A less than stellar charity rating … getting blasted in a blog … or, maybe, a CEO that gets caught in a scandal. Any of these situations are bound to leave an organization’s phones ringing with calls from confused, frustrated or even angry donors.

How does an organization relax those donors, calm their fears and address their concerns?

Read more from the FRS Conference Roundup.

Melissa Busch, Associate Senior Editor, FundRaising Success

"At first glance, the CAN-SPAM Act establishes fairly basic rules for an organization to follow," says a whitepaper produced by ExactTarget. "However, given that this law is constantly evolving … new details and judicial interpretations will surely follow." This means you can’t take anything for granted, but instead must proactively respond to ongoing changes. To avoid typical pitfalls, here are a few of ExactTarget’s recommendations:

Develop and enforce an enterprise-wide unsubscribe or opt-out process. Says ExactTarget, "Organizations must make a concerted effort to not only implement the proper technology to handle opt-out processes, but also to ensure the philosophy of that opt-out is adopted at every single customer touch point."

Avoid misleading email subject lines. In the past, legitimate marketers encouraged people to open messages with "teasers" like: Your computer may be infected. Today, subject lines like these rarely evade spam filters, and might actually violate CAN-SPAM. "[W]hen in doubt," advises ExactTarget, "marketers should consider the standpoint of ‘the reasonable recipient’ to determine if a subject line is misleading or could be misinterpreted."

Don’t even consider dirty tactics. You shouldn’t harvest email addresses, and neither should you engage in dictionary attacks—the practice of guessing at addresses like ajohnson at whateverurl.com.

Be sure to catch a full blown detailed article in our September Journal on what the new CAN-SPAM rules mean for nonprofits.

MarketingProfs - Source: ExactTarget. Download the whitepaper here.

Some highlights from this session:

Why do some organizations raise 2x the money with the same staffing?

• Prospect potential – what is out there?
• Strategy – how do we tap into it?
• Execution – can we execute the strategies?

Three business processes of Fundraising:

• Base Development (DM) - Goals:
• Broaden participation
• Raise unrestricted revenue
• Teach giving behavior
• Develop organizational loyalty
• Major gift Development – Goal:
• Maximize philanthropic behavior & loyalty
• Prospect

Business Understanding:

• Objective of program
• Evaluation & deployment: projections

Data Understanding:

• Acquire new donors
• Engage non donor constituents
• Renew previous years donors
• Upgrade donors
• Move donors into the major gift pipeline

Laura Cox, Sr. Account Executive, Direct Media, Inc.

Here are the hot points from this session, including a case study by American Heart Association.

What is modeling?

• Advanced statistical methods that analyze data which represent & predict future behavior

What can it do?

• Select donors on desired future outcome, not just prior reactions
• Help mail smarter & improve ROI
• Break down into populations & show which groups should be contacted more frequently

Co-op Database:

• Holistic view of philanthropy
• Each organizations history is used to influence the database
• Always make sure security & integrity are maintained

House file modeling:

• Combine co-op with organizations own RFM data
• Donors are scored & ranked from high to low
• Take information & mail to those who are higher – more likely to respond.
• Don’t mail as often to the lower deciles.
• Can identify donors who will upgrade significantly to larger gifts
• Look at age, length of residence, spending volume, # of adults in HH
• Then do thank you at point of acquisition via call or written letter

Mid Level Donor Cultivation Model:

• Group the more responsive donors & larger gift givers
• Treat that group differently to try & get a higher level gift

Sustainer Invitation Model:

• Identify those that are likely to become sustainers or pledge program donors

Acquisition Modeling:

• Zip level on upfront – applied pre merge/purge
• Household level model – applied post merge/purge

Warm Name Conversion Model:

• Gathered from walk, bike, gala or other special event
• People that are most likely to convert to ongoing DM Donors

Creating & Utilizing Profile Models – American Heart Association case study

The Dear Neighbor Program

• Volunteer based
• Mail letters to neighbors & collect donations

What is Profile Model?

• Analyzing a group that exhibits desired behavior & similarities
• Define objectives
• Define target group (i.e. $30+ volunteers)
• Analyze target group to create profile
• Average age, length of residence, income, interests, gender
• Apply model to desired universe & get tiered groups/buckets
• Validation
• Look at target group ($30+ volunteers) & see where they fall in bucket. They should fall in top tier.
• Application
• Let the model do the work

American Heart found that top tier prospects outperformed other prospects by 65%

Refresh models every 6 months – 1 year.

Laura Cox, Sr. Account Executive, Direct Media, Inc.

When you work in a specialized field for long enough, technical jargon and industry lingo start to sound like everyday words. You might start to take it for granted that everyone knows what you mean if you say something like “unsubscribe.” But Mark Brownlow warns that you could be talking to your audience with words they don’t understand. For perspective, consider slang used throughout the entertainment industry. “Coverage,” for instance, is the concise summary and analysis of a screenplay for executives; “tenpercentery” is a common term for agencies. But the average person would be baffled by these industry-specific terms. In the same way, Brownlow says you might inadvertently use marketing-speak when you communicate with your donors or members. For a reality check, he recommends finding five friends who are not “power users” of the web or email. Then:

• Ask them to “whitelist” your email address.
• Ask if they want the “HTML” version of your offer.
• Assure them your campaigns comply with “CAN-SPAM.”

“They will look at you like you’re speaking Estonian,” he argues. And that kind of disconnect is bad for business. If your donors can’t comprehend a request or instruction, how can they react positively to it, or take the appropriate action? Once you SpellCheck, remember to JargonCheck, too. Unless you’re targeting a special audience, leave out the lingo. MarketingProfs - Email Marketing Reports.Read the full post here.