Most of us by now are aware of YouTube. It's been used to send funny clips and music videos to colleagues and friends millions of times over. So popular is it in fact that by the end of 2008 it is estimated that over 50% of the entire traffic across the internet will be video streaming from the now Google owned YouTube.com

YouTube can be more than just a source of amusement though. It provides a powerful emotive medium that fundraisers and marketers can take advantage of. Whether it is explaining concepts or connecting people with the faces of those bearing hardship or tragedy, video is unequalled as a communication medium.

For fundraisers in particular, it is important that you are able to establish an emotional connection between your audience and your cause. YouTube provides a method for you to do that.

Here is a great example of what is possible. This video tells the story of Richard Hoyt who has a son, Rick, who has Cerebral Palsy. Over the years they have produced many videos telling their story and have been portrayed in many articles, interviews and new items. Richard was originally an unfit man when Rick asked if he could take part in a fun run. They are now seasoned competitors in tri-athlete  and marathons the world over. Why? Because after that first run Rick told his dad that when running he “didn’t feel disabled any more”. It’s a truly emotional story.

Now imagine harnessing videos like this to make connections with your customers and supports? Don’t you think that would make a difference to your message?

Yesterday DMS ran its HI TECH High Tea presentation to a number of Brisbane’s leading fundraisers. During the presentation I promised attendees that I would be updating my blog that afternoon but I’m only just getting to it, so fantastic has the response been. I should have known given that we originally planned for 20 to 30 attendees and had nearly 60 and further, had to cap that after only ten days of promotion.

Since the presentation, we’ve already had dozens of emails and phone calls thanking us, complimenting us on both the execution of the event and its content and asking us for repeat presentations to board members, demonstrations of our products and quotes for web development.

The Hi-Tech High Tea was run by DMS at Brisbane’s famous Joseph Alexander’s restaurant on Coronation Drive. It was a great networking event for all of us there and judging by the feedback we received, it was extremely topical.

DMS have been working on extending our MAILman fundraising and CRM applications for the last twelve months so that organisations no longer have separate website and in-house software systems. We were able to show this off as well demonstrate how social networking sites, Web 2 technologies and a whole variety of other internet related issues are changing the landscape for not-for-profits and commercial organisations alike.

DMS are now planning to run repeat presentations in the coming months in Brisbane again, as well as Sydney and Melbourne. If you would like to register your interest in attending this event or you know colleagues who might be interested send me an email and I’ll make sure you’re included in the invitations list.

Here’s some of the feedback we received from the event.

Finally, I’d like to thank everybody involved, in particular my fantastic staff who did an amazing job. So much so that we had professional event managers in the audience praising how well the event was run. Thank you also to everyone who attended and helped make it such a success. And we appreciate all the kind words you’ve given us.

This morning DMS ran a highly successful presentation on the use of
Web 2.0 technology for fundraisers.  Nearly 60 people from over 30 different
Not For Profit organisations attended. 
DMS would like to thank all attendees and we hope this session has been highly informative.

There are a lot of organisations out there looking for product or products to solve their web marketing problems. They often get caught up in feature comparisons and wish lists and looking at how they might solve their current internet marketing issues.

When I talk to clients I try to speak in terms of strategy rather than solution.

The problem with a solution based offering is that it can only encompass the issues that your organisation is facing right now, or at least those it can envisage it will face in the near future. With the internet moving so quickly however, this is not enough.

For example, who, six months ago would have factored Facebook into their marketing strategy? And yet today it needs to be given at least consideration.

The internet is such a dynamic environment at the moment and it is likely to continue to be so for the foreseeable future. I’m encouraging customers to look not for products that can solve particular products but for an organisation to partner with over the long term.

I’m also suggesting that they also need to budget with this in mind. An internet solution is not like buying an accounting system. Your requirements in a few months’ time might be very different to what they are today. Yes an initial investment is required to get going but so too is an on-going commitment to keep pace important. This doesn’t mean that you need to be on the bleeding edge. For most clients we strongly recommend against that. Let us and others face that expensive battle. But it does mean that you need to be prepared and resources sufficiently to take advantage of the proven new opportunities as they present themselves.

At DMS we have a team of people constantly researching a variety of technologies and assessing their viability; comparing how they might be used to leverage our various clients’ positions, looking at the cost of implementation, trying to work out how to make them easier to use and a whole variety of other things. On an almost daily basis, we encounter new problems and opportunities and it’s not just in the area of software development.

In addition to our development team, we also have Google experts, graphic artists, copy writers and we take advice from other external experts who focus on specific areas like RSS, Blogging, Twitter, Facebook and many others. Add to that the people who work on the areas like changes in SMS marketing, direct mail and print advertisements and various combinations and becomes quite a complex ever changing process.

To give you an idea of what this is like I thought I might list just some of the areas we’ve worked on just this last week:

-          Facebook marketing campaign results which resulted in thousands of new contacts but only a couple hundred dollars of revenue.

-          Rendering of emails; many organisations have looked at the issue of how their web pages are rendered differently in different browsers and computers, but what about those HTML emails you send out? How do they look on a 3G cell phone or Blackberry which is where an increasing number of people are reading them.

-          What is the best method of delivery of donation receipts or art union/lottery tickets, email with a PDF attachment or a physical mail piece? The emails often get blocked and some people don’t have the same confidence in having a PDF in their inbox versus a physical piece of paper in their hands. On the other hand, email gives you that immediate response and lower fulfilment costs but can result also in higher customer service costs if they go astray. Is it better to select one or the other for on-line orders or offer a choice? Should the same choice be offered to telephone and mail orders? So far we’ve been unable to find any research on this interesting topic.

-          We have a new best practices document for credit card data storage for our customers.

-          We have been discussing a variety of new attack vectors being utilised by hackers.

-          We’ve been experimenting with server performance and how it is affected by some of these new technologies when implementing on a large scale.

-          How do we improve Google’s ability to see data published through content management systems and how do we increase the frequency of search engine spiders crawling our website?

These and many other subjects have been worked on in just the last five days here at DMS. This is on top of all of the other things that we have to do of course.

It’s a never ending challenge but one that we as a team love. No one operates as a silo and each of us has work that influences the others. Then we have to package it all up and show what we’ve learnt to our customers delivering both products and expertise.

This is what a serious organisation needs to do in order to do well in today’s market. And this is what we offer to our clients. As you can see we’ve come a long way from shipping prepacked software.

Here at DMS we try to practice what we preach. For example, we use our own software for all of our customer relationship management, data quality, postal barcoding, campaign management etc. But we also like to employ the same techniques and approaches that we recommend to our customers when doing our own marketing.

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to run a road show to promote our new MAILman web integration. This road-show was targeted initially towards Brisbane (Sydney and Melbourne coming soon) based Not for Profit organisations that met our particular criteria for size, ability to purchase and interest level. Of course having relevant and topical subject matter to present and good marketing creative was important. But what we felt was most important was who we contacted and how.

We decided to use a variety of methods both to contact people and allow them to respond. For example, we used both our own contact lists and rented contact lists to communicate with different sectors of our target market via e-mail, post, telephone and networking. As expected, our experience showed us that a prospect that, for example, had received an e-mail and/or a mail piece from us regarding the presentation was much more likely to respond positively to us when we called them.

So too did customers appreciate the variety of methods with which they could respond. Many registered on-line or via e-mail. Others chose to phone us and we even had a couple of responses via fax even though we hadn’t included our fax number (we thought people wouldn’t want this option but we were wrong).

The crucial thing that both this campaign and those our customers have been running has been that customers want choice. They will choose which media they respond to and which method they will use to respond.

Campaign managers must think in terms of multiple simultaneous media and this in turn means that they must have infrastructure and systems in place both to roll out multi-stream campaigns and to handle responses in a variety of methods. In fact we have seen an increase in campaign managers focusing less on split testing of various creative and more on split testing of different combinations of solicitation method.

In many cases this has meant a complete change of direction and in many cases (if interest in MAILman is anything to go by) often a change of systems and infrastructure as well. Those who are making these changes successfully are seeing immediate returns, higher response rates, new market opportunities, increased customer communication and retention and lower overall business costs.

These are exciting times in fundraising and marketing; don’t be left behind.

In February 2008 Australia Post made a draft submission to the ACCC seeking permission to increase postal charges across the board. Copy of this draft proposal from Australia Post regarding the price increases can be downloaded from the ACCC website.

The proposed price increases from Australia Post cover most of their letter services from an increase in the price of a single stamp of 10% from 50 cents to 55 cents through all of the barcoded mail, charity mail, clean mail and other letter services.

While these moves are being opposed by industry groups such as the Major Mail Users Association (MMUA),and the Fundraising Institute of Australia (FIA),history has shown us that Australia Post are generally successful at getting requests for price increases through the federal government, albeit sometimes with modifications as happened in 2002 when the last increases occurred.

I’m not going to comment on whether or not I think Australia Post is justified in seeking the postage price increases, however their planned implementation in July 2008 is going to be critical for many.

Organisations across Australia, both Not-for-Profit and commercial, are already starting to see the effects of the changes in our slowing economy; as interest rates have risen, business is starting to tighten as consumer confidence drops. Most organisations have put a hold on, or reduced, their hiring, expenditure and income and profit forecasts. The rising price of credit and commodities such as fuel are already putting price pressure on Australian organisations. These looming price increases from Australia Post will only serve to add further pressure to those organisations already starting to struggle.

One of the key arguments put forward by groups like the MMUA and the FIA to the ACCC against a price increase is their belief that Australia Post has not yet fully taken advantage of the cost benefits of their FuturePost program (postal barcoding) which was introduced in 1997. Australia Post will surely try to address this in an effort to nullify this argument.

It appears to me that regardless of the outcome of Australia Post’s submission to the ACCC, one thing is certain; it is even more important than ever for organisations to assess their use of Australia Post’s postal barcoding services to determine whether or not they are getting the full discounts on offer; and if they are not utilising postal barcoding already, a strong consideration should be given to implementing postal barcoding technologies as soon as possible.

Naturally, DMS has a vested interest in promoting postal barcoding as DMS develops the largest range of postal barcoding software available with products ranging from those suitable for small businesses through to those capable of running the mail lodgement operations of major councils. However the numbers speak for themselves.

Even at today’s current pricing levels, a quick check of DMS’s Postal Savings Whitepaper or Postage Savings Calculator will show that if an organisation spends $5,000 or more annually on postage, considerable cost reductions can be made with postal barcoding.

I would encourage you to do the maths yourselves before the price increases are introduced.

DMS will be watching the Australia Post submission closely and will provide customers with an updated whitepaper and calculator once the ACCC provides the market with their recommendations. Australia Post is hoping to makes the changes in July though, so with the end of financial year looming, there isn’t much time.