Over the last few weeks, I've been posting about a wide variety of best practices to improve contact rates in phonathon. This post will serve to consolidate this information and recap the recommendations.
It is not possible to raise money from someone that you can't get in touch with, so contact rate is crucial to a healthy phonathon. When your contact rate improves, you will raise more money even if call quality doens't improve at all. It is not optional. You must have a plan to get your data clean and valid and keep it that way. First Steps to Improve Phonathon Contact Rates: This post outlines the importance of contact rates and details the basic research processes that every phonathon should be doing prior to loading data for the year. Next Steps to Improve Your Phonathon Contact Rate (Wireless ID and Wireless Append): This post lays out the trends with respect to households transitioning to wireless only. Your database must manage phone types properly to accommodate this shift. There are also new data research tools that you need to make use of to acquire cell phone numbers. Continuing to Improve Phonathon Contact Rates (Most Best Practices): In this installment, I recommend that you manage your data so that you do not load known invalid phone numbers for calling again. Once you remove those invalids, you'll need to find more groups to call and I show you how to lobby to call new colleges, schools or units. Improving Contact Rates in Phonathon with Where-Are-You-Now Emails: Besides making good use of data research services, you should also go to your constituents and ask them to update their information. In this post, I give an overview of sending next day "where-are-you" emails and "where-are-you" email blasts. Young Alumni, Contact Rates and the History of Cell Phones: This post shows why young alumni are a strong group for contact rate and gives a comprehensive argument for why you should not remove young alumni from phonathon. I hope you find these tips helpful. If you implement these strategies, your contact rate will improve. Improved contact rate in your phonathon will mean more money for your institution. Please comment below and let me know your results.
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For the love of sweetness, goodness and light, please create web addresses that are simple to remember. Your web addresses should be both easy to say out loud and easy for people to remember. As an example, I’m finishing my graduate degree in English literature. Whenever I need to reference the English department’s website, I just hope over to www.usm.edu/english. Simple, right? But, I always have to google the graduate school’s website because the url isn’t easy to remember. It’s www.usm.edu/graduate-school. I’m sure if it was www.usm.edu/gradschool, I would have no trouble remembering it. This is a matter of mere inconvenience for me, as a current student. But, this could have real implications for prospective graduate students and for the effectiveness of the Graduate School’s marketing materials in general. Many websites will assign automatic web addresses to newly created pages and they can be complicated long strings of words and dashes and underscores. If you can’t get the actual URL to be simple and easy-to-remember, have your tech support shop set up a URL that redirects to your page. Here are some good (theoretical) examples:
Now here are some examples of what NOT to do:
True, you will be promoting your web links in HTML emails and on social media, where you can provide a hyperlink. But still, you will also be promoting your websites in print and direct mail and announcing the giving page web addresses at various events throughout the year. Make them memorable and easy to type in. Don’t put up more barriers to communication with your constituents. Don’t make it more difficult to give. Like many fundraisers, I’m goal-oriented. I love that feeling of accomplishment when the goal number has been exceeded or the big gift comes in. In fact, I might be addicted to this feeling. Because when I am plugging along doing my regular work without the big hoopla, sometimes I don’t feel like I’m being productive.
I was feeling unproductive this week. Not because I wasn’t busy or hadn’t made significant progress, but because July is this time of sowing, not reaping. One of my marketing colleagues was complimenting me on some of the important steps I had made for my organization this year and particularly this summer, and suddenly, it was clear to me. I need to honor the sowing part of my work, not just the reaping. Success is not all about the big gestures, the payoff, or the celebration party. Most of the time, success is about the small but consistent daily efforts that move your career and your institutions forward. The real measure of success isn’t like skydiving, it’s more like ten minute daily walks. So, put your plans together. Write those daily thank-you notes. Build those relationships. Plant those seeds. The harvest will come. But it’s those unremarkable daily actions that pave the path to success. Today my first e-book is available for purchase: How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast: Seven Secrets to Fill the Seats. The information in this book has the power to revolutionize your call center operation by starting at the beginning. Staffing.
I will show you how to:
You can’t afford to spend another year spinning your wheels with staffing. Break the cycle of caller turnover for good and begin loving your job now! In this book, you get all the secrets: Everything you need to staff YOUR phonathon FAST. And here’s the bonus: These techniques not only get you the most callers possible with the least amount of time invested. This method will also give you the very best callers and insulate you from caller turnover both in the short term and in the long run. If you want to be a rock star phonathon manager, have amazing fun at work, and ultimately grow your career in philanthropy, this book will put you on that path. There’s no doubt about that. You’ll have great students to train, you’ll quickly get busy raising tons of money for your institution, and your success in crushing your goals will be rewarded with accolades and future job opportunities. What are you waiting for? Let’s get busy creating your staffing plan. Purchase your copy of How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast: Seven Secrets to Fill the Seats today. |
Jessica Cloud, CFREI've been called the Tasmanian Devil of fundraising and I'm here to talk shop with you. Archives
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