Mobile Programs: What’s good? What’s bad? What’s the norm?

In the wake of the Haiti earthquake, we all saw the Red Cross show how mobile giving could change the face of fundraising, raising $32 million from $5 and $10 gifts through text messages.

Now, just a month after releasing benchmarks for social media, M+R Strategic Services teamed up with Mobile Active to release its first-ever mobile benchmarks study, taking a look at how nonprofits are using text messaging programs and establishing some metrics by which an organization can evaluate its own.

Some of the most interesting findings:
- Nearly 80% of subscribers to text programs signed up online.
- Mobile programs are a growth industry – the annual increase in list size this year was a whopping 49.5%! (But it’s important to note that list “churn” – the rate at which subscribers leave the list, mostly through their numbers becoming undeliverable – is also very high, 30.7%)
- One of the ways text programs have had the largest impact is on call-in efforts. Recipients of text messages participated in a call-in at a rate five times as high (4.7% ) as those who received the action via email (0.82%). That’s one of the benefits of having your advocates already on their phone – making a phone call is literally just a few clicks away.

This is just the first effort to try to quantify the norms in mobile programs, but it’s already clear that they have a lot to offer the world of nonprofit advocacy.

How to Deal with All the Negativity

By now, we all know that one of the prices you pay for opening up a real dialogue with your audience is that the feedback you get isn’t always going to be positive – or even nice. It’s everywhere you go in social media – from blog comments to Facebook Walls to Twitter.

How to – and even whether to – respond to the negative criticism can be tricky, if not frustrating. That’s why Mashable put together a “how to” specifically geared at responding the right way to the comments you need to respond to – and ignoring the ones you don’t. The key is staying positive, and it starts with separating the legitimate beefs from the trolling spammers. In other words, step 1: take a deep breath.

In the end, the open dialogue can be one of the most beneficial aspects of social media, empowering your audience to take control of the conversation.

Testing, testing...

Even when you think you know it all about what tactics perform the best in email marketing, it’s always good to take a step back from time to time and test it.

Pinpointe, an email marketing company, just released the results of its study Email Marketing 101, which tests a lot of the basics from subject line length to sender information to email personalization. The results, while not too shocking, help establish some key best practices in email communications:

1. Keep subject lines short.
2. Send messages from a real person, rather than sending from an organization.
3. Personalizing the messages increases response.

Take a look at the full results here – download the PDF or watch the webinar.

What's "normal" in social media?

Everyone wants to know how they should be using Facebook, Twitter and other social media to best promote their cause. Should we be tweeting more? Should I set up a Facebook Page or a Facebook Cause?

Two studies released this month dove in to try to establish some social media benchmarks among nonprofits and marketers.

A “mega-report” by MarketingProfs consulted with a panel of social media experts and surveyed its readers and concluded: Facebook is better than Twitter, at least in the marketing world. There’s a lot more content and helpful information than just that conclusion, though, and you can read a lot more about the report on Social Media Examiner.

In another report, this time looking at growth and social engagement metrics among nonprofits, M+R Strategic Services aimed to shed a little light on the social media habit of nonprofits, who up until now have been forced to “make it up as they go along.” With this study, M+R hopes nonprofits – no matter their size – will be able to develop meaningful metrics by which they can develop their social media engagement.

Social Media Lessons to Learn from Haiti

With the tragedy in Haiti just now starting to come into focus, the work that so many organizations – and individuals – have done to help save lives and bring relief to the hundreds of thousands of victims is inspiring. And it’s no surprise that social media played a pivotal role in so much of that good work. Geoff Livingston of Zoetica decided to take a look at the lessons nonprofit organizations can draw from social media’s impact on the relief effort.

"While terrible in scope and nature, catastrophes like the Haiti earthquake bring out the best in people. In the age of social media, we get to witness this firsthand.

"With the widespread adoption of social media in the non-profit sector, people’s ability to act and support communities in need like Haiti has only been increased. There’s no greater example of this than the incredible fundraising job the American Red Cross did with social and mobile channels. With its texting campaign, the American Red Cross raised more than $20 million."

You can read the whole article – with all five lessons for social media – at Mashable.com.

2nd Annual Grassroots Innovator Awards- the finalists

It's officially awards season in Hollywood- and we're following suit at the American Heart Association! We're just days away from announcing the winner of our 2nd Annual AHA Grassroots Innovator Award. But first, you'll need to hear from the finalists. Then- be sure to cast your vote for the winner right here on the Let's Talk Grassroots blog.

If you missed the finalists' presentations- you can access a recording by calling (866) 609-5877. Conference ID: 3774314, Participant Passcode: 8876228

The finalists are...

Melissa Brown (GRA): Faced with declining email open rates and little indication of why, Melissa and her advocacy colleagues in the Great Rivers Affiliate developed a survey to gather more information from their advocates. They used two sets of questions- a more detailed questionnaire for their most active advocates and a shorter survey for their mid-level advocates. They intend to use the survey results to shape future grassroots messaging.

Allyson Frazier (FDA): As a prominent advocate prepared to receive an award at the Boston Heart Ball, Allyson and her colleagues seized the opportunity to raise the profile of advocacy with the Heart Ball audience. In addition to heightened exposure to advocacy messaging, attendees were invited to record video messages that were later delivered to state legislative offices in support of AED legislation.

Julie Archila (GSA): In need of a way to visually represent the wide support for an increase in Florida's tobacco tax, Julie worked with Florida Advocacy Director James Mosteller and coalition partners to collect pictures from supportive volunteers. The photos were posted to a Google Map, and the link to that map was shared with lawmakers- putting a face on the support for this bill.

It starts with listening

How can a really big, diverse organization “turn the ship” toward a meaningful and intentional social media strategy? The American Red Cross started by simply listening.

“Perhaps the biggest benefit and unexpected outcome of engaging in social media through listening first is that the Red Cross drove internal adoption of social media. Wendy says people are no longer afraid of negative comments or posts. “The opposite of hate is indifference, if someone bothers to post a negative comment it means they care.” Negative comments are now viewed by the organization as an opportunity to educate and improve what they are doing.”

You can learn more about the Red Cross philosophy for social media outreach here.