Life is simple. We just find new ways to fuck it up.
Okay, I do.
Life is great as long as we don’t do things that we wouldn’t want to happen in our life. Easier said than done. But be it the personal or professional as long as we apply common sense the chances of failure would be minimal.
Unfortunately, common sense is an endangered species. Being offended is an ongoing national hobby.
Sorry! no comment on the Tanishq and ‘Love Jihad’ controversy. I haven’t read or watched any content around it. However, I believe we should recruit next-gen warriors from social media.
In this madness, I am sure you must have missed Nancy in Google’s latest ad to promote Nest Mini. It is an ad trying to own voice in India. It is cute, narrates a beautiful and relevant story. I am in love with Nancy.
Coming back to my point of common sense.
Let me explain via a story. To do so you don’t need talent or degree. You just need to be born in a small town where electricity is a want.
As you know that my childhood and my teenage years went observing the trains, living in a railway colony, and doing a whole bunch of things other than studies.
Every evening around 7 the electricity would go off. You could hardly study with an oil lamp in a hot and humid climate. Charging lights from our favourite country China were yet to hit the market. Even if you wanted to concentrate mosquitos would wage a mutiny.
My brother studied. I invented new ideas to get away from studies and join the gossip gang.
So for the next hour, I would join my friends talking and listening to all kinds of gossips. One of the reasons why I loved History. The subject was intense and every chapter had stories. I would see everything happening in front of me. Somehow this visualisation has stayed with me.
When I was introduced to the Marketing and Advertising world I had no clue about the industry. I never studied Marketing (except in BCom) and considered creative people god gifted geniuses.
Self-education was the only way to survive. I read, observed, and kept writing. For me, this process still works as I try to learn the world of Digital Fundraising.
A few years ago I heard the word “Storytelling.” A word that was interesting initially because it connected to my childhood. However, in recent years I have seen enough examples of how we have just completely ruined the word.
Storytelling is a simple way of communicating with a fellow human being in a language that could be easily understood. How you normally talk to your friends. No BS, no filters.
Just a simple conversation.
But I have never understood why the moment a brand comes into the picture. The whole decorum changes.
I do understand that you won’t use cuss words as I do. Nonetheless, even behind the logo, there is a human being trying to connect with his customers or readers who are also human beings.
Now let’s see it from a Nonprofit perspective.
Storytelling plays an important and evident role. We have enough studies to prove that content works, email gives a better conversion rate, social media works when you tell a better story, and even the ads works when you tell a story.
Save The Children India did a great job with its Lagey Apna Sa campaign when it had to tell a hard fact of “Street Children” being ignored during the ongoing pandemic.
Better than what Femina did with #ActAgainstAbuse - a template-based purpose-driven domestic abuse campaign.
Nonprofits and newsletters
Creating an advertising campaign needs money and it is a challenge. So one needs to find other ways of storytelling. The newsletter is one of the strongest ways to do storytelling and it won’t cost you a bomb. But it needs the right intent and ongoing effort.
The majority of Indian nonprofits see newsletters in these two forms:
Email a monthly newsletter in a template form jam-packing with all the stories, work, impact, numbers, logo, and whatnot.
And then there are the second types who will create fancy newsletters in pdf format. These pdf documents will be like 20-30 pages, uploaded, and filed on their website.
All these nonprofits are living in a pre-historic era who haven’t figured out how to cultivate storytelling in newsletters. At the most, it is a monthly job of putting everything in a regular template.
Amanda Israel, from Burger King Foundation, says nonprofits need to tell stories with a purpose.
“Each nonprofit has a unique story and purpose behind their programs. Sharing stories from those who are receiving aid or benefiting from the programs connects readers to a human purpose and shares a new perspective.”
In my recent conversation with John Walsh, I had discussed the problem of nonprofits pushing everything into a monthly pdf format newsletter.
He remarked that when people donate they want to know what the nonprofit is doing. They want to know how their money is driving an impact. “Email takes all these large pieces of content, creates bit-sized information with the links to the blog.”
Storytelling and newsletters
I recently received an email from Children International with a subject line: “October 2020 Newsletter: Stories on virtual learning, race and mental health.”
I think they can get rid of the entire newsletter thing on the subject line. It is lengthy and the copy says it again. The newsletter focuses on the stories the reader might have missed, how the community is helping, and clear ways to support the nonprofit cause.
The newsletter has required pictures, links to blog posts for further reading of stories, and a banner that talks about community support - “Together we’re helping to meet this moment.”
“Balance your newsletter content to be 90% educational and 10% promotional,” writes Ginny Meno in her blog post - “How to create an email newsletter people actually read.”
“Chances are, your email newsletter subscribers don't want to hear about your products and services 100% of the time. While they may love you and want to hear from you, there’s only so much shilling you can do before they tune out.”
Besides Children International is supremely active sending email communications every week or alternate week. Here is how the nonprofit has been integrating content marketing with email.
How to create an effective newsletter
That people might read :) :
Even before you think about a newsletter figure out your “Why”, and build your content buckets around the why. Use the blog to create and publish content. Now use email to distribute your content to your community.
Creating an email every week will be a tough ask for a small nonprofit. So do two email communications and the monthly newsletter. Consider the below snapshot as your simple 5-week email journey for a new donor.
Basically, you have created multiple content pieces, and your monthly newsletter is a summation of what you have done in the month. This way you are there on your donor’s mind not only asking for money but also communicating about your work that is powered by their money.
When you create a monthly newsletter - have a subject line as one of your biggest stories of the month, send it from a human from your nonprofit, keep a plain text email avoid a template if you can. Add one hero image instead of too many images and have an “Alt text” for your images.
Don’t be ashamed of asking for money. Just avoid buttons, links work better. But also carry out your A/B testing for these things because what works for me might not work for you.
You know what is funny. Whatever I have shared in this post isn’t rocket science. It is basic common sense.
Newsletters are not working. Go ahead and subscribe to a few Indian and International nonprofit organizations. Observe and learn from them. Use the damn Internet. And test it out.
Additionally, you don’t need to be a V.S. Naipul or Charles Dickens. I suck big time when it comes to storytelling. English is not my native language, my heart melts for Hindi. But I still love it.
My secret? I keep it simple. No filters, no BS.
“Your donors just want to see your effort. Keep it simple and honest. Rest you will figure out if you have the intent.”
See it is simple :)