Puppy love

My phone rang, showing a number it didn’t know.

“I hear you’re interested in having one of our puppies,” said a female voice.

“Err… no,” I replied. “I don’t know anything about that. I think you must have the wrong number.”

“Well, this is the number I’ve been given,” she replied in uppity tones.

It was difficult to know what to say.

I got the feeling she was expecting me to answer, “Oh, in that case I’d better take the dog then.”

And I was left feeling rather discombobulated for the rest of the day.

Because her ‘stop wasting my time you silly little man’ tone was rather at odds with the content of our conversation.

I’ve started getting a few fundraising communications like that.

Where the tone is at odds with the message. From some little-known American charities that seem to have been targeting innocent old Blighty recently.

The content is that of... well, a good cause.

But the tone, oh my life. The most awful, exploitative stuff you’ll ever come across: copy that gives emotional blackmail a bad name.

Allied to stacks of tacky incentives (badly illustrated greetings cards, key rings, blankets, umbrellas etc) which are positioned almost as goods you need to pay for.

But the worst thing about some of these ‘charities’ is how much money they spend on admin charges.

In the UK, reputable charities typically spend less than 15% on admin charges – a very modest amount.

Yet the worst I’ve heard of from these unknown, underhand US mass-mailers was a charity from Tennessee called ‘Youth Development Fund’. Where apparently – wait for it – 91% of all money raised went on ‘fundraising and administrative expenses’.

And that’s more shocking than anything they write in any of their appeals.

PS If you're interested in adopting a puppy (not in any way house-trained), let me know.

Name calling

It’s not trendy to say ‘trendy’. Saying ‘fashionable’ hasn’t been for some time.

‘On trend’. That’s what you say now. Amazing what you can pick up reading old copies of Heat magazine in a doctor’s surgery.

My background is as a copywriter. But I’m still impressed – stunned, sometimes – by the power words can have on the perception of a thing. They can change its value utterly. Even though the thing itself hasn’t changed at all.

Asking your donors to come up with the ideas for you, that used to be called ‘being lazy’.

Now, depending on whether you do it by focus group or by putting a prize-incentivised brief online, the on trend phrase to use is either ‘co-creation’ or ‘crowd-sourcing’.

But as I flicked through that dog-eared Heat (honestly, I didn't buy it), I was struck by how one of the words they use has had a recent effect on charities.

Because nowadays, according to fashion, old clothes aren't 'second-hand'. 

They're 'vintage'.

Which means they’re suddenly more valuable. So more people are choosing to sell them on eBay or to small ‘boutiques’.

Which may be why so many charities are despairing of a dearth of donated clothes to sell in their shops.

To avoid disappointment

Best thing about watching Avatar in 3D?

According to my girlfriend, it’s that behind the dark glasses, no-one can see you cry when the blue people get killed.

I enjoyed it very much – you just have to tell yourself beforehand that being the highest-grossing film ever made doesn’t mean it’s going to be the best film ever made.

Because expectation is everything. If you over-deliver on someone’s expectations, you’ve got a happy audience, cooing at computer-generated hovering mountains.

Under-deliver, and you’ve got a webbed-toed Kevin Costner in Waterworld.

There’s a parallel in fundraising.

When we recruit new supporters, we set their expectations. We usually tell them that when they become a supporter, a) we’ll really appreciate their kindness and b) their kindness will make a real difference.

But do we make good on those expectations? Or do we disappoint them?

I can still remember my first-ever big disappointment. I was about seven.

It was Christmas, and I wanted an electronic organ. Christmas Eve I went to bed, frantic with excitement, unable to sleep, listening for Santa. 

 
What I heard, from downstairs, were the unmistakable reverberations of a full-sized church organ, with those giant pipes filling the air (and presumably literally filling the lounge of our three bed semi). Wow. This was going to be the best Christmas ever.

It was many years later before I realised that I must have just heard Christmas Mass on the TV. As, on Christmas day I unwrapped not a 20 foot high church organ, but a Bontempi keyboard. That couldn’t manage chords, only one note at a time (I can still remember the key numbers for Jingle Bells).

I was dreadfully disappointed, but I think I managed to hide it from my parents.

Charity donors, however, don’t hide their disappointment so readily. They just stop giving. They cancel their direct debits, they stop responding to appeals and they never get round to mentioning you in their will.

So we shouldn’t disappoint them. 

Which means remembering one very important, but often overlooked fact: charity donors don’t give us money for nothing.

They give us money because they expect us to make good on our promises (the ones about appreciating their kindness and their money making a real difference). And to avoid disappointment, we should live up to those expectations.

The charity Action for Children is good at this.

Everyone who responds to one of their direct mail appeals, for example, gets a follow-up letter. It doesn’t ask them for more money. But it says thank you for their gift (quoting the amount they donated), tells them how it might be used, and gives them a positive update on the appeal they responded to. 

Telling them, for example, what the child mentioned in the appeal is doing now, some little slice of life example of what they’ve been up to.

It’s pretty straightforward stuff. But it makes a connection. It creates a rewarding relationship. 

And, just like in Avatar, it shows that even in a tough old world, it’s ok to believe in happy endings.

Sky's the limit

I missed the start of the new series of Mad Men.

Well, actually I caught up at the weekend, thanks to the magic of iPlayer. It was as well-written as ever, though I wasn't sure about Don Draper’s ad for London Fog raincoats (A woman flasher with the line ‘Limit your exposure’?)

But I had to watch it on a computer because my Sky+ box broke. I rang them to see if they could fix it, and had an... interesting customer experience.

Now, in fundraising we often think there’s a lot to learn about ‘Customer Relationship Management / Marketing’ from the commercial world.

Well, not from Sky.

In fundraising, CRM is called ‘stewardship’. And it just means that, once you’ve persuaded someone to support you in some way (whether that’s by making a gift, joining a campaign or giving their time), you look after them.

You listen to them. You respond to them. You turn a traditional model of a monologue into a conversation, by finding out what interests them, finding out how they want to be treated, and personalising your communications accordingly.

Sometimes it's just remembering that you don't have to ask them for money every single time you communicate with them.

By treating your audience as individuals, with a bit of respect and consideration, they reciprocate with greater loyalty, more donations and a legacy gift. In other words, you look after them and they look after you. And you maximise their lifetime value. 

And, while few charities would tell you they're completely satisfied with their stewardship programme, most are developing ways of giving their supporters a more authentic, personal experience. 

We're engaged in stewardship programmes with most of our charity clients, and there are some fantastic things you can do online and using dynamic content or digital print.

So, by contrast, Sky. 

Which has 10 million customers and so should have got the hang of how to ‘steward’ them.

My Sky+ box broke so I gave them a call. The guy on the other end said he would talk me through fixing it.

First, he told me to press the button marked ‘TV’ followed by the one marked ‘Sky’. In other words, he told me to turn on the TV and turn on the Sky box. I said ok, I’d done that.

He then asked me, without irony, apology or personality, if it was now working.

Brilliant. Clearly it’s impossible to underestimate the intelligence of your customers in the eyes of Sky.

We then spent a pained few minutes together, pressing buttons, waiting to see if anything happened, pressing more buttons, before he had to admit defeat.

Well, not quite. First he asked me if I wanted to upgrade to the sport and movie packages.

Amazing. Patronise me first. Fail to fix the problem second. Clearly the perfect environment to try and persuade me to spend more with you.

Then the final coup de grace. He told me the Sky box was out of warranty (I’d had it 18 months). So there’d be a charge of £65 to repair it.

£65 to repair a box I have to have in order to be able to use the service I’m paying them £25 a month for. Utter genius.

Unlike me. I’m a mad man.

Cos I paid up.