General questions for all

Hey there Dale,

These are great questions - keep 'em coming! I will say when it comes to the Housefile BuilHFB campaign, it's typically best to stick to the theme of "keep it simple". Looking at some past campaigns, the majority of your results are going to come more from response to the email messages and eCard. Now, the idea of cross-promoting the store is a good idea. Here's a suggestion: How about placing a promotion on the store-front that promotes the HFB give-away. But, keep the the HFB campaign more simple without the "store" promotion. I think you'll find that it will get the word out there to more people about the give-away and also not turn into a reporting mess. You may want to also promote the new store on your homepage.

There definitely is strength in the give-away model because there is a tangible thing that incentivizes others to send out those eCards. But, I'll also say that the most succesfful campaigns we've seen, whether give-away or viral, had a few things in common: they were timely, mission-centric, and often times relevant to the region of constituents you are servicing.

For the eCards, we will build out one eCard design for you as part of the Service Module program. However, you are certainly able to offer more if you build out additional designs. Here's a link to an example of another client that did offer more than one eCard design. http://omrf.convio.net/site/Ecard?ecard_id=1061.

Post back if you've got additional questions. Hope this helps!

Taylor

Dale Anania:

When we send the first email about the context, the recipient is already subscribed to our enewsletter. However, most likely their friends that they forward it to are not, so I assume that the email they get from their friend has the box pre-checked, saying something like: Yes, sign me up for The Marine Mammal Center's monthly email newsletter. If the friend enters the contest but unchecks the email box: 1) do we still get their name, street address and email address, and 2) can their confirmation autoresponder be different than someone who signs up for the e-newletter so that for opt-outs we can explain more about the e-newsletter and have another box for them to subscribe? 3) when we send all contest registrants a reminder, can we have two groups, those that are opted into the e-newsletter and those that are not, so that we can try to get the opt-outs to subscribe to the e-newsletter?

Yes, there will be an email opt-in checkbox. It won't be in the email; however, it will be on the contest sign up page. When you talk about the eNews box, do you mean one interest that is specifically to sign up for your eNewsletter, or are you refering to the box that says "Yes, I'd like to receive information from this organization"? I ask because the way we (and the Convio system) treats that is different. One is an interest they opt into (which puts them in a group) and the latter is for a global opt-in that says whether or not they receive any email. Let me know and I can make sure I'm addressing the rest of the questions appropriately.

Thanks!

Taylor

Dale Anania:

We can do either, which do you suggest?

Hi Dale,

The baseline suggestion here is the following:

IF (and only if) you are using interest categories to manage your audiences for the messages that you send out, then we suggest that you present them with the interest categories as an opt-in/opt-out check box. HOWEVER, if your organization is not actively using interest categories to manage your audiecnes for your e-communications then I would not recommend putting interest categories there as an option.

Question Dale, when you send your eNewsletter out, do you use the eNewsletter interest category opt-in and opt-out groups to manage the audience for those deliveries? Or do you typically send your eNews to your entire housefile?

Dale Anania:

We are somewhere inbetween. Because we do have events we do these by special email - since many of our supporters are not local, we created an Interests Category ourselves and uploaded those who gave us permission for General email AND have a local zip code into the Interest group for Events.

Question about the great new Housefile Campaign from StMaryskids.org that went live today - I signed up and sent some eCards. Will you ask them if they will share their results with our group?

Also, if we send you a photo, can you put text in the photo for us, so it appears like their photo of the kid with "fragile" stamped across her forehead, and words in the background of the photo, or do we need to do that on our end?

Hi Dale,

Thanks for all the info. In regards to the email opt-in and interests, in this case I would suggest sending the Housefile Building messages to your entire housefile. I think it is great you are targeting people specifically about Events, but I think that stands on its own. It should help us reach a broader audience if we stick to the entire housefile. If people opt-out globally, then they are saying they do not want to receive any email communications as a whole and that will mark them as "do not accept email" in the system. That doesn't mean you aren't capturing their information. If they submit the eCard, they will still have a record created in Constituent360. But, they have requested not to receive emails, so the system will not send email to them. When someone submits the survey for your give-away/pledge, they will automatically be placed in a Housefile Building Campaign group.

Great to hear that you signed up for SMHC. We can talk with them to see how they feel about sharing results after the campaign has run.

For photos, please do go ahead and prepare the photos and send them to us exactly as how you would like them to appear. If you are looking for some photo editing software, there is a pretty robust free program you can download called The Gimp at http://www.gimp.org/.

Let us know if you have any more questions.

Taylor

Dale Anania:

Kate and I both signed up for th St. mary's kids campaign and got several emails. However, neither of us ever got an email annoucing the winner. We don't want this to happen to our file when we do this. Do you know what happened?

Hi Dale,

I'm not totally sure of the particulars with St. Mary's but it looks like they just have opted to not yet send out the announcement. They may be working on this and waiting to send until a little later date.

Don't worry, though, because we will work with you on what specific day you want to send your announcement email. :-)

Cheers,

Taylor