Convio and SXSW 2012

It’s that time of the year again folks! Dust off your Tom’s, iPads, and lanyards- SXSW is finally upon us and no one is more excited than we are here at Convio. For those of you who are wondering what this fun acronym is all about, South by Southwest is a 9 day festival that includes 3 portions: music, film, and our favorite, interactive (March 9th-13th). 

This year we are diving in with our feet first by co-sponsoring the TechMix Happy Hour on March 9th. We invite you to come out and mingle with the hosting teams, customers and SXSW attendees on a variety of topics. Because, honestly, when else are you going to be in a room with people who want to discuss leveraging the power of Twitter for nonprofits or debate whether or not Google+ is an influential tool, and over drinks to boot? If our happy hour wasn’t enough time to get the creative juices flowing, or other juices were flowing too much, our Social Media Marketing Specialist, Cheryl Black, will be hosting a nonprofit meet up in the Beacon Lounge March 10th from 1:30pm-2:30pm. We encourage people to take advantage of this fantastic networking opportunity, and of course the complimentary snacks.

On top of that we are sponsoring lunch every day (delicious eats for free, yes!) in the Beacon Lounge, where the theme is, “Lounge With A Conscience.” Falling in line with the theme, each day we will be accepting donations during lunch to go to a local nonprofit, and at the end of the day we will match up to $500 dollars. The nonprofits benefiting are:

• Saturday: Life Long Friends
• Sunday: Austin’s Chapter of American Youth Works
• Monday: Capital Area Food Bank
• Tuesday: Austin’s Chapter of American Red Cross

Nothing gets us more jazzed than to help out great organizations that are located right in our own backyard; because at the end of the day it is about the impact they are making in our community.

The icing on the cake that is our participation in this great festival is definitely our ability and fortune to be a supporting sponsor for the SXSW 2012 Interactive Awards. It’s kind of a big deal to receive it considering last year’s winners included, The Tiziano Project | 360⠁Kurdistan, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien Presents: Team CoCo, just to name a few.

I realize, this is a lot to take in, as is anything involving SXSW. Have no fear if you are new though, they provide a nice beginner’s guide and mobile app for those who are feeling overwhelmed.

In case this hasn’t revved up your engines for South by Southwest as much as it has for us, here is a sneak peek interview with our own Lori Bainborough, aka Convio’s own event guru, on why she can’t wait for this year’s festival.

Guest post by: Sarah Daniels, aka Marketing Intern. When Sarah isn't trying out new cooking recipes, reading a good book, or in class she likes to take long walks with her weenie dog.

LEAPin' Lizards

How lucky are we to get a whole extra 24 hours this month that we normally don’t get? Don’t waste it! Here are seven things you can do on February 29th that will give you a surprising sense of accomplishment:

1. Do a little early spring cleaning—I’ll bet that donor database of yours has a few nooks and crannies that haven’t been swept in a while.  Pick a chunk, any chunk, and clean up old emails, addresses, phone numbers and the like.  Your marketing staff will thank you for it.
2. If you didn’t send them a Valentine, send a thank you note to everybody who donated in February.  Tell them you had an extra day this month and couldn’t think of a better way to spend it than by telling them how much you appreciate them. (See 7 Ways to Say Thanks.)
3. Write down one new idea for how you can better use social media to attract new supporters. And don’t restrict yourself to 140 characters please. (See 50 Social Media Content Ideas.)
4. Do a post-mortem on your End of Year Appeal efforts.  Did you achieve your goals?  If not, why not?  Write down one actionable thing that you are going to do differently next year to change your fortunes.  If you were wildly successful, then write down what you know you need to do more of. (See Keep It Simple to help get the wheels turning.)
5. Take stock of your staffing plans for the year. Are you where you need to be in terms of recruiting, promoting, upgrading, or laying off? Don’t wait until mid year to figure out you’re behind the curve on this. (See Successful Strategies for Hiring a Development Professional if that’s one area of recruitment.)
6. Take a look at critical dates in the next 90 days for grant deadlines, BOD meetings, major gift meetings or events, committee deliverables, program delivery and the like. Prioritize your workload for the next 30 days with these dates as your guide.
7. Commit to at least ONE activity that will foster your own career and/or self development. You can’t run an organization if you can’t run yourself. And you can’t run yourself without a commitment to be constantly growing.
   
   And lastly…
8. Dump the Valentine’s Day chocolates still sitting around. You know you should.

For those of us that always feel like the clock is working against us, take today as a free gift and do something useful with it!

Meet Nikhil Kumar

Nikhil Kumar

This month's interview with a Convio employee is with Nikhil Kumar, our Vice President of Service Delivery. In a nutshell, his team is the group that builds things for clients using Convio solutions. Whether it's a new donation form, advocacy page, CRM configuration, or data integration project, Nikhil's team is the group that is getting it done at Convio. He has done an amazing job at building a culture of sharing and collaboration between his team members and throughout Convio. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed the conversation.

Connection Cafe Podcast 6 - Nikhil Kumar

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The TED of Direct Marketing

Recent research suggests that economic and policy changes over the last five years are continuing to make things difficult for fundraisers.  Recession and slow recovery have reduced the total giving, more organizations are competing for constituent mindshare and walletshare , and there are proposals to reduce the charitable gift deduction and a rise in postal costs.

What are we to do?  I suggest that we kick back, grab a drink, and complain about the state of the industry with your comrades…wait, wait, wait… maybe I should start over.

Looking for new and fresh ideas on how to increase the frequency and intensity of engagement with your constituents?  Ready to explore mobile or social fundraising and don’t know where to start?  Or just looking for what’s new and hip in the world of direct marketing?  Check out the 2012 Washington Nonprofit Conference, hosted by the Direct Marketing Association, Nonprofit Federation this week, March 1-2.
 
That’s more like it! 

It’s the TED of the direct marketing world. The theme this year is something near and dear to my heart: “Ideas. Analytics. Results.”   Using your data to drive results is becoming a required method in direct response fundraising and marketing.  And this year you can hear from some of the industry’s best and brightest on how they are advancing their programs and their mission through analytics and other strategies.

• What if you could reasonably predict how your segments will perform? 
• What messages are resonating with your constituents? 
• What cohorts are performing well or poorly in which channels? 
• Would you make different decisions?

Convio is presenting a fantastic session featuring Dennis McCarthy and Mike Rogers from Convio and Joanne DelGiorno Bowers from CARE entitled, “The Multi-Channel Boost: Where to Focus Next for Success.”  In this session, they will present the findings from a research study that Convio and CARE completed last year to measure the success and opportunity of a multi-channel program.  If you are looking for a pick-me-up (trust me, it’s better than the conference coffee!) this is your session.

Convio is also hosting some educational sessions about strategies to incorporate analytics into your constituent engagement strategy.  These sessions will include Mike and Dennis (and you’ll even see me there!).  If you are going to be there and want are interested, contact your account executive and let them know.  These are small groups and they are filling up quickly!

This year’s conference program features some great Convio friends presenting on various topics, including:

• Monthly Giving
• Stewardship
• Multi-Channel Marketing
• Acquisition
• Social Media
• Mobile
• Analytics

If you’ve never been to a DMANF conference, I highly recommend you go and commiserate (I mean connect) with your peers!  There are so many ground breaking ideas out there, it would be a shame to miss the opportunity.  See you there!

Get a Date with your Event Donors

Fundraising events are tremendous acquisition tools because they extend your reach into the social circles of your event participants. Think of your event like a party: you invite all your friends (event participants) and they invite all their friends (event donors). Hopefully, at the end of the party you get to walk away with some new friends you didn’t know. 

I often run across organizations that shy away from communicating to the donors of their peer-to-peer events because they are concerned that their event participants will be upset that the organization started recruiting their personal contacts.

Going back the party analogy, if Susie came to your party and gave you her digits, then you are now her friend and welcome to call her. The same holds true for making a donation to your fundraising event.

Just like you would (over) think how you contact a new romantic interest, you need to carefully plan how you will engage a new donor. The key is to provide timely, relevant, meaningful content. 

1. The 3-day rule – You may have heard the adage that a suitor should wait three days before they call (ladies, we can debate this indefinitely, but that’s another blog post for another day). Like with dating, timing is everything when it comes to engaging event donors without upsetting your participants. I recommend that your first communication to your event donors is immediately following the close of your event fundraising efforts.  
2. Acknowledge where you met – Most of the event donors were motivated to give because they received a request from a friend or family member participating in your event. When you are “asking for the next date,” you should mention how you were introduced to the person. Thank your donors for their original gift. Let them know how much your event fundraised overall and how that gift is impacting the mission of your organization. They’ll appreciate that you remember them and enjoy reliving the warm, fuzzy feeling of giving.
3. Be persistent and use a variety of approaches – Some people like to play hard to get. And some people just don’t like the activity you are inviting them to (like inviting two-left-feet-guy out dancing). To combat both, I recommend that you send a series of emails with focus on different requests.
4. Know when to walk away – It’s very likely that these donors will be recruited next year to give to your event participant; you don’t want to turn this person off to your organization. If you’ve made three attempts to communicate and they have not responded, then it’s time to realize, he’s just not that into you. 
5. No one wants to be alone during the holidays – Always include event donors as a custom segment in your end of year solicitations. (I know the dating metaphor is a little stretched here.)  People are looking to make tax deductible donations at the end of year. At Convio, we processed more than $30 million in online donations in December. To enjoy a larger slice of the end of year pie, customize your message and acknowledge the relationship that these donors have with your organization through their previous event gift. 

Which of these tips have worked in your organization? What other ideas can you share with your event fundraising peers?

This post originally appeared on the Event 360 blog.