By now it’s conventional wisdom: your audience is not a monolith, and you shouldn’t communicate with them that way. Online communications are particularly well suited to segmentation – thinking about your audience in terms of subgroups – but all communications can benefit from a bit of strategic thinking about what makes different subgroups of your list more and less open to different messages, approaches, asks, and channels.

If you’re among the lucky communicators with access to data from past communications campaigns, you can analyze past results by different groups and establish a segmentation approach based on the hard work you’ve already done.

If you’re building your segmentation approach from the beginning, here are three things you can take a look into for opportunities to better target your communications:

1. Level of Engagement: People who have volunteered for you could receive different communications than those who have just signed up for information; advocates who donate could be approached differently than advocates who haven’t donated yet; people who always read your emails could be approached differently than those who never read them (as determined by your handy dandy software). What different levels of engagement do subsets of your audience have with your organization, and are there ways you can communicate with them better to acknowledge their current commitment and inspire them to commit more?

2. Demographics: 20-somethings and 60-somethings not only get their information from different channels, but they interact with those channels in different ways. There’s evidence that men and women utilize online communications differently, and mounting evidence that age and geography have an impact on how people respond to direct mail. Does it make sense for you to think further about the demographics of your audiences?

3. Content: The Humane Society of the United States is famous (at least in certain circles) for effectively targeting dog lovers separately from cat lovers to inspire ever-higher levels of activism and contributions. Is there anything in your content — training versus job board programs, international versus domestic policy focus, child-related services versus senior services — that might make a difference to different subsets of your audience?

Segmentation is a complex science as well as an art, and is always a work in progress, but these days, as options for targeting messages grow ever-more sophisticated, you can’t afford not to give it a try.

We don’t love talking about the technology to back that up, and usually we don’t have to.  Tools for communications and organization have become so ubiquitous, inexpensive, and user-friendly that we usually get to work with clients to figure out how best to deploy them in support of kick-butt strategy.

However, we’ve been reminded of late that a little thinking about your technology toolkit is a good thing now and then.  So, three things we hope you’ll take to heart as you consider how to implement the best possible strategies for communications, advocacy, and fundraising:

1)  Make sure your technology isn’t holding you back.

We’ve been a bit like a broken record in preaching that successful communications is not about the tools, it’s about executing a well-thought and appropriate strategy (for example, here, here, here, and here).  That’s still the true story, but some recent work has reminded us that a baseline level of access to the tools is necessary to implement almost any good strategy.  If, on a regular basis, you find yourself saying (or hearing from your strategy team) anything like, “That’s a great idea but it’s a nonstarter because our website can’t accommodate it,” then your technology might be holding you back.

At the very least, if your website doesn’t include a content management system (CMS), with baked-in capacity for RSS feeds and the flexibility to add, change, and test buttons, blocks, and other ways of conveying information, then your technology is holding you back and it’s time to fix it.

2) Never build your own content management system.

There are a slew of open-source content management systems available for every budget level – Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla, to name a few – and if you’ve got budget and are looking for something a bit more “plug and play” there are several good options there, too.  It is never a good option to build your own CMS or contract with a developer or firm to build your site on his/her/their own homebuilt one-off CMS.  It’s a bad idea for at least two good reasons:

• The big systems have thousands of users who have tested the system, found it’s bugs and weaknesses, and in the case of the open-source solutions devoted their time and brains to making the system better.  Not true with the home-brew CMSes.  Fewer smart minds and fewer users equals a lot less testing and improvement, which means less usability for you, and less likelihood that the system will have grown to accommodate the baseline technology referenced above.
• If you build your website on a home-grown system, you are forever tied to the developer who built the system. There are hundreds of excellent developers with oodles of experience building on Wordpress (just as an example).  If for any reason you want to bring in a new developer, if your site is built on Wordpress you will be awash in terrific options.  A homebuilt system has one or two developers who know it inside and out.  If you want to switch providers, you’re stuck – either with that developer, or with building a whole new website on a better CMS.

That one-off CMS built by your Communications Director’s son’s college roommate might seem like a bargain now, but it will end up being a very costly decision over time.

3) Choose systems that integrate as much as possible.

There are terrific options for managing websites, mass email, social media, membership lists, donors, and more.  Luckily, many of them work together so you don’t have to figure out how to manage multiple databases in order to most effectively communicate with your volunteers, advocates, and donors.  We usually talk about this in the same way we talk about not letting your technology hold you back – having the same people in 10 different places certainly holds you back – but it’s so important we thought it deserved it’s own “thing” in this week’s 3 things.  Keeping track of how people end up on your list, what they best respond to and when, what they like to do, what they can be inspired to do, and how they’re connected to their networks is vital information – online and offline.  Integrating your databases as completely as possible is a good technology investment.

Perhaps she’s right and email will soon join the rotary phone in the dustbin of communications history. But for now, email remains an important and effective commuications tool, albeit one that could use some strategic rethinking.

Three things to consider about your organization’s email list:

1. Size matters, but not as much as you think.

It’s axiomatic that the more people you have on your email list, the more productive that list can be for fundraising, advocacy, education, or almost anything else you’re working to inspire people to do. Of course that’s true, but focus on building as big an email list as possible often comes at the expense of focus on building as strategic an email list as possible.

It should be equally axiomatic that who’s on your email list matters as much as how many. 1,000 deeply committed activists from your target Congressional districts is better than 100,000 vaguely interested people scattered across the country. 500 people with the means to contribute something and personal connection to your organization is better than 5,000 people who are on your list just because they thought they could win an iPad if they consented to getting email from you. 100 people engaged, committed, and inspired enough to talk to their friends, family, and colleagues about your cause or organization may prove more effective than any other list you’ve got (so long as they’re the right 100 people).

So, size matters, but strategy matters more. Think about your approach to building your email list and make sure you’re looking at who you’re building relationships with, what you’re hoping to inspire them to do, and whether they’re the right people to move your mission.

2. Content matters, even more than you think.

Not very long ago, the state of the art thinking on email communications was that they key was consistent communication to keep your organization, cause, candidate, issue top of mind for the people on the email list. The conventional wisdom was that the people on your email list were kind of like moms – we just love to hear from you, even if you don’t really have anything specific to say. - So the priority was establishing a regular calendar, then filling it in with content.

For some lists at some times that might be true, but statistics on open, click-through, and conversion rates point to a new conclusion: what you say is more important than how often you say it. Assuming you’ve recruited the right people onto your list, more important than regular communication is compelling communication. Send an email when you’ve got something of value to offer or some truly important, efficacious way for the people on your list to engage.

3. Email matters. Make it more effective by integrating other channels.

Email is decidedly not dead. Not even mass email.

A few weeks ago a study revealed that 58% of people check email first thing in the morning, before doing anything else online. And mass email lists remain a critical and even growing component of many organization’s fundraising, advocacy, and education program – one that still delivers results.

However, that same study showed that more than 10% of people log onto Facebook first thing, 20% start with a search engine or portal site, and 5% head first to online news. By and large people still check their mailbox on most days and answer their phones. Be creative and test ways to engage your email audience in other channels. (Read the details of the study here: http://bit.ly/cFHXxW.)

I was tickled to be invited to speak.  I gave a presentation on measuring advocacy – an elusive and difficult task.  I’ve posted my presentation slides on the blog, and this week’s Three Things offers up the core of the approach I recommend: focus on inputs, outputs, and outcomes.

1. Inputs - these are the things we put into an advocacy campaign.  Emails sent, tweets tweeted, Facebook posts made, social media interactions, coordinated actions in coalition with other organizations or individuals, etc.  Inputs might be best understood as those things we control – these are the things we do. Inputs are also the easiest things to measure, so they’re among the most commonly measured things.

2. Outputs - these are the immediate results of all of those inputs: Volunteers recruited, petition signatures gathered, email addresses added to the list, Twitter followers, “Likes” on Facebook, emails or calls to legislators, etc.  Outputs are the meat of most advocacy campaigns.  Outputs are the results that are relatively easily measured and easily reported.  Outputs have become the bread and butter of the advocacy world, and are generally among the metrics studiously measured by sophisticated advocacy organizations.

3. Outcomes – these represent the finish line, the win or the loss, and the reason for bothering with all of those inputs and outputs.  Did the legislation pass/fail? Did key decision-makers change their minds? Did the campaign change the world in its intended ways?

As I discussed in my presentation. outputs at the most important level are impossible to measure in ways that trace directly back to any campaign.  Maybe it was all those calls to the Hill that made the difference, or maybe it was a single call to the staffer writing that section of the budget.  The process of policy making  is complex and opaque, and it’s not possible to know exactly what combination of factors led to the outcome.

However, the best advocacy campaigns have a strategy that reflects a solid political theory of change and make decisions about inputs and important outputs with that strategy always at the fore.  It’s critical to measure progress along that theory of change, test it for validity, review, decide, and repeat.  Without taking measurement beyond easily quantifiable input and outputs to frustrating difficult to quantify outputs, decisions about investments of resources – time and dollars – into advocacy activities are impossible to make in an informed way.

So, be honest: if you ponder the metrics you reported on your last advocacy campaign, how many were inputs, how many were outputs, and did you get around to taking a good hard look at outcomes?  Can you make a strong case that your advocacy efforts are connected to making the change you’re fighting for?

Let us know (and, as always, we’re here to help you figure it out if you need us).

-Shayna

This week we’re excited to offer another guest post from one of our brilliant colleagues in the world-changing business: Karen Uffelman at Groundwire recently wrote about finding your “engagement superpower.”  We were inspired and think you will be, too:

Nonprofit organizations all have missions, expertise, and a dependence on other people who care about our missions to get the work done. In a perfect world we would not have to compete for the time, attention and pocketbooks of those people upon which our success depends. We’d have all the support we required and we’d achieve our missions in no time. Comic book villains defeated. Climate change fixed.  Toxics outlawed. Urban sprawl, deforestation, disappearing biodiversity – all of that stuff would be a thing of the past.  Unfortunately, the world’s not perfect yet, and all of those good folks whose help we need have loads of other things on their minds, schedules and budgets.

To make the most difference in this imperfect world, your organization needs an engagement superpower. Here are three bits of guidance as you identify your organization’s superpower and use it for good:

1. How Are You Special?
So how do you build relationships with the good people who care about your cause, make them prioritize your cause, better engage them in your work? One excellent way is to use your unique expertise, access, skills – whatever you’re super at – to provide a product, service or experience that really matters to your target audience.   A value proposition.  And not just some vague value proposition, like, “we protect the environment,” but more along the lines of what can you do for me today? Wonder Woman, for example, fights crime, but her superpowers? Invisible plane, “lasso of truth” and, hello, magic bracelets.

Your engagement superpower shouldn’t distract from your mission-related work. In fact, your superpower should advance your mission, even be integral to it. However, an engagement superpower may be an expansion of or a departure from your historical strategies and tactics. Or something you’re already doing, but not doing much of because you didn’t realize it was a superpower.

2. Learn from Good Examples: Engagement Superpowers in Action
•    Conservation Minnesota – These guys have developed a bunch of engagement superpowers, but the one that I really love is the weather service they offer on their website. Weather is something that people want to know about everyday – and really, it’s probably the most common way that people relate to the natural environment. It’s also the starting point for any conversation about climate change. Offering a weather information service on their website has doubled Conservation Minnesota’s web traffic over the last year, and has served as a gateway for really important policy conversations about climate. Awesome engagement superpower.
•    Washington Trails Association – WTA is working to preserve, enhance, and promote hiking opportunities in Washington State. Cool, right? They lobby the legislature, they organize volunteers to repair trails, they have hiker education programs.  But their engagement superpower is a hiking trails database that is not only a great resource for hikers looking for trail information with recent updates, it’s also a place for those same hikers to post trail reports – giving back in a way that is both fun and useful. The easier it is find a hike and the more you hike, the more invested you are in the Washington Trails Association. In the last year, over 700,000 unique visitors visited WTA’s website to find or post a hike.
•    Ecology Center – The folks at Ecology Center have developed an incredible superpower and you can check it out at their HealthyStuff.org website. Once there, you can research over 5,000 consumer products, including toys and other children’s items, and find out exactly what’s toxic and what’s not. It’s a great service, behavior changer and action motivator all rolled into one. Nothing will get you more fired up about the sad state of consumer product protections than discovering that the Dora the Explorer activity tote you just bought your niece is chock full of lead, chlorine, arsenic and bromine. Yuck! This is a site that I started visiting all of the time once I found out about it.  I’ve told all of my friends with kids about it, and it has seriously engaged me in the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign.

3. Important Superpower Questions
How do you know if an experience, service or product you offer is actually an engagement superpower? Or if it has the potential to become one, if you just invested a little more?
•    Is there a market for your superpower? Is it something people actually want? Really? Would people pay for it? We’re not saying that you should charge for your superpower, but if you’re doing something that people would be willing to pay for, that’s a pretty good clue that it has superpower appeal. If you have to organize, cajole or guilt people into using or taking advantage of your superpower, well….it’s probably not a superpower.
•    Does your superpower attract people with whom you’d not otherwise be in contact?
•    Does your superpower cause people to identify themselves to you and enter into the beginning of relationship that you can further develop?
•    Is your superpower uniquely excellent? Is it something that your target audience can’t readily get from anyone else?
•    Does your superpower make your mission personally relevant to the lives of the people with whom you’re seeking to connect? This is really the key. For the true believers in your mission, they already take your issue personally. But for all of the rest of us who might be volunteering, taking action, contributing or otherwise supporting you, providing value around what’s personally relevant to us related to your issue is the best way to engage and expand your base.

Today’s Three Things is the second of a two-part series by Rebecca Epstein, the Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of Client Services at The Management Center (TMC). The Management Center (TMC) works with talented nonprofit leaders who are experts in their fields, have thrived as individual performers, and now must learn how to get things done through other people – in other words, how to manage. Learn more about TMC at www.managementcenter.org.

As we noted last week, much has been written about the importance of giving people a sense of ownership over their work, but significantly less attention has been paid to what it means to be a good owner. The two practices of handing over ownership and being a good owner are inextricably linked: without trusting that a staff member will really drive a piece of work forward and take responsibility for its success, it’s much harder for managers to delegate full ownership (or, as is often the case, to delegate work at all beyond the simplest of tasks!).

Last week we offered up three tips to get a handle on “owning” a piece of work. This week, we’re following up with three more tips to make you an effective owner, and thereby a more effective manager.

Here’s the headline: Do it all with a spirit of ownership! Even in the context of the best-planned work, issues will inevitably arise: people won’t respond to your repeated calls and emails, timelines will shift due to circumstances outside your direct control, unexpected costs will outweigh limited resources. One way or another, you can pretty much bank on things not going according to plan all the time. In our experience, there are generally two types of owners: the helpless victim who thinks her hands are tied when problems arise and often makes things harder (e.g., “there’s no way we can meet deadline now”) and the can-do driver who takes things in stride, adjusts to new circumstances, and finds ways to keep moving forward (e.g., “if we move our internal deadline back by one week we’ll be able to focus on Convention and still get the book in on time”).

Can-do drivers come in many shapes and sizes but they all have one thing that makes them successful owners. We’ll call it the “Spirit of the O” and it looks like this:

1. Creative problem-solving: You actively re-strategize when issues come up, surface options, get input/approval as needed, and continue driving work forward, even if it means finding and then navigating another road. You’re not wedded to one way of doing things and because you’re focused on your outcomes (see ownership Part I), you’re flexible in how you get there.

2. Proactive approach: You realize that because success or failure lies with you, it’s unlikely that your co-workers are lying awake at night thinking about the project you own. You also recognize that sending out a brilliant action plan or polished email with clear next steps does not mean that your Helpers are automatically on it. As a result, you don’t wait for deadlines to pass or problems to arise – you take active steps to meet or prevent them, checking-in along the way, sending friendly reminder emails before deadlines come around, and nudging/cajoling as needed to keep things on track.

3. Good attitude and a focus on results: You approach your work with a can-do attitude, staying focused on where you’re trying to get and pushing past the bumps to reach the finish line. Because you enjoy your work and bring a spirit of optimism, others want to work with you and help you succeed. Sounds trite, but it’s true.

Again, being an effective owner is not easy. It takes knowing what you need to own, bringing others into the process at the right times in the right ways, and approaching it all with a true spirit of ownership. While the benefits of ownership are many – empowerment, responsibility, even happiness – the pitfall is that you’re on the hook for great work (with power comes responsibility). We think the tradeoff is well worth it and leads to happier staff, happier managers, and better outcomes for the world.

At The Management Center, our mission is to instill the management practices that make it easier for progressive leaders and their organizations to get results.

We predictably spend a lot of time teaching management skills. More surprisingly, we also find ourselves often teaching “ownership” skills; that is, how to effectively drive your own work forward and manage up, across, and down to do so.

While much has been written about the importance of giving people a sense of ownership over their work, there’s significantly less attention paid to what it means to be a good owner (in fact, so much less that we’ve had trouble finding resources on the topic).

The two practices of handing over ownership and being a good owner are inextricably linked: without trusting that a staff member will really drive a piece of work forward and take responsibility for its success, it’s much harder for managers to delegate full ownership (or, as is often the case, to delegate work at all beyond the simplest of tasks!).

This week we offer up three tips to get a handle on “owning” a piece of work. Next week, we’ll follow up with three tips to make you an effective owner, and thereby a more effective manager.

1. Be Clear About Who The “Owner” Is: The first Ownership Rule of Thumb is that everything (goals, projects, tasks, specific next steps) needs an owner – and only one owner – who is responsible for the work’s success or failure, ensuring that it gets done (either directly or via others) and that others are engaged appropriately along the way.

In the words of one client, the owner is the “obsessor” (i.e., the person who wakes up in the morning thinking about whether or not the work is on track and what needs to happen next). Without clarity about ownership, it’s impossible to take the next steps.

2. Know What You’re Owning: So, you’ve identified that you own a project, task, goal, or other critically important thing. Now what?

· Step 1: To start, begin at the end by agreeing on what success looks like. Ask your manager to paint a picture of what she envisions and make sure you have the same idea in mind.

· Step 2: Next, fill in the details. Once you have a good picture of where you’re going, you’ll want to fill in any relevant other details. The trusty “5 Ws” is one way to make sure you’ve covered your bases. Who else should be involved? What else is important to know? When does it need to be completed by? Where does this fall among current priorities? Why is this task important?

· Step 3: Repeat it back! Sharing what you’re taking away is a simple way to check for alignment, giving you a chance to capture your takeaways and your manager an opportunity to add/subtract/refine expectations as needed.

3. Manage Your MOCHA! As an owner – especially within progressive nonprofits where we place high value on involving multiple stakeholders – you will likely need to engage other people in your work along the way. The “MOCHA” model can help managers and owners be transparent upfront about who needs to be involved and how.

• M = Manager assigns responsibility and holds owner accountable. Makes suggestions, asks hard questions, reviews progress, serves as a resource, and intervenes if things are off-track.
• O = Owner has overall responsibility for the success or failure of the project and ensures the work gets done (and that others are involved appropriately).
• C = Consulted should be asked for input and/or needs to be bought in.
• H = Helper(s) are available to do part of the work.
• A = Approver signs off on decisions before they are final. May be the Owner or Manager, though may also be others in the organization (for example, the Executive Director or board).

Bringing in the right people in the right ways and at the rights times is a key component of good ownership.  To do so, you’ll need to stay on top of your Helpers’ work as well as your own and make sure that the rest of your MOCHA has the information and resources they need to keep the work moving forward.

Happy owning, and stay tuned for Part II: Doing it with the Power of O!

We know our client isn’t alone in this situation, so this week: three things to help make the best of scary levels of uncertainty:

1) Articulate and clarify the costs of failure. That’s a big scary word: FAILURE.  Break it down.  If the launch is a dud, then what? What is lost?  Is this the last chance to get it right, or just the first? Will funding evaporate? Board members be mad? Will you lose face in your community.  Lay it all out there… then you can work through the Plans B, C, and D.

2) Identify what you think is the weakest link, and work through any potential fixes. Maybe your website still isn’t up to snuff, even after investment and work, but you’ve got to launch now. Is there anything you can do before you can go in and fix it? Perfect a landing page? Focus on making the main ask perfect?  What are the immediate next things you can do to make it right, just as soon as you have time/money/capacity?

3) Figure out the first thing you need to learn. You’re about to jump: what’s the very first bit of data you’re listening and looking for?  Maybe it’s low hanging fruit: see if this landing page results in email signups better than that landing page.  Or maybe it’s partners: did any of them go above and beyond in helping spread the word, or was any partners’ community particularly receptive?  Pick one or two things that you can change quickly in response to data that will arrive shortly after launch, and focus on learning what you can.

Making the world a better place is big important stuff, and sometimes we need to leap in big scary ways to make it happen.  We can’t always make our efforts perfect, and even if we could “perfect” may not be what’s required.  So… we hope you’ll do your best and learn from your successes and failures to make it better.  Onward!  (And wish our fab client luck!)

1.  What’s your “raison d’etre?” In other words:  What are you doing here?  Why are you running this campaign?  What problem are you going to solve?  This may seem like a no-brainer, but all too often we see candidates, organizations and coalitions who don’t take the time on the front end to get on the same page and really answer this question.

And your answer should be as specific as possible, so you can better do all that comes next.  You can’t solve World Peace, but your campaign efforts might be convince President Obama’s State Department to put money for universal education in their budget request.

Just like when defining your goals, defining your campaign’s reason for being should be clear, focused and specific.  And all of the major players need to be in agreement on the front end to avoid bickering and disagreement later on.

2.  Who are the major players? In an electoral campaign, this would be your candidate, leadership staff, core “kitchen-cabinet” advisers, and a few major donors/raisers.  In an issue campaign it’s most likely going to be organizational staff (who’s in charge of this specific campaign), board members, top external advocates, elected officials supporting your issue, partnering organizations, and key donors.

Identifying who needs to be brought into the fold early on will help you accomplish goals later, and again, help diffuse any potential conflicts before they begin.

3.  What is your true capacity? The answer to this question will dictate the rest of your campaign planning.  Building a beautiful plan that requires 37 staff members and $27 million dollars to execute won’t do you any good if you’ve got a budget of $27 and a staff of 1.  Take a hard look at each of your major player’s capacities and abilities and then design your initial campaign plan around those elements.  Part of the plan should most likely include using your current capacity build and expand that capacity by bringing in new money to hire new staff to manage new volunteers, but off the bat you really need to be honest with your expectations and abilities so you don’t set the whole campaign up to fail before it even has a chance to succeed.

There are many, many, many other factors to consider when beginning a campaign, but without these first 3, it will be nearly impossible to go wrong on the rest.

Tell us what we missed:  drop us a line here.  Or, be in touch if we can be helpful getting you started with your new campaign!

1.  Keep It Personal. Don’t just blind copy hundreds of bloggers on a mass press release.  Just like in traditional PR, getting the coverage you want is more often than not about building relationships based on trust and the promise of mutual assistance.

When reaching out to blogs, do it individually with personal messages that show you’ve actually read that persons blog and have some awareness of their point of view as well as a sense of who their reader is.  Then, show them why your issue will be appealing as content to their readers specifically.

2.  Let them know how it will help them. Everyone is busy, so be clear about why this is a good thing for them too.  Tell them how you will spread the word about the post to your audience (thus expanding their potential readership). In addition, offer to write a guest post where you do all the work, and all they have to do it post it.

3.  Start small. The best way to gain credibility with the big blogs is to get your content posted on small blogs first, and then work your way up.  So, start with what Pick refers to as “C-List” blogs and establish yourself (or your organization) as thought-leaders, then leverage that presence when reaching out to B-list and then A-list blogs.

With studies showing that more and more Americans are looking to blogs as their primary source of news and information, organizations can no longer rely solely on “traditional media” to spread their message and establish their reputation.  If your organization isn’t already reaching out to blogs as part of your communications mix, hopefully Tom’s great article can get you started.