March 2005
Tips on reactivation by Susie Fought
Web audits: The best first step for a Web site redesign by Dottie Hodges
What's up online by Dan Weeks
Tips on reactivation
By Susie Fought
IS YOUR organization giving up on lapsed donors or members too soon?
Even 24-month-plus lapsed donors who haven't responded to several direct mail appeals are worth reactivating. Remember, it costs more to acquire new donors and members than to reactivate lapsed ones. What's more, studies show that reactivated donors are more generous and responsive over time than newly acquired donors.
Here are just a few things you might try to reactivate lapsing donors:
1) Send one final renewal effort with an outer envelope teaser such as WELCOME BACK!, FINAL NOTICE, or LAST CHANCE TO RENEW.
2) Let the donor know the date of her last gift. And explain that you're concerned you haven't heard from her since then. Keep in mind that, when surveyed, many donors don't realize they've lapsed.
3) Include a brief survey in place of the usual reply device. This way, you'll give the donor the opportunity to tell you why she's choosing not to renew her support. Be sure to thank her for her past support in the letter — and be understanding. There are legitimate reasons why some donors can no longer contribute. Encourage her to fill out the survey, write a short note, or even call or e-mail you directly. You'd be surprised how many people will respond with a gift.
4) Send a more personal package to the $50+ or $100+ lapsed donors who have supported the organization over several years. This could consist of a short, handwritten note mailed in a small (A2) hand-addressed envelope. Or it might be a typed note mailed in a closed-face, fully typed or lasered envelope. Include a reply envelope — but leave out the more formal reply device.
5) Remind the lapsed donor you'll have to stop sending her the donor newsletter. On the other hand, you may want to hold onto lapsed members by offering this option on your reply: "I'm unable to renew my support at this time, but I would like to continue receiving the donor newsletter." That's because, as donors age, they may not be able to afford to continue giving generously. And yet, if they own property or other assets, your organization could be in their bequest plans. In addition, many groups benefit from being able to tout large memberships (for advocacy reasons and access to corporate and foundation grants, for example).
6) If you've tried all these approaches and your lapsed donors still don't respond, pick up the phone and call them. Telephone fundraising is perhaps the most effective tool for reactivating lapsed donors and members. If you can, use a professional telephone fundraising firm that works specifically with nonprofit organizations. At worst, the revenue received from donors will cover the cost charged by the firm. (Remember what I said about the value of reactivated donors.) Otherwise, you can have board members or other volunteers make the calls.
Not only will you reactivate donors, you'll also capture valuable information. Donors will tell you why they've lapsed. And you'll get updated and corrected addresses. Many donors and members also say phone calls help them stay connected to the organizations they care about.
7) Once donors lapse beyond two or three years — not having responded to any reactivation efforts — they become former donors. At this point, you'll want to add these names (as a special segment) to your acquisition mailings.
Web audits: The best first step for a Web site redesign
By Dottie Hodges
HAS YOUR ORGANIZATION wanted to redesign its Web site but perhaps didn't know where to start? How do you know when it's time to redesign? What are your site's most critical problems? Do your constituents find the site easy to use? To answer these questions, I recommend that you first take a step back by conducting a Web audit, and I'll share with you a few tips and tricks to get started.
Setting the stage for success
Today's rule: It's not about you. Chances are your audience doesn't understand your departmental structure. To build an effective user experience, you have to break free of your institutional boundaries, even if only temporarily. Think like the user.
First, convene a session of cross-departmental representatives. Ask them to put their specific needs aside and think holistically about what the organization wants to accomplish. In the spirit of collaboration, you'll arrive at a clear set of goals and priorities that everyone supports. In the long run, this will reduce those testy homepage turf wars. What's more, the result is user- and outcome-focused — a critical mindset shift from the subjective approach often used.
Using the same internal group, next discuss your audiences in detail. List, describe, and prioritize them. Determine the needs and motivators for each audience, in addition to your desired outcomes. It's much easier (and smarter) to see how your site compares against this list rather than an amorphous concept of "a good site."
Site architecture and navigation
Barring a full focus group for your site, you can develop — based on the above priorities — a set of likely user paths. Choose one and look at the current navigation to map the various paths the user may take to complete that task. Flag those that are most likely to be taken. Identify "dead ends" for the user, such as broken links or misleadingly labeled sections. Determine if they're direct enough to satisfy the objective of this particular user action.
When it comes to navigation, quite often organizations tell us that they want to "be different." They want a site with a groundbreaking approach to navigation. They eagerly trot out their departmental section names and talk enthusiastically about doing something funky with the layout.
But sometimes tried-and-true location is best. For some elements of the overall design, like architecture and navigation, users expect certain standards. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen's Law of the Web User Experience states that "users spend most of their time on other Web sites." In other words, their expectations are going to be heavily influenced by experiences on other sites. Anticipate user expectations, and deliver an experience that won't create user roadblocks.
To determine the best information architecture for your site, take your content apart. Break it down. Identify the smallest units of information — a report, an action, an appeal — and look at it from a user's perspective. Are you organizing the information based on where your users will look for it or on the departments that produced it? For readers whose sites employ a content management system, this can be as simple as making sure that the core content — an article, a photo — is coded with keywords so that it can be called by the system into multiple locations on the site. For readers who leverage static HTML for the bulk of their sites, this approach will warrant a more detailed look at what the best and most likely location of that content should be.
Once you've settled on the architecture, the page design needs to be examined to ensure that the information structure is clear and navigable from every page. I call it the Genie Test. If you were magically beamed to a random page within your organization's Web site, would you be able to determine where in the site you were located, and how you would get back out? Could you navigate to other areas of content?
Make sure your site clearly displays navigation and sub-navigation that indicates the user's location, and titles pages individually with this level of detail. This includes ensuring that your link labels, page titles, and headlines all match as closely as possible. A user shouldn't click "Contact Us" and arrive on a page titled "Feedback." Users want nothing more than to click a link and complete their task.
Screen allocation analysis
Many organizations struggle to decide how much page space to allocate each feature or function — particularly on the homepage. To resolve this dilemma, refer to the priorities identified by your cross-departmental team. These should in turn drive the allocation of screen real estate. Higher priorities should get greater screen real estate than the lower priorities.
Let's apply a little science to this exercise. First, review your priority goals. Perhaps your organization places its highest priority on advocacy and a secondary priority on fundraising. Next, see how much of the site's existing screen space is dedicated to each type of content. Either count the pixels using graphics software or print out the design and measure it. That's right, with a ruler. Keep in mind this isn't an exact science — there are no magic numbers. But if an advocacy organization's homepage contains mostly content and navigation with some fundraising and just a tiny percentage dedicated to advocacy appeals, some reallocation of screen real estate is probably needed.
No time like the present
Whether the outcome leads you to a new look and feel, new site architecture, a new technology path, or simply some subtle changes, a Web audit is the best first step for your organization to reevaluate your site's user experience. You'll have a stronger site vision, a stronger internal team, a more user-centric view, and — in the end — greater results from your organization's Web site.
Dottie Hodges is Vice President of Beaconfire Consulting, 2300 Clarendon Avenue Suite 1100, Arlington VA 22201, which serves nonprofits in the evaluation, design, and implementation of Internet technology. Contact her at www.beaconfire.com or e-mail info@beaconfire.com.
What's up online
By Dan Weeks
Micro loans have been an effective means of helping the world's poor for some time now, but Opportunity International really expands on the idea to include "microfinance" and "microenterprise development" — a broader range of services such as savings and insurance, business training, mentoring, financial planning, leadership development, and their Trust Bank model program.
Opportunity International is a Christian ecumenical organization serving women and men of all beliefs. Their Web site is a nice blend of photographs and text, color print and easy-to-read black type on white background. It's easy to navigate and learn more about how they help people at all levels of the "poverty pyramid". Check it out at www.opportunity.org.
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