Cary's Blog

Kevin and I had a great time presenting at Minnesota Council of Nonprofits 25th Annual Conference! Thanks to all of you who joined us for Email EQ.

You can find the presentation slides below, as well as links to PDF versions of the before and after email campaigns for our fictitious nonprofit Roofs Over Youths (yeah, in retrospect we should have made up a name that tripped off the tongue a little more easily.)

• “Before” Email Campaign (PDF)
• “After” Email Campaign (PDF)

As some of you may know, I began working at MAP for Nonprofits in May as their Technology Outreach and Education Coordinator. It’s a great position for me. Basically it amounts to doing what I’ve been doing for free with this blog and in my volunteer work for organizations like Rainbow Rumpus, but getting paid for it.

It’s also a half-time position, something that sealed the deal for me, as it allows me to pursue my dream of developing a viable web design and online communications business in earnest, something that I couldn’t concentrate on while with Minnesota Council on Foundations, my previous employer, as the 40+ work weeks didn’t allow the time.

I’ve been working for MCF to support them during the transition, and now that they’ve hired on the fabulous (and fabulously nerdy) Chris Oien, my time there is finally coming to an end.

Reality is setting in — I’ve slashed my salary literally in half so that I have the time, and yes, the motivation to succeed in creative and business pursuits. I have, in the words of my client Barbara Hoese, “burned the ships.” Wish me luck.

I never cease to be amazed by my new dog’s tireless quest for food, or the broadness of her definition of it. As my SO explains, to Lela, “food is what you eat.” And so during the course of the day yesterday I wrested from her mouth one apple core, a piece of neon yellow chewing gum (second hand) and apparently not poisonous mystery berries.

Although her open-mindedness vis a vis “food” leaves me longing for hand sanitizer, I can’t help but admire her instincts. Lela has no preconceptions about what opportunity is. She recognizes it and pursues it with single-minded enthusiasm.

I read an article over on Wired yesterday about the psychology of power. In it one of the experts notes that those who find themselves in positions of power consistently become less apt to listen to those who are not perceived as being as powerful as they are.

As a result, they miss out on the insights of those working beneath them on the organizational totem pole, and one can only imagine that the work of the group suffers as a result.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the particular qualities of leadership that enable an organization to be innovative. I’ve come to the conclusion that one of these qualities must be an omnivorous approach to ideas at all levels — an ability to set aside our bias and evaluate opportunity upon facts instead of stereotypes.

As Andrew Carnegie once stated, if he had succeeded in life, it was only because he surrounded himself with people smarter than he. Where would he have ended up if he hadn’t recognized the value in listening to those around him?

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase an picture is worth a thousand words. Well in the world of online and mobile, there’s at least one instance where that old axiom is just plain wrong — e-mail. Here’s why.

Did you know that at least half of e-mail recipients have images turned off?
Outlook and other e-mail clients like to block images by default. This is done as a sort of privacy feature for users, as e-newsletter services like MailChimp, Constant Contact and others actually use images to track open rates (true fact).

The image is a very, very tiny one that’s placed by the sending application in your e-mail campaign. When that image is “requested” by the receiver’s e-mail client, Constant Contact or MailChimp “knows” that someone opened your message. It’s like a little beacon that says, “Hey, they opened your message!”

So, if your nonprofit or foundation’s event promotion, donation campaign or what-have-you basically consists of one big image, with the call to action and other text within the image file, you’ve just set up a barrier to users seeing your message.

They have to opt-in to view it, and frankly sometimes deleting something is just that much easier than right clicking to view your message.

That big image makes you look like SPAM
Whether or not an e-mail message is marked as SPAM is based on a variety of factors. One of the factors is the type of language you use in your e-mail. So, if I’m a naughty SPAMer and I’d like to tell you about the low, low cost of a certain male performance drug that I’m supposedly willing to sell you I might avoid being marked as SPAM by using an image to convey my message instead of using terms like “Viagra” in my e-mail message.

Now, obviously your legitimate e-mail campaign has nothing to do with these subjects. However, if the text that explains what your message is about is within the image, which SPAM filters therefore can not “read”, you are more likely to be marked SPAM, because the SPAM filter has no way of distinguishing your message from the naughty ones.

How much image space is too much?
Half and half is a good rule of thumb in my book. You should at least have as much text proportionality in your message as you do have image space. I would always avoid putting your call to action within the image.

Hi ya! If you’re visiting my site, it may just be because I met you at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Technology and Communication Conference. I probably told you something about how I love to answer the questions of actual human beings that I meet on the blog — well…it’s true! I do, and I would love to hear from you.

You can submit your questions by commenting on this post and letting me know your burning Google Analytics questions, or really anything else online communications and web related.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

-Cary

Hey all! Yes, I am the person writing a blog entry at 10 pm. If this is shocking you don’t know much about about me, my friend.

But, if you’re going to MCN’s Tech Conference tomorrow, and would like to learn more about me, or more specifically some of these topics that I enjoy nerding out about, please do find me and we can chat!

Google Analytics for Nonprofits
I’ll be staffing one of the lunch hour tables with David Erickson, chief technology awesome guy (I may be paraphrasing this title) of Tunheim Partners. We’ll be talking about how you can make sense of the sea of data that GA can give you. It’s really astounding how much info you can find about your user traffic, and yet the guidance on the net for how to effectively use that data is written for businesses 99.9% of the time. We can help you translate terms like KPI and funnel conversion into nonprofit-ese.

Creating a New Website with Ruby on Rails or Drupal
I just helped two nonprofit organizations launch a total of three websites last year! I am still standing, battle scarred and wiser. If you’d like the dirt on two of the more popular Open Source platforms out there, I’d be happy to talk with you. You may also want to check out Allie and Barry of Advantage Labs 10:45 am session on Open Source website platforms, and how to create a site with one and avoid the pitfalls. I launched http://rainbowriot.org and http://rainbowrumpus.org with their help.

MailChimp, the E-newsletter Service / Nonprofit E-newsletters Generally
One thing I would also love to dish about is MailChimp. If you’re not familiar, MailChimp is a fabulous e-promotion and e-newsletter service similar to ConstantContact. I can not tell you how much I love this product, and the support they give. It’s evangelical really. It’s like the type of fanaticism that would probably make actual workers at MailChimp perhaps a tad uncomfortable. Any way, if you’d like to talk about using features like their Google Analytics integration, dynamic content, or how much you enjoy the product too, I’d like to talk to you.

I think that’s about it! I’m looking forward to meeting some of you I’ve been following on Twitter face to face, and learning more at the sessions. I’m especially looking forward to the one on e-newsletters, a relatively unglamorous medium that really doesn’t get enough props in these days of twittering and myfaceplace.

See you there!

Link, link, link! If you write for the web at all or create e-newsletters you’ve probably heard the advice that creating more links is always a good thing when writing for e-communications. And often this is true.

But is compulsively linking in copy ever a bad thing? Yes, absolutely. Let’s explore when linking can be a trap, rather than a boost.

When to link.

If you’re writing a blog entry, or creating an e-newsletter that’s focused on sharing information, link away. Doing so will help give credit where credit is due, hook readers up with useful resources and, if you’re linking back to your own site, help boost your SEO.

When not to link.

However, if you’re linking within a donation campaign e-mail, or some kind of e-promotional message where you want your user to take a very specific action, steer clear of the shotgun approach to linking.

Even if you’re sharing supporting information, linking to anywhere besides your donation page, or your registration page — whatever the end goal is of your communication’s piece, will shunt away vital web traffic from the primary action you’d like your readers to take.

Here’s a personal experience where I should have been more focused with my links. I work for the Minnesota Council on Foundations, where I’ve managed the redesign of the as yet to be launched MCF site.

I recently sent out an appeal to our nonprofit audience asking them to update their contact information in preparation for the launch, because we are going to combine our databases and allow users to manage all account info via the new website.

Naturally because I was writing about mcf.org, I felt the need to link to mcf.org in the text when describing the impending launch, in addition to linking to where users could update their profile information. I thought about not linking to mcf.org, as I feared that folks would go there instead of to their Update Profile page, but it felt, frankly wrong not to link to the site.

After sending out the e-mail, I checked the user statistics, and sure enough, instead of going to their own profile information, the vast majority of users that clicked in my e-mail selected mcf.org, even though the copy explicitly stated the site had not changed at all yet, and that the launch was forthcoming.

The lesson: If you want someone to take a specific action in your communication to them, be very, very selective with your linking, even if it goes against your instincts as a communicator.

There’s that ancient saying — “all roads lead to Rome.” Well, in your donation campaigns and other action-oriented e-mails, all paths should lead your user to a page where she or he can complete your desired transaction, lest your peops be roaming somewhere else.

Whew! If a blog could have a coat of dust, this one would be sporting a parka right now. It’s been almost three months since I last posted. So, what the heck have I been up to?

Well, among other things, I’ve been wrapped up in the successful web launch of rainbowriot.org and rainbowrumpus.org, two sites for one amazing nonprofit organization which I project managed, and designed with the help of Advantage Labs, and the fabulously talented volunteer and Drupal diva Melissa Avery (among others.)

In addition to Rainbow Rumpus, I’ve also been busy acting as the internal project manager for the redesign of Minnesota Council on Foundation’s new site, which we are planning on launching early February. (If you’re a nonprofit reader from Minnesota, stay tuned to mcf.org. The new site will feature exciting, innovative ways to keep tabs on grantmakers in the state, some of which I will be outlining in future entries.)

These projects have been keeping me really busy! But the good news is, I am back in the (blogging) saddle again. I’ve collected a slew of great topics for you that will be coming out soon, and, in addition to catching me here on the blog, you can also find me at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Tech Conference on February 23.

I’ll be staffing the Google Analytics Help Desk with David Erickson, director of e-Strategy at Tunheim Partners, and the author of e-StrategyBlog.com. I’ve attended one of David’s past MCN web analytics sessions, and I can say from personal experience that the guy knows his stuff. I left with some great take-aways. As for myself, I’ll be sharing some of the resources I’ve refined over the year since my presentation at the last #MNnptech.

If you’re going to be at this year’s conference, be sure to stop by and visit during the lunch hour, and bring your burning analytics questions, too.

Until next time, adios muchachos!

Photo CC Bill Gracey

Why Twitter? That’s a question I get a lot from co-workers and friends.

Besides the chance to pluck the daily mind grapes of such notables as Conan and Sockington, I usually tell people that it’s a great way to find out about news and resources in your field that you might not already know about yet.

It’s also a good way to network, too. I’ve been able to establish relationships with, and yes even to deepen relationships with others working in online communications and the nonprofit sector.

Last week I got the opportunity to hear Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic and Social Media University Global (SMUG). He answered the question “Why Twitter?” question with the best answer I’ve heard to date.

As he put it, “Facebook is for your friends, Twitter is for the friends you don’t know yet.”

Photo CC Rosaura Ochoa

If you’re a young nonprofit professional I highly recommend you buy yourself a copy of How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar. It’s a candid how-to book on advancing your career in the fields of philanthropy and nonprofit written by Rosetta Thurman, president, Thurman Consulting,  and Trista Harris, executive director of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice.

As Rosetta and Trista point out in the introduction, although a third of emerging professionals aspire to be a nonprofit executive someday, only 4% of them are actually being developed to someday assume positions of power. Of that 4% more men are being groomed for leadership than women.

In other words, if you want to be a leader, you’re going to have to carve out your own path. You’ve got to identify yourself as one and get out there. How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar is your road map to doing so successfully.

I really wish I had this resource three years ago when I found myself the public relations director of a small nonprofit at the age of 24. Although I loved my work and was good at what I did, I didn’t have the confidence to truly feel comfortable with the title I had earned. As a young woman and naturally introverted  a part of me, call it internalized sexism, ageism, BS or what have you, felt at odds with my identity as a leader. I know for a fact that I missed out on opportunities because I struggled with embracing the role and identity as leader that I found myself in.

Reading How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar was a great reminder of what I’ve had to learn over the last three years, and that’s this:

The world needs you, and I mean you specifically to be your best. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. Especially not yourself.

Want to learn more? Sign-up to download a free chapter or purchase How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar here.