Communications | Optimist Consulting

Christmas shut down – what does it say to your members?

Having worked in/with a number of membership organisations across the last few years, it never surprises me how many different approaches there are to the ‘Christmas shut down’ dilemma.

On the one-hand as a membership body it is important to be open and available for members, so having staff on-hand to respond to members during the post Christmas/pre New Year period can be important. However, some organisation’s find that actually having staff in across this period isn’t necessary as there are no/very few member queries. And the cost of opening the offices for those days is greater than the benefit delivered by having staff work.

There is also the issue that many organisations in the non-profit sector choose to shut between Christmas and New Year as an additional perk to staff and with staff benefits in the sector being fairly limited it is a nice thing to be able to do.

My own view is that it is ok to shut down over the in-between Christmas and New Year period as long as you are clear to members; which is sometimes where I think organisations can fall down.

So, if you are thinking about the period between Christmas and New Year then I have listed below a few things to consider:

1. Anticipating issues
You need to think about the types of reasons why members might contact across this period. It is likely to be the normal sorts of queries that could wait until the New Year? Or do you have a deadline during the period or in early January (eg AGM voting, exam entry, survey completion, promotional sale ending etc) that could result in lots of queries?

2. Producing a plan
Whether you are planning to shut down or stay open, you need a plan to ensure that staff are aware of what is happening.

If you do decide to stay open it is unlikely that you will need all staff to work, but you will need to decide who will work and when. Obviously how this is organised will need to be in line with your HR policies around holiday etc.

If you are planning to shut down and you haven’t done so before, you may need to ensure that your Chair/Board is ok with the decision. And you will need to produce a brief communication plan to tell the members about the shut-down.

3. Communicating to members
Ideally you should give your members a few week’s notice of being shut so they can plan around it if needbe. The message can be fairly short and factual outlining when you shut and when you will be open, but I’d always offer a link to your website to help them find immediate answers should their query be urgent.

If you are staying open you maybe choose to advertise this fact to members, so it can be sold as a benefit “We will be open during the Christmas period to assist members”.

4. ‘Out-of-office’ messages
Ideally all out-of-office messages across the organisation should be the same, including reiterating that the office is shut or that it is open and so and so is the person to contact.

It is important to remember all the other communication methods across the organisation and ideally they should reflect the same message too. These could include:

Individual voicemails
Company switchboard message
Company mobile voicemail messages
Generic email accounts (eg info@)
Online purchases auto-emails
Website
Social media channels

I have personally found that providing staff with templates for messages is the quickest and easiest way to achieve consistent messages.

What do you think?
Will you be shutting or staying open? How do you handle it with members? Do leave a comment below.

3 essential elements of measuring the success of your email campaigns

May 16th, 2012 | Posted by Abby in Communications | Marketing | Membership - (0 Comments)

I recently attended CharityComms’ seminar ‘Enhance your email marketing’. It was a packed 2.5 hours of really practical advice. The paper I liked the most was from Sam de Mesquita who has, for the past decade, worked for a number of non-profit organisations managing their email marketing. He has recently moved to Regus, the hotel group.

He talked about how to measure the success of an email campaign. As part of the membership function I am sure you (or marketing staff if you have a separate department) send out many emails, but do you track how effective they are? Should you be doing so?

Sam’s advice on this topic provided food for thought:

1. Open rates

Your “open rate” equates to how good your subject line is.
Consider experimenting with different types of subject lines. Ideally you will split your data into two lists (generally these lists are then referred to as A and B) and use different subject lines to see what response they receive.
Test and record the results of different subject lines. He suggested using an Excel spreadsheet like this:

2. Click through rates

Sam’s advice was to focus on click-throughs over time, rather than each campaign individually. Create a graph to plot what is happening. Falling open rates are the main thing to worry about.
He also suggested testing different ‘calls to action’ (for example event bookings, commenting on a consultation response) and placing them in different places in the email. Again, use a spreadsheet like the one above to help you work out what achieves the best results.

3. Going deeper – using Google analytics

He also suggested using Google’s URL builder tool to help you track your email campaigns in more depth using Google analytics. This video gives a quick overview of Google’s URL Builder which you use to create a url that you then insert into your email tool.

It was reassuring to know that even when Sam was working at large non-profits organisations with big marketing teams, that they still needed to test subject lines and story placement. His key message was that you need to use the tools above to understand what your audience wants and enhance your marketing to meet those needs.

What do you think?
What is your experience of using email to reach your members? Do you track all your emails, even renewals emails? Let me know what you think by commenting below.

5 things I learnt from the CharityComms Social Media Conference

March 22nd, 2012 | Posted by Abby in Charities | Communications | Marketing - (0 Comments)

Today I joined over 100 others gathered for the CharityComms Social Media Conference (#CCsocmed on twitter). CharityComms, the membership body for charity communications professionals offered a great day of practical advice from communications professionals working in a number of high profile charities. The day left me feeling very inspired!

Image: British Heart Foundation.

Reflecting on today, I learnt:

That your supporters (whoever they might be) should be a rich source of inspiration and creativity. These are the people that really “get you”, are you using them? Rob Blackie from Blue State Digital London gave the great example of a Obama supporter back in 2010 painting the campaign logo on their farm shed. This lead to a ‘Barns for Obama’ campaign which helped raise his profile with rural supporters.
That investment in developing relations with journalists is more important than having a social media crisis plan. Hilary Cross from Macmillian talked about when Ed Miliband used their research in Prime Minister’s Question Time and the charity was accused of political bias. They took a pragmatic approach to assembling a PR Crisis team, but it was clear the Communciations team’s previous efforts of developing relationships with journalists played a key part in enabling them to achieve positive coverage during a time of crisis.
That if you want to use your supporters/ambassadors you need to provide them with the resources. Sophie Jones from Cancer Research UK talked about how they use ambassadors to support their lobbying work. She talked about creating an easy way for them to engage (an online petition posted on their facebook page was an example), clarity of ‘ask’ and campaigning toolkits for those that you want to act on your behalf.
That the new facebook page timeline is going to make a difference to charities. Learn now how to rearrange your page to ensure that you make the most of the new features. Find out how here.
That adding a social element to your website (a like button, or a tweet this button) can help with your fundraising. There is correlation between sharing fundraising activity (eg posting on facebook after you have donated on a website) and income raised. Howard Lake gave lots of great examples of how you can make simple changes to your website to make it more engaging for your potential donors.

What can your charity learn from these findings?

Charities

Offline still works

October 10th, 2011 | Posted by Abby in Communications | Marketing - (0 Comments)

As a new customer of the online business www.notonthehighstreet.com I was really interested to receive a mini printed catalogue through the post, following my first online purchase a couple of weeks ago. At the same time a printed Early Learning Centre catalogue also arrived in the post. I guess the timings was due to catch people who are starting to think about Christmas.

It just struck me, that these multimillion pound business obviously finds it worthwhile to still print and post catalogues. In this increasingly online world, it just proves that offline and traditional media still have a place. I then also received an complementary email from Not on the High Street to reinforce the messages of the catalogue, a good example of an integrated multi platform campaign.

What can you learn from this and apply to your own marketing in your organisation?

Demonstrating your impact through communications

September 19th, 2011 | Posted by Abby in Communications | Marketing - (0 Comments)

I was really impressed with Chance UK’s 2010 Annual Report and it really got me thinking about ‘demonstrating your impact’ and how you can use your communications to help. Whether you are a charity or a membership body, you will need to illustrate what you are doing to your stakeholders.

Chance UK chose to demonstrate their impact, with ‘Tom’s World’ (see below). Tom is a one of the children on their mentoring programme, it shows how far reaching the mentoring programme is, it isn’t just about Tom and his mentor, but also includes others at Chance UK, Tom’s family and his teacher.

The images and graphics are great too. They appeal to both children and adults. Engage did an amazing job on the designing the report.

I was also struck by a letter from Boris Johnson (below) about his mayoral re-election campaign. The letter, colloquial in tone, illustrates what he believes he has done for London. “36 more police offers”, “cut robberies by almost 19%”. etc. Obviously re-election is all about demonstrating what you have achieved, but I thought it was a good example of choosing impactful statements.

What can you say about your achievements to your stakeholders or members?

Are you “using” your members?

August 7th, 2011 | Posted by Abby in Communications | Membership - (0 Comments)

Every membership body should have the members at the heart of everything they do, but sometimes they don’t always “use” them. And I mean use in the best possible way! It does take resource to organise, but offering an interview, blog entry or story from a member is a great way to remind the rest of the membership they are part of an exclusive club.

I particularly love The Marketing Society’s WLTM (would like to meet) blog, it offers a quick and friendly insight into a new member, but I also think it is keeping with their brand.

The Institute of Directors also offer member case studies. As does CharityComms; they use video clips which I think adds interest. Both use the communications as a ’meet the member’ and also as a testimonial for the organisation.

So take a look at your member communications, could you feature members to help you reinforce your key messages?