Thursday August 14- Testing

Hi !

The lighter side of: What’s cookin this week

In this week’s enews…

• Failure? Yes and no

• What to test this year

• Learn from the good: Your awesomesauce

• Great post: How to conduct interviews

• Strategy Insider: How effective are your programs?

• They’re getting rid of what?!

The solution to the Triple E (enews easter egg) from two weeks ago: Air Supply songs. I’m a fan.

Last week I tried something new. I asked you to test your online donation form.

The connection to year-end campaigns? You’ll be directing traffic to that page and you want to raise max money from max donors.

But that’s not the only reason for last week’s request. It has to do with a MAJOR pain point of most nonprofits… especially when it comes to fundraising. It’s a pain point that almost paralyzes organizations into not acting.

And that can hurt you, especially when you have so much riding on your year-end campaign.

Let’s dive into testing, the pain point and how to go from survival to thrival. 

Spy vs. Spy: I failed. Or maybe not. 

I decided to try something new. Rather than sharing a full edition with best practices related to your online donation form, I encouraged you to test it out yourself and share your findings with me.

Here’s the data: .006 of you took me up on my challenge. That’s six tenths of one percent.

A very very low conversion rate.

So going by the data my idea failed. I didn’t convince enough of you to take the donation form test.

But was it a failure?

My two favorite hashtags are #AlwaysBeLearning and #AlwaysBeTesting. To move forward and to grow, we need to experiment and test to know what works and what doesn’t.

That applies to life, business and yes, nonprofits.

But bring up the issue of testing something to see the results and most nonprofits will shy away. Some will voice fierce opposition to testing something new.

If I were to ask how many of you heard during your nonprofit career “but we’ve always done it this way” I’m pretty sure the positive response rate would be well north of 50%.

Because so many organizations live in poverty/scarcity mindset, they are risk averse. They won’t test because they could lose money. And since the almighty dollar rules, we can’t risk losing even a dollar.

To which I always respond: But what if it turns out you tested and it succeeded? It helped you surpass your goals? By not testing you won’t know!

Like last week’s edition, I will test certain things in the enews to see what works and what doesn’t. I’m not just testing anything. I think and consider each test before launching.

But I DO test because I want to make this enews better, make sure you’re getting max benefit from it.

If your organization wants to go from survival to thrival, you MUST include testing within your fundraising and marketing plan. It will help you understand your audience better. Know what that will lead to?

Building better relationships. What does that lead to?

A boost in retention and lifetime giving. What does that lead to?

More people served and greater impact in the community.

Who doesn’t want that?!

Let’s talk about testing and the year-end campaign you’re working on.

Drawn out dramas: Test to surpass your year-end goal

Let’s start with what’s working:

If parts of past year-end campaigns have worked well, then repetition can save you time and money.

And by all means, repeat those direct mail letters and emails the following year! (Take a look at this great post about what to repeat with your year-end campaigns.)

But I wanna share with you three tests you should consider for your 2025 year-end campaign: Two related to direct mail and one to email.

1️⃣ Take a look at this envelope:

I managed that organization’s year-end campaign for six years. At the outset they wanted a standard envelope in white and nothing on the front besides address and return address. Over the years I convinced them to spend a little more money each year and try something new.

Why? Because the outer envelope has ONE goal: To get people to open it. Spend all the time you want on the letter copy but if a person doesn’t open the envelope…

The above image shows three things I recommended testing so the envelope would stand out in someone’s mailbox and boost the number of envelope opens:

1. A different envelope size than the standard

2. A color other than white (pink is one of their branded colors)

3. A message along the bottom (“Thanks for the bra!” creates curiosity. People wanna open and find out what it’s referring to)

Outcome: Their year-end campaigns consistently had an ROI of 350-500%. That means that the total money raised at year-end was 350-500% MORE than what it cost them to print and send!

2️⃣ In addition to doing testing on the envelope, I suggested some testing with the actual letter. One year here’s what we decided to do along the bottom of the letter:

On the back side was an appeal to become a monthly giver. The goals were to:

• Encourage people to donate online instead of sending in a check (we put the website URL for the online donation form on this “tear off” in pink)

• Encourage more people to become monthly donors

With another nonprofit I worked with, I suggested they add a QR code on the direct mail reply card. The QR code would link to the organization’s online donation form- an easy way to mobilize people to donate online.

Both of the above are easy tests you should consider.

3️⃣ For email, I’d like you to consider testing your subject line.

You can conduct two tests:

1. Use the subscriber’s first name in the subject line (can lead to a boost of up to 50% in open rate)

2. Test two different subject lines

You’ll be sending… you’d better be sending multiple emails for your year-end campaign.

Let’s say you have 1,000 subscribers. With the first email of the campaign send subject line A to 500 subscribers and subject line B to the other half.

Give it 24-48 hours before checking for “final” data. See which email had a higher open rate and which email had a higher click thru rate. Now you know which subject line works best which means that for subsequent emails you can use the winning subject line once or twice more to boost opens, click thrus and conversions.

(And if you’re gonna say: But Ephraim, you told us that open rate is a vanity metric and is unreliable! My response: 🎯 But in this case I will look at it to see which subject line caused more people to open the email. It won’t be exact but the ballpark figure will be good enough.)

Do the same as above with adding or not adding the person’s first name in the subject line.

With email you can also test:

• Image used in the email

• Parts of the content

• The verbiage of the CTA button

Here’s the point: Yes, testing can be scary because you don’t know the results in advance. But by not testing (in a smart, thoughtful and calculated way based on best practices!) you’re potentially preventing your nonprofit from raising more and growing.

2025 is your year to test. Try one thing, review the results and make decisions based on data and feedback.

Use testing to help you surpass your year-end goal!

Fundraising expert T. Clay Buck, when discussing testing, quoted Australian poet Erin Hanson:

“What if I fall?” “Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?”

Snappy answers to stupid questions: Learn from the good

In this section I will share with you something good being done by a nonprofit that you can learn from.

Your website has to clearly articulate what you do and how you do it.

While on the Urban Health Partnerships website, I saw this image:

They lay out their roadmap in a very clear way. What they provide, who benefits and the outcomes. All in one image. Great stuff!

Do you have something similar on your website? Please reply to this email with a link! I’m always on the lookout for great images/graphics that explain what a nonprofit does.

Fold ins: A little of this and that

In this section I’m going to share with you great content I’ve picked out that you can learn from.

1. How to conduct interviews for your fundraising storytelling. MUST READ! (Moceanic)

2. Best practices for your website’s impact page (Wired Impact)

3. Fundraising copy checklist- the first 4 tips (Clairification)

4. Fundraising copy checklist- the next 4 tips (Clairification)

5. The do’s and dont’s of online auctions (FundraisingIP)

One day at the…: How to change people’s lives

In this section I’m going to share with you how I build strategies for nonprofits. Each week I’ll share another piece and over the coming months you’ll see how everything fits together.

Knowing who the nonprofit serves is important. But diving into HOW they serve them is critical.

Part of my deep dive analysis (which I do before building out a custom strategy) is to do a comprehensive review of the programs and services the organization offers. This allows me to understand how this organization works to solve a problem and impact people.

I will talk to program staff to learn about the programs, who they’re offered to, when and where they take place, what’s the expected outcome and why they believe this is the most effective method of changing people’s lives.

Additionally, I dive into the “backend” of the services. I want to see:

• How programs are evaluated for efficacy

• How the organization determines whether to open something new or close an existing service

• Are there playbooks or manuals to help new staff and volunteers learn about the programs and how to operate them

All of the above information provides me what I need to help a nonprofit consider their current offerings and what to keep, what to add and what to shutter. Those are important decisions that will affect the short and long-term planning and health of the organization.

So far I’ve shared with you my deep dive into fundraising, marketing, platforms, interviews, competition, the Board, grants, organizational processes, gratitude, content, staff and programs. Next week I’ll be discussing the mission.

Movie and TV parodies: WTF?!

It’s hard when things from way back become obsolete. Or when the people you watched on TV growing up die. (Dee from What’s Happening?!)

But getting rid of this?! This is the way it started! The sound of the Internet! Phooey.

I’ll be back next Thursday. Have a great weekend!

🎶 I had a collection of best hits from the 80s playing while working on the enews. Best decade of music. I won’t be taking arguments to the contrary.

P.S. In the coming weeks I’m going to have some new offerings to help you boost your fundraising and marketing. Stay tuned!