Justgiving's blog

Email 101

Back in the springy haze of March, I wrote a little post about email.

Emailing your friends is still the bread and butter of winning at online fundraising. Sure, there are lots of other ways you can alert people to a Justgiving page, what with the emergence of Facebook apps and widgets and so on and so forth. Email is still kicking referral posterior though, and here's why:

It's important to recognise the concept of direct and indirect asks, and the differences they can make towards smashing your target. As I mentioned in the previous post about email, it's super-important to break people up into groups and change the message content accordingly.

You can even use different methods for different groups. Many JG'ers call close friends and family about sponsorship first, or speak face-to-face, and then follow it up with an email reminder in case they forget the url.

You can then follow it up with group emails to everyone at work and your other friends and family you might not see as often (that guy from uni whose name you've forgotten, and Uncle Bob, for example).

Once everyone's been directly asked, that's when all the Facebook / MySpace / blog widget action can start kicking into gear.

I've got loads of Facebook friends whose email addresses I don't have to hand, but I can send them all a nice link to a JG page by building a new group, or adding the Facebook app to my profile.

Purely adding the app on its own without an ask can spur curiosity from folk you don't speak to that often, or Facebook 'friends' who you'd have difficulty classifying as a proper friend. You never know, if your personal message is good enough and they've forgiven you for that time you broke their xbox/kissed their sister/appeared as an extra on Eastenders, then they might sponsor you.

It's their choice, and that's the whole point. If it's a great cause, and it's visible to enough people who have at least a passing recollection of who you are, it can all help towards raising those vitals funds. There's plenty of time too, you can keep updating things on networks and help build a story around what you're doing. It not only provides a nice history of what you did, but it's something to follow for everyone that knows you.

Have you got any tips on how you've managed asking everyone for sponsorship? Share it in the comments or email me.

How to Raise More Money

It's high-time for some tips. Everyone loves tips.

New readers might not have found the Clinic series we did earlier on in the year, which gives an insider's view on raising funds effectively on Justgiving.

It's especially useful for those out there who've got hefty targets to hit, but I think it's fair to say every fundraiser wants to do their best and there's some pretty nifty techniques on how to maximise the cash with the minimum amount of stress.

Check out the clinic category here, some of the topics covered include using widgets and RSS feeds, choosing a good URL, printing stuff out to give to your friends and lots more.

JG:Clinic part 9 - Tell All Your Friends to Tell All Their Friends

We're loving the way that widgets are being adopted. The days of depending on email to make the ask are clearly numbered. The best part is, widgets can help to inform people you don't necessarily know that well. You can ask your friends to host a widget for you or forward on an email to other groups who might be interested.

Andrew and Natalya's website has been cropping up regularly. They're encouraging all of their fellow bloggers to host their JG Widget and even mirror the required code on their own site:

I asked Natalya how it's been going. Here's what she said:

'At the moment we have around 30-40 blogs and websites that show the widget for us. It's encouraged a lot of people to view our site and the Justgiving page which is excellent'.

So that means they're getting bonus clickthroughs from here, here, over there, somewhere else, other places and lots more besides. Brilliant work.

You don't have to blog though, you can just ask directly on your page, like Yvonne has for her London Marathon page:

It all works, and it all drives extra traffic to your fundraising page. This ultimately results in more donations, so give it a go!

JG:Clinic part 8 - Badge Your Email Signature

Ever since we launched the widget at the end of last year, lots of you have been asking for something to put in your email signature. Widgets work on websites, but not in email signatures. However the Badge on the other hand does work as an email signature in Outlook.

I've made a short video to show how it's done:

A couple of points:

- If your work email has got super-draconian security settings (ie. you're not allowed to change your own signature and it's managed by some chap in the IT dept), then you might not have access to do this.

- The same goes if you're on a networked system like Citrix.

- Webmail. Now I know some webmail services do support HTML signatures, so why not have a play around with the code. If you get it working in Hotmail, Gmail, AOL or any of the others then let me know and we can share the knowledge with everyone else.

Have fun!

JG:Clinic part 7 - Using the Social Web

So you already have a Justgiving page. That's a great start but there are lots of other websites that can help your fundraising further. The best thing about the new social web is that all the individual services can work together to help you. Take a look at this lovely diagram:

A Justgiving page can be a starting point for an entire education about your fundraising. In the personal message section you can hyperlink to everything if you want to: your blog, flickr account, YouTube videos and everything else inbetween. The best part is, you can track the activity on all of these by subscribing to all the various RSS feeds.

The easiest way of doing this in our opinion is to set your browser homepage to Netvibes, Pageflakes or Google Personalised. My current favourite is Netvibes. Here's a shot of a demo page I built:

Click to go large

Clockwise from top right: Our MySpace comments, our blog, the FG blog, Justgiving tags on del.icio.us, our flickr stream and finally three fundraising pages that I'm keeping an eye on.

The beauty of RSS is being able to pull in all the content I want and put it where I want it, without having to visit all of the sites individually. It's easy to set up and much more convenient.

So are Justgiving users doing this? Yes. Have a look at Jeremy's blog. He has got everything and his fundraising page and blog work together seamlessly to keep all of his readers and sponsors up to date with his challenge. Follow his example and you'll spend less time chasing up your data, and your sponsors will feel more connected to your event.

Let me know if you're using other websites to promote your Justgiving page.

JG:Clinic part 6 - Ruling URLs

One of the reasons I haven't jumped feet-first onto the Facebook bandwagon is that they haven't sorted out a decent short URL structure like MySpace, del.icio.us, flickr or we have.

Here's a link to Kai's Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/p/Kai_Chan_Vong/506185987

Catchy!

I can almost picture him out and about, shouting 'FORWARD SLASH, LITTLE P, FORWARD SLASH, KAI UNDERSCORE CHAN UNDERSCORE VONG, FORWARD SLASH LOTS OF MEANINGLESS NUMBERS' to get people to visit.

Although Facebook mostly grows via hyperlinking and email, there's always an advantage to having a memorable short URL. Bands often announce their MySpace URLs onstage. People swap them in pubs and clubs instead of phone numbers. It's becoming a commodity and with the onset of initiatives such as OpenID, the URL will get more and more relevant.

So bearing that in mind, do give plenty of thought to your Justgiving URL. Availability means you won't always be able to just have your name (eg. www.justgiving.com/simon went in 2003!). So think of some memorable examples that will help your sponsors remember where your page is. Make them as intriguing as possible and you're going to multiply your clickthrough rate, which ultimately helps your fundraising total. Here are some good ones:

/cycle2012 - Cycling, Olympic year, not what you'd expect

/mymomentofmadness -  I wonder what it was...

/NoelEdmondsIsInnocent - No deal.

/Stelios40th - No, I wasn't invited either.

/reformedfatkid - Go former fat kid, go!

/mattinmanure - Ewww...

/dysfunctionals - They'll make it!

So keep it short and memorable. Avoid really long URLs incase people type it in wrong (and it doesn't fit on your cards), also avoid underscores and hyphens because they can cause confusion too.

JG:Clinic part 5 - Why am I doing this again?

This fits in with what I wrote earlier about customising your personal message. It's also something really simple to do, that loads of marathon runners (and other fundraisers for that matter) forget about completely.

Why am I doing this?

A common error when asking for sponsorship is to make no mention of the story behind the challenge itself. It's OK to say 'I'm running the marathon, it's a long way, please sponsor me'. Thousands of people say that every year. Funnily enough, everyone already knows it's a long way, and that it's no walk in the park.

Effective fundraising pages communicate very clearly the core reason behind why that person is undertaking this particular challenge. Let's have a look at a really good one:

Sarah's page is great. Not only does she give the personal background into why she's doing it ('the marathon seed was well and truly planted in my mind last year when some colleagues ran it. Plus, I spend half my life in the gym, so I figured I may as well have a goal and do it for a good cause'), but she's gone into detail about how her charity will benefit:

'The difference this fund raising can make is phenomenal, given the size of the charity (£50k cost turnover p.a.) and the related positive affects of successful counselling.'

Donors love knowing that their money makes a tangible difference to a charity and not that it's just disappearing into some massive pot somewhere. Sarah's communicated this really well, so it's no surprise she's already exceeded her target by over £500 with more than a month to go before the big day.

She's also asked for some inspiration: 'I'd love it if you could give me names of tunes to load on to my iPod'.

So in the comments section her donors are gradually building up her marathon playlist. Take a look:



So has anyone else found a great way of involving their sponsors? Let me know.

JG:Clinic part 4 - Print it out!

A couple of years ago James and I were at the London Marathon Expo, eating too many sweets. A very excited chap called Alan bounded over to show us his business cards. Sadly we don't have a photo, and I think it succumbed to the Great Flood of 2006, but he'd made a card with his Justgiving url on it.

'I don't have everyone's email address' he said.
'Wow, that's awesome' said James and I in unison.

Well as part of the Clinic, I'd like to expand on this idea a little.

Cards are great for lots of reasons:

• they fit in your wallet
• they're not sponsorship forms, so no hassle
• you can make them look nice
• you'll get sponsorship from people in the pub whose email address you don't have
• they're still not sponsorship forms

So where to get them done? Well the cheap option is to make them yourself, print them out, chop them up and get busy dishing them out.

The slightly less cheap, but more exciting option is to go and check out our friends at moo.com

All you need is a flickr photo account and a spare tenner, and they'll print 100 individually customised cards for you and deliver them in double-quick time. If you don't have a flickr account they've still got some great galleries to choose from.

Here's some moo cards:

Aren't they pretty? Check out this Canadian blogger who is doing this right now.

Give it a go, print them out and let us know if it makes a difference. We owe it to Alan.

JG:Clinic part 3 - Emailing People

A short but important one today. If you've just built a fundraising page recently, or if you've got one without any cash on it yet then this could help.

Don't email everyone at the same time

Why not?

Well, let's say you've got 100 contacts you plan to email your fundraising page to. Within that potential donor pool, you'll have maybe five or more different types of person: close family, extended family, some colleagues, a few old school friends and your best mates for example.

You can't treat all of these people the same in your emails. Close family and friends (ie, your mum, dad, husband, wife and pet rabbit) should always be the first port of call. They need to get the page started with a bang.

Here's a grab from Dan and Andrew's Golfing Challenge page (click if it's too small):

Well done Mum and Dad. Once they've done their bit and put some decent money onto the page then you're free to craft your communications to the 'maybe' crowd. Due to the law of averages, your sponsors will look at the amounts others have donated and probably go for a similar figure.

Without that more personalised approach at the start, you could be stuck with a page that has a lower average donation. Just a thought.

JG:Clinic part 2 - Fun with Photos

Do photos on a fundraising page make a difference?

The short answer is yes. Allow me to demonstrate:

Ben is doing the Marathon des Sables.

That's in the Sahara Desert. It's also the 'toughest footrace on earth'.

Lots of sand? Check.

Would I recognise Ben? Check.

Ironic t-shirt? Check.

10/10 there. Here's another:

Fay, Cathy and Nicola are doing the Moonwalk.

Amusing take on our cartoons? 10 bonus points.

Proficiency with Photoshop? Definitely.

Communicates the theme of the event? Check.

Are they smiley? Yup.

Here's one more good 'un:

Stephen and Duncan are cycling through Ireland.

Do they have bikes? Check.

Proper looking 'tour de france style' bikes? Oh yes.

Lycra? Plenty.

Matching polo shirts, like they're in a team? Indeed.

The point is easy. If you upload a really good photo that is easily recognisable, is relevant to your event and maybe a bit funny then it will definitely help your potential sponsors connect to you and what you're doing.

What we don't like seeing on pages so much are our stock cartoons. So if you've been putting it off, sort that photo out right now, and don't forget that you can update it as often as you like, or even make a fancy animated one.