SEO strategy for charities

There are a few ways you can approach SEO.

If you’re a big company trying to sell something boring and uninspiring like an insurance policy then you’re going to have to do expensive things like hiring a big PR firm to try and create news stories that get you in the press (and on their websites) and running expensive affiliate and link building programmes.

If you’re an interesting charity with interesting things to say then in many ways it should be easier (and cheaper).

The graphic above shows a positively reinforcing spiral. At the centre is great content that interests people. Encouraging people to link to the content and inviting comment on it then starts to build online buzz. Bigger sites pick up on the buzz and link to the content. The bigger the site, the higher the quality of the link and the more importance Google then gives to your site. This pushes you up Google’s search results, sending more traffic to your site and kicking off the whole cycle again.

SEO doesn’t have to be hard or mysterious or expensive. It just needs you to be saying something interesting and then the hard work to start and nurture those online conversations to start this whole process.

Strangest ask ever?

World Vision US's super bowl email: donate and pay the postage

I’ve just been shown this stange World Vision US email. In a follow up to the superbowl, they’re asking supporters to make a donation so that they can post left over NFL clothes to poor people, probably in Haiti.

Whilst there’s nothing really wrong with the execution of the email, or even the timing, the ask just seems completely mis-placed to me.

How disempowering for a donor. Their contribution is completely belittled and they aren’t made to feel part of the project, or even that they’re achieving anything. Essentially, paying for postage is never going to be the most motivating ask in the world, but if this ask was 100% necessary (and I strongly challenge this – surely the NFL could afford it?!) then the proposition should have brought the donor much more closely into the story and made them the start.

Instead, the NFL takes all the glory and the donor is a bit player.

I would be really surprised if this achieved its fundraising target.

Where are you hiding yours…?

One thing I’ve done as part of this “experiment” is go to the websites of the UK’s leading charities and sign up for email newsletters. Sounds simple? It’s not – it’s incredibly difficult. It seems like many charities are trying to hide their email newsletters. Are they ashamed?

Here are some highlights:

• CRUK – couldn’t find where to sign up
• Macmillian – took about 3 minutes to find the form, was squirrled away behind a small link on fundraising page
• RSPCA – no idea where it is
• NSPCC – no idea either

And then there were sites that made the sign up process difficult

• BHF – link hidden under multimedia under events, tried to sign up, asked to register for the website, went through the site registration process and then asked to sign up for an event, had to navigate myself back to the email sign up form
• National Trust – 2 data protection opt-ins. One for National Trust, one for NT Enterprises. This is only explained when you fail to select the check box, but it still seems very salesy (find out about our credit card). This is really confusing and I’m sure some will give up.

There was one good one, Marie Curie – simply sign posted from the home page and a quick and easy form. Shame this is such a rarity!

12 days of xmas email…

First up, who is this email from? The lack of Christian Aid branding and an obvious mention of the organisation is really stark to me. Their supporters will have to be well aware that Present Aid is their sub brand for virtual gifts. No logo and only mentioning the organisaiton deep into the body copy will have people reaching for delete until they discover it’s from an organisaiton they trust.

Secondly, I think this email is a bit confused about what it’s trying to get me to do. Is it selling Present Aid? Is it a feedback (I haven’t bought from them before), is it content about their celeb’s trip to Tanzania? I’m confused! A clear call to action and a single minded proposition is an absolute essential in an email – more so than any other communication. What needs to happen should be clearly marked above the fold, but there’s nothing here doing that (fold indicated by black line of image below).

present aid email with graphics enabled

Thirdly, copy errors in the final paragraph make this seem very sloppy and slap dash. Proof reading before pressing send costs nothing.

Finally, the data opt out is to opt out of 12 days of Christmas emails. What if I want to opt out of all communications? Or all present aid ones? What happens to communications from Christian Aid if I opt out here? I think they’ve tried to give the supporter choice here, but without a crisp explanation this just adds to more confusion.

I do like the creative look. It feels quite clean and simple – not over designed. I also like the header copy before the link to the html version – this introduces a bit of the content of the email and gives it a bit of intrigue and CTA to open the email, rather than just “click here if you can’t see the images” which tells you nothing about what’s inside.

An experiment…

Email marketing is one of my bug bears. The channel can no longer be described as being in its infancy – yet there is an incredible amount of bad practice in email marketing – especially in the charity sector.

Email is a very powerful and profitable medium and it is only going to carry on growing so it’s important charities learn how to use it now. There is so much expertise in the sector for direct mail, but so little for email – this just seems crazy to me and leads to common mistakes and error being repeated over and over again.

So I’ve decided to do a bit of an experiment (as part of an effort to make me blog more) and monitor and comment on emails that I receive from various charities. I’ll comment on the good and the bad and I won’t hold back from identifying organisations and poor practice. I’ll also try and look at things like targeting and frequency and see if these are being optomised. I hope that this will come together to be a resource for everyone to see a bit of a snapshot of what charity emails look like now, as well as helping people improve their email marketing.

I won’t be posting about creative from my organisation. Not because I think it’s perfect but because it’s unfair on my colleagues and also because it’s not very professional of me as I should be highlighting my concerns internally to the relevant people. Also, as a disclaimer, nothing I post is a malicious attack and I don’t claim to know the ins and outs of every organisation or their marketing plan – this is just my subjective opinion as someone who’s approaching this a member of the public.

So to start…an agency email I got recently.

I know this isn’t in the exact spirit of what I’ve just written, but as it’s a charity agency and it’s incredibly poor practice I thought I should highlight it.

Xmas party email from a charity agency with images turned off

I have blanked out the name of the agency to protect their modesty (aren’t I nice?).

As you can see, this is what confronts you when you open up the email. A load of empty boxes with red crosses. What am I possibly going to get from that?

This is such an incredibly common mistake – relying on images to do the work where html text should take over. Lots of lovely images may make the email look nice, but unless you’re a trusted sender of the recipient they’re not going to get a chance to see your email. Trust me, having a load of blocked images like this does not add intrigue.

Making an impact with words is incredibly vital as it’s the difference between your email getting deleted or people taking the time to download the graphics, read it and respond.

For balance, including my name in the subject is a good touch to increase open rates.

What does this email say to me about the agency who sent it? They don’t have much of an idea about email marketing, and I certainly won’t be beating a path to their door for an email campaign. So whilst the email is trying to build client relations by inviting me to a party, it’s actually ended up scoring a bit of an own goal.

I’m sorry CAF, but you’ve been rubbish

Many smaller charities rely on third parties like CAF to provide an important donor servicing function in setting up and processing Direct Debits. But are charities checking that they’re getting value for money from these services? My recent experience suggests maybe not.

A week ago I set up a DD with a small charity on their website. I was taken to the CAF site and filled out my details and ticked the gift aid box. I then got 2 automatically generated emails – one confirming receipt of the DD and the other confirming my gift aid. The gift aid email thanked me for setting up gift aid but it also informed me that my gift aid money would be going to help Bournemouth University. Whilst I have nothing against Bournemouth University, I certianly would have prefered my gift aid to go to the charity I support. I complained to CAF and the charity. Only the charity responded and after speaking to CAF told me it was an administrative error.

Then, a few days ago, I got written confirmation of my DD. But it came in an MSF envelope. Thinking it was junk mail, I almost put it straight in the recycling. I’ve complained again, and no doubt this will be down to an admin error too.

Working in the sector, I’m aware of the relationship the charity has with CAF, so I’m not blaming them for these problems. But how many of the public would understand these set ups? Plus how many would be so understanding?

But my real point is about getting value from third party suppliers. If you’re paying for a service, you have a right to demand a certian level of service. Just because you’re a smaller organisation doesn’t mean you shouldn’t demand less than first rate. Regularly check your third parties, ask your donors what you think of their experiences, ask the organisation you’re buying services off to provide reports on their performance.

“Admin” issues are really important in donor experience and shouldn’t be ignored.

I like things that make my life easier

I like things that make my life easier – especially stuff online. Hence, brands that give me things that make my life easier go up in my estimations.

And that’s exactly what Barlcays have done with their new online CRM portal. And so now I like them a lot more.

Barclays old online CRM space was clunky, looked horrible and was only really a place to go and pay off your credit card bill. Now they’ve given new customers tools to help them manage their spend.

Not only does the new space look great as well as being easy to navigate, they’ve been able to turn a horrible looking table of transactions into something more interesting:

my barclays card now helps you see how you have spent your money - I like it!

Barclaycard now automatically assigns transactions into categories and then displays these in a funky pie chart. So all my grocery shopping is automatically in one handy column. If you don’t like how it’s assigned things you can set up your own categories and put different payers into different places, which it will remember for the future.

You can also look at your spend over more than one month, so you can see in total how much you’ve spent on shoes in the last year (if your shoe spend is a worry to you).

So in summary: Barclaycard’s new CRM area is handy and it’s made me like them a lot more.

But the interesting thing is the impact it’s had on me in terms of being a bit of an advocate for Barclaycard. I told a lot more people about how good it is (and therefore how good Barclaycard are) than I would have done if this didn’t exist. If brands give people useful tools then they are more likely to get people to like them. And when people like you, they’re more than happy to help you out by telling their friends.

A model of engagement

Over on Queer Ideas Mark has a nice model for analysis donation (or sales) data.

He cateogrises three file types:

• Nails: most people give once and then don’t give ever again. They shouldn’t even be classed as your donors.
• Carrots: files decline slowly over time due to a lack of continuing engagement
• Upside down beetroot: only a tiny minority haven’t given recently and most have given something in the recent past.

I really like this model because I think it clearly illustrates how recency is important to engagement. But also like it because I think it can apply to broader engagement, and particularly digital engagement.

How many times have you seen people claiming “outstanding” results for digital engagement campaigns that are little more than hollow numbers. Digital is measurable – you can see how many people are following you on twitter, or how many fans you have on facebook. But how many organisations ask themselves the difficult questions – how many of these people are actually engaged with us? I think many “successful” organisations would be surprised.

But all is not lost! In digital engagement you need to ask people to do things – and regularly – otherwise you’re just talking at them, and that’s not what social media is about. When you ask supporters to do things, you can track their actions quite effectively. This needs to be recorded and analysed, just like any other CRM database. Then you can work on turning your nail into a juicy fat beetroot. Organisations who do this will reap the benefits in the future.

New Samsung Viral

I quite like this from Samsung.

Hat tip to web jungle

Which? charities

A bit away from digital, but I’ll follow this up with a digital focused post in a while.

An article in professional fundraising says that intelligent giving has ambitions to turn itself into a Which? for charities. It wants to measure effectiveness – the impact that a charity has – so that it can say which organisation an individual is best investing in.

One of the main ways it proposes to do this is by talking to beneficiaries, as well as experts in the field.

Despite the obvious methodological difficulties of any study, this may be achievable for the UK. But such a system is completely unrealistic for international development.

Is Adam Rothwell really advocating that he will fly around the world, speaking to thousands of beneficaries in hundreds of countries about how charity x or charity y has improved their lives? The time needed to assess an organisation like Oxfam is mind boggling.

Even putting aside the resources required, there are good reasons to suggest a survey wouldn’t be valid, because poverty covers not just material wealth but also social capital. It’s not just a case of counting schools and talking to happy community members – issues are complicated and involve rights and social development with intangible things, like confidence.

In my job I was lucky enough to visit work in Malawi and speak to a community where the charity was phasing out its work after 10 long years. Big changes had been made, a new school, a well, a co-operative for food production. But when I spoke to the community members they were scared. They didn’t want the organisation to leave because they felt they weren’t ready – they had never had to run a community co-operative on their own before, and be truly in charge of their own development. The organisation’s staff were confident that the community could go it alone – like a bird learning to fly they just needed to take the plunge. But to an independent observer, who do you trust in this situation? The community members who are scared, or the organisation’s staff?

Intelligent giving’s aspirations are admirable – trying to see which organisations are effective is really important. But this idea seems pretty half baked to me.