Sometimes we run into some great blog posts with good tips about the frequency, design or purpose of email marketing – but just like many things online, we also run into some horrible, misguided information.

Recently we came across a blog post criticizing the efforts to make email, print and online communications consistent. The author claimed that consistent branding leads to readers ignoring the message because everything looks the same.

This is obviously someone who doesn’t understand how to develop a strong and effective brand.

“For example, a certain association holds a lot of webinars and classes, and they send out a lot of marketing messages about them — each of which follows the exact same template, with the exact same look, written in the exact same style. I get them and before I even read them, I know exactly what each email is about. And I delete every single one.”

He doesn’t realize it, but his example is a great sample of how consistent branding works. Yes, he may delete the emails now, but at some point he read them. Every single one of them, and we know this because he confesses to knowing the association’s brand. He knows the look, feel and tone of their emails. And, more importantly he knows they offer educational courses.

What he calls a failure in email marketing, is in fact, a great success.

Think your job is done? Think again!
In a recent newsletter, we mentioned the need for brands to change and evolve as the marketplace changes.

The ultimate example of brand evolution is Madonna, whether or not your a fan. Over the last twenty-five years, she’s gone from “Material Girl” to Marilyn Monroe lookalike to children’s book author to pop icon. While many eighties rockers are relegated to the bottom of people’s CD collections, Madonna remains relevant and in the public eye decades later.

But you don’t need such an extreme makeover to keep your brand current.
Just look at Apple. Their logo is iconic, and it’s undergone several redesigns since the mid-seventies. Remember that rainbow-striped apple they used between 1976 and 1998? It made sense because its color graphics were one of Apple’s main selling points. Now the company is known for the slick, streamlined appeal of the MacBook and iPhone, so their new logo reflects this new identity.

Brand enhancements like tweaking or simplifying your logo can improve your brand, but they’re not a cure-all. Your association itself needs to evolve as well: for instance, getting involved in social media and facilitating two-way communication with members. With strategic changes over time, you ensure that your association continues to grow alongside its members and maintain relevancy.

“We cannot adjust the wind… but we can adjust the sails.”  Unknown

This marketing plan package equips association and non-profit executives with the tools and knowledge to fill the empty seats. This package is especially designed for:

• Associations and non-profits with a limited staff
• Organizations not meeting their attendance goals
• Organizations with an In-house marketing team that needs a fresh set of eyes to review currents strategies

We are only offering this special package in the first quarter of 2010. If you want to reach your conference attendance goals for next year, then check out the details and special price for the workday sessions and remote guidance provided in our exclusive Marketing Planning Package.

Facebook’s popularity is still growing at exponential rate. Is your nonprofit taking advantage of this gold mine?

Here are three key features that can help your organization get the most out of Facebook:

Key Feature #1: Pages

Facebook has introduced Fan Pages for businesses and organizations, whereas, profiles are meant for individuals. From your Facebook Fan Page you can build community and increase communication with your members by posting updates, sharing pictures, blogging and interacting with your fans. It can also be helpful in recruiting volunteers, raising money and essential networking. It is free to set up a Facebook Fan Page. The only commitment your organization will have to make is one of committing time to create the page and keep it active.

Key Feature #2: Causes

Facebook has a diverse group of users who want to use their Facebook for various reasons. To help users get just what they want out of the social networking site, Facebook has allowed other companies (or web geeks) to create Applications which users can download to their profile. These thousands of applications include games, ways to share music or pictures, quizzes, polls, and lots more. The one that nonprofits need to be aware of is Causes. Instead of us telling you what they do, here’s a snippet from their website:

“Causes offers nonprofit organizations of every budget size, staff capacity, and issue area access to Facebook and MySpace, which between them have over 400 million monthly unique visitors. Facebook, the world’s “stickiest” site, sees over 100 million people log in on a daily basis. Beyond the sheer reach of these social networks, Causes provides nonprofits with specialized tools for spreading awareness, building community, fundraising, circulating petitions, and promoting other actions. Whether you want to reach out to a new supporter demographic, expand your donor base, engage and mobilize existing supporters, or spread the word about your incredible work, Causes is a platform for efficiently and effectively achieving those goals.”

The Causes website has a wealth of information for nonprofits interested in using their platform, including everything you need to know to get started, success stories from other nonprofits, and information on corporate and foundation matching grants.

Key Feature #3: Events

Besides allowing users to manage their contacts and multimedia, Facebook has a feature which allows users to create events and invite guests. You can customize the event, edit its privacy settings, invite members (you can also invite members not on Facebook through email) and add pictures or video. After creating the event, you can send reminder messages to your guests, monitor RSVPs, and interact with guests via a comment section.

When it comes to meeting conference attendance goals or fundraising goals, we know that sometimes you feel like the champ, but there are also times when you’ve taken a hard hit.

The competition can be tough as you battle for your audience’s attention and commitment. Many associations are finding that marketing plans that have worked in the past are now producing poor results.

Remember the classic game Rock’em Sock’em? The hours of fun spent knocking off the block of your tough opponents? And, the strategy that went into moving your red or blue robot into position, throwing punches at the perfect time – and most importantly, to try again after defeat.

Association marketing can often feel like today’s adult version of Rock’em Sock’em. You take those hard-blowing punches when e-mail blasts give less-than-desired results, or few members are jumping on board for early-registration.

It’s times like these that you simply have to pick yourself up, and keep swinging. Think on your feet and keep an open mind to new possibilities. If the same old punches aren’t working anymore, learn some new ones. Strengthen the impact of your conference marketing with a finely tuned logo. Improve membership retention with better communication through social media. Re-think your event marketing plan.

Keep rockin’ and sockin’ to discover those block-buster punches, and celebrate with that beloved gotcha victory cry!

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To compliment our recent Whitespace Newsletter about conference marketing success by integrating direct mail and social media, we put together a few tips for our nonprofit friends who are slightly more interested in fundraising.

We’ve put together 4 easy tips to help nonprofits:

• Engage previous supporters
• Find new prospects
• Convert prospects to donors
• Raise more money without greatly increasing your budget

Tip #1

Let supporters know about your presence on social networking sites. In addition to finding supporters on Facebook and LinkedIn with your current email list, you can also inform them about connecting with the nonprofit through these channels with short blurbs on direct mail pieces, emails and the organization’s website.

Tip #2

Respond to feedback from social networking sites, and share it with supporters who are likely keeping up with the organization through direct mail or email. The nature of social networking is that it allows users to provide instant feedback – the good, the bad, and sometimes the ugly. We’re not going to touch on how to handle the bad or the ugly, but we think you should sing the good feedback from the rooftops! Well, not exactly, but we do recommend you share it on direct mail pieces and emails, just like any other testimonial.

Tip #3

Integrate the campaign logo and theme across all mediums. Some organizations feel that their online marketing has to have a different “brand” than the rest of their marketing. This has potential to confuse the audience. We recommend using the same logo and theme for your fundraising campaign, despite how you are communicating with potential supporters. However, this does not mean you can use the exact same message, word-for-word on your direct mail piece as used on the nonprofit’s Facebook Fan page.

Tip #4

A popular trend (and useful tool) on Twitter is to tag posts with a hash tag (#), plus a keyword. This helps identify what the post is about, but also makes it easy to find when conducting searches. One of the most popular tags is #charitytuesday. This tag is used, you guessed it, on Tuesdays. Twitter users will post something about their favorite nonprofit and include this tag, hoping that the post will help raise awareness.

Alerting Twitter followers about upcoming direct mail pieces will peak their interest and let them know you need their help in raising awareness about the campaign. This is a great opportunity for nonprofits during a fundraising campaign with the potential to encourage matching gifts and referrals.

Recently we were asked to create an ad for a unique national campaign to raise funds to support Pakistani Refugees fleeing war-torn Swat Valley. As the number of men, women and children recently uprooted by the conflict in north-west Pakistan neared 2.4 million, the UN Refugee Agency stated that it is “absolutely essential” that the international community mount an immediate and massive humanitarian response. This campaign was kicked off by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she asked the American people to join in the world-wide humanitarian effort in Pakistan:

“Now, Americans can use technology to help, as well. Using your cell phones, Americans can text the word “Swat” — to the number 20222 and make a $5 contribution that will help the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees provide tents, clothing, food, and medicine to hundreds of thousands of affected people. And before I came over here, we did that in the State Department. So we are making some of the first donations to this fund.”

It’s an honor for us to participate in a campaign that can easily positively impact the lives of people in dire need of basics for survival. After learning about the magnitude of this refugee crisis, we set forth to design web and print ads. Here’s a little tip for nonprofits – we were able to obtain amazing pictures of refugees from the Associated Press. The photos they shared with us tell the story of desperation, need and hope better than we could explain with words. The AP is often willing to share their photos with nonprofits, and will typically offer them at a reasonable price.

Keep an eye out for our ad to appear in some national publications, but more importantly we hope you participate in the campaign. To learn more, visit www.unrefugees.org.

One of the most sophisticated, safe, and user-friendly web analytics programs just happens to also be free for anyone to use, regardless of site size or amount of traffic. For many web developers, marketers and site owners, Google Analytics seems like a gift too good to be true. It performs just as well (if not better) than costly, high-end web analytics programs.

Google Analytics is enabled by including a tracking code in the template of your website. This code allows Google to see every page of your site and then give you information about the traffic you’re receiving.

We use Google Analytics to track the performance of our website by observing how visitors interact with our online content. On a regular basis we review our Google Analytics stats to evaluate which pages of our site are getting the most traffic, where those visitors are coming from, and how they are interacting with our site once they arrive.

This is invaluable information for any site owner who desires to make their website a powerful means of communication. The data provided to use from Google Analytics allows us to transform our website from being a one-way piece of communication, into a conversation with our visitors. Without this data, we would just be spewing information onto the web then sitting back hoping that the right people would find us, and that hopefully we’ve lived up to their expectations. But, through the magic of Google Analytics we discover how and why visitors come to our site, if they found what they were looking for, and how often they return. Then we respond in the conversation, by taking this information and tailoring our online content to better meet the needs of our visitors.

Most recently we identified a page on our site that was receiving a high amount of traffic compared to other pages on our site. Assisting associations with conference marketing is a popular service we offer our clients, but it was still pleasantly surprising to see the amount of traffic generated by a recent White Space (our monthly newsletter) edition on the topic. This simple page was where we dumped the newsletter after sending it out to our subscribers.

Our Google Analytics told us that visitors were coming to this page when searching for:

• Conference Marketing Plan
• Increase Conference Attendance
• Marketing A Conference Steps Deciding On The Content
• Conference Attendance Down
• Marketing Plan + Annual Conference

This clued us in on what our visitors are expecting when coming to this page: they want to see tips, information and resources about annual conference marketing. As you can tell, this is not rocket science.

With this information in mind we decided to improve this page of our site in hopes of better meeting our visitors’ expectations.

• First, we added a link to our blog – a place that we update regularly with tips and resources that can be useful to associations planning a conference.
• Second, we added a blurb about who we are and what we do to give the user an idea of who they are taking advice from.
• And lastly, we added a link to our digital portfolio, which is a great opportunity for visitors to get an idea of how our ideas translate to strategy and practical pieces of visual communication.

Now when visitors come to this page, they have easy access to more information on the topic of their interest, they get a better idea of who we are and our capabilities, and they generally have a more enjoyable user experience.

With the help of our Google Analytics data we have quickly and easily transformed a high-trafficked page of our site into a stronger means of communicating with prospects. Associations and nonprofits have very different goals for their websites than we have for ours, but this lesson in optimizing web performance can easily translate to your site.  The data provided to you through Google Analytics can boost your website’s ability to capture the interest of potential members or sponsors and inspire current members for specific actions such as renewal or purchasing a product.

Many associations and nonprofits have service areas that stretch far beyond their “hometown”, but that doesn’t excuse them from striving to build a vibrant, healthy reputation among the local population. Regularly communicating who you are, what you do, why you do it, and how your association makes a difference, can make a strong impression on the local community – which is comprised of potential sponsors, partners, volunteers, members and other valuable connections.

Many organizations are familiar with traditional means of PR, but are still a little uncertain how to take advantage of social media. Reaching out to your community through local websites and blogs is an easy, powerful, and often free way to increase visibility. Here is a simple three step process to help your organization seize rich, local PR opportunities.

Step 1: Scope out local blogs and websites.

You’re probably already familiar with the local newspaper and other print publications, therefore step it up a notch and search for online news sources. The first step to starting a local PR campaign is to identify where your audience is already having online conversations and where they are going to get information.

Spend an hour or two browsing the websites of your local newspaper and TV stations. You may be lucky enough to find a guide to your area’s best blogs. If not, specifically look for news that is being pulled into their website from local blogs. It is becoming very common for traditional media companies to aggregate information from smaller, topical, local blogs that are run by citizen journalists.

The first place you should start is with local business-focused websites. Regardless of your organization’s mission and reach, the common factor between you and the community is that you employ members of the community and conduct business with other local businesses. Secondly, start looking at topical blogs and websites.

Make a list of the blogs and websites that you feel have the best chance for promoting your organization’s news. Be sure to single out the contact person for each website you identify as having potential for your organization’s message.

Step 2: Send 1-2 press releases a month to local news sites.

All the local news and information sites you’ve identified need new, regular content since they likely update daily, and they will gladly welcome any news-worthy information or story you pass along to them. Also, one of the great benefits of a press release is that you have control over what information is shared. You will find that some websites may simply post your information (or a shortened version of it), which is typical for many print publications as well. But many blogs prefer to make their posts more personal, and may offer the opportunity to have a key staff or board member be a guest blogger.

It’s imperative that you follow basic guidelines of telling a compelling story with a strong news angle in each of your press releases. To increase the chances of your information being published on the websites you contact, make sure it is relevant to your audience and answers the 5 Ws: who, what, where, when, and why. Remember to include plenty of contact information.

Step 3: Add a news section to your website.

News pages are a great way to manage content about events, sponsorships, and all forms of company news. It can become a place where local media outlets can depend on getting the latest information about your organization. In addition to being an invaluable communication tool, it is a great opportunity to boost credibility and return the favor of linking to the websites that post your information.

A sound local PR strategy can go a long way in boosting local recognition and enhancing credibility for any association or nonprofit, especially if you are intentional in seeking out online hotspots for your community. While it’s fresh on your mind, jot down a couple of topics for upcoming press releases and start your search for relevant websites.