouldn’t spam (don’t we) and none of us spam (right). Well here is a little reminder to you of why you should not Spam.

I was reading yesterday that apparently Ammado (The social networking site that aims to connect nonprofits and engaged individuals to achieve their vision) sent unsolicited emails about a UNHCR campaign to a few Irish Bloggers. They were not happy.

The result is that the bloggers below all posted negative things about Ammado and also some negative comments about charities, who they felt get this stuff wrong, (probably important to state at this point that if you click on the links below you are reading the comments of those bloggers and not mine). Justin Mason, Damien Mulley he pulls no punches so be warned!, Michelle Neylon, Suzy Byrne

So here we have an organisation whose central mission is to do good and help charities. But unfortunately trying to do good isnt a good reason to spam. 

In fairness to Ammado, they have apologised and admitted that they got it wrong, and I have no doubt that the team in there is working out how to make sure this never happens again. So I’m not here to try Ammado-bash

But the result of their actions is that now when you google Ammado, the third, fourth, fifth and sixth items to come up are about this spaming incident.

So for all non-profits out there, learn from this mistake. Dont Spamalot

One Bad Word

I woke up this morning to an email (striving to be viral, which it stated too…hmmm!) with a great offer.

I really wanted to read more about the offer and the email seemed to be progressing well. Ticking a lot of boxes that Seth Godin mentioned in his what makes an idea viral post. It was indeed easy to swallow and tempting.

The offer was a good one, I could get a magazine subscription for 62% less than the cover price (I do think they should have mentioned the actual discount amount though, Paul talked about this on his don’t make me think post). A further incentive was thrown in, 40% (again why not say $7) was going to back to a great cause. I was engaged, reading, interested, and this is even though it was a female magazine subscription, i thought my girlfriend might like it. Then they went and ruined it all.

With just one simple word they totally lost me…and I stopped reading…here it is (I’ve added the red so you know the word):

………………WHY???

Do you know what the worst part about it is…..There was no CATCH. The catch they were talking about was the offer ends in a few weeks! This is a call to action, ACT NOW, because this offer isn’t around for ever. A catch is that I maybe have to commit now to buying the magazine at full price next year, or even that I have to go and collect the magazine from my local shop every month. The fact that the offer is ending isn’t a catch, its an incentive to not wait until tomorrow to sign up, and to tell all your friends about this great offer.

This was clearly a well thought out campaign, they are trying to get 10,000 people to sign up, the email was a nice looking mail, the offer was really valuable to me (or people I care about who would be interested in this type of magazine) and as an added bonus even with the subscription I was paying a large portion of it was going to help children. I was just so disappointed to see that such a basic error was made so early in the mail (it was in the second paragraph).

One badly word, used at the wrong time, in the wrong place can ruin your campaigns chances of success.