Your Questions, Answered

Written by
Tim Yeadon

‍

We recently held a webinar, Actions Speak Louder Than Words. You can watch it here. Some of the best moments came from your questions, so I'm sharing a few of them here with fuller answers.

Q: When does a message feel too intrusive, or even creepy, to the recipient?

A: This question has followed me through my whole marketing career. Are triggered messages creepy? My first step is always to ask the client what they’re comfortable with, because there’s only so far I’ll go in bugging people.

Knowing someone visited your website doesn’t mean you have to send them a note. Plenty of people are turned off by retargeting and paid ad programs, and I’m one of them. I don’t want to see ads for something I just mentioned to my wife.

That said, I do advocate for triggered messages that provide a service, or clear up confusion for people. For instance, abandoned registration notes. When someone gives you an email address but doesn’t finish signing up, ask whether anything was confusing. Keep the note focused on helping them. I’m not shy about that one. Onboarding prompts are great too, especially if someone doesn't seem to be getting everything they can out of their membership. 

Most of the tracking we can do today isn’t meant to show up in a message at all. It’s business intelligence. It belongs in a report for a fundraising officer who can decide what to do next, or for a membership team following up on recent cancellations.

Q: Can you recover a relationship after crossing that line?

A: If an organization makes people feel used, or feel that their information is going toward questionable purposes, it deserves to lose them. Far better to be respectful from the start. Pay attention to behavior and engagement so you can be more useful to people, and in turn more useful to your mission. If your main goal is to extract value from people, then you’ll have a hard time building loyalty.

Q: We haven’t been building relationships or capturing data. How do we start with an existing list that isn’t used to hearing from us?

A: Start small, and start with the people most likely to engage. Segment the list by likely interest. Anyone you know personally, anyone who attends your events, anyone who wouldn’t be annoyed by a note goes in the safe group. Email them first.

If you’re emailing people out of the blue, say so at the very top of the message and put the unsubscribe link right there. Tell them why they’re hearing from you. The more upfront you are, the less likely they are to mark you as spam. Something like:

“Hi Tim, you’re receiving this note because you’ve attended at least one of our events over the past few years. We’ll be sharing more updates throughout the year. If you’d rather not get these, we completely understand if you unsubscribe. Thanks!”

It’s okay for people to unsubscribe. You want to talk with interested people and avoid annoying the ones who aren’t. There are organizations I really like whose emails I don’t want. I’ve subscribed to and unsubscribed from REI and Alaska Airlines more times than I can remember. Sometimes I just don’t need another pair of shoes or another plane ticket.

Q: How should we roll out a brand new membership program to that list?

A: Consider splitting your rollout into two groups. The first already understands the value of what you do and just needs to decide whether membership is right for them. The second needs to understand that value better before they can even consider joining. The first group will probably line up with people who have attended an event or engaged recently. The second will be people who have been quieter over the same period. Having both groups lets you tailor your content to where each person actually is.

Q: If all we have is a first name and an email address, how do we collect more data after the fact?

A: You earn it, going forward. Engage people and pay attention to what interests them from here on out. People share more once they trust you, see a fair trade, or believe their support creates real impact. They’ll also share more during signup, and from there you can watch their interests and behavior closely through onboarding.

A final thought.
If you’re doing it right, then you’re building relationships, not just collecting data. Pay attention to what people tell you, be useful, and respect their choices. The rest tends to follow.

‍

The author, Tim Yeadon, is Principal of Clyde Golden, the member retention marketing agency for non-profits and mission-based organizations.

‍