From strong headlines to well-placed keywords, this PRWeb guide has tips to get customers reading about your business, including:

• How to write professional, jargon-free news releases that get read and shared
• How to write a headline that shines on search engines and leaves readers wanting more
• How to pick a story angle that makes your news stand out

Download The Guide

Get more information on PRWeb online at prweb.com.

Below are links for more information on international privacy protection laws to help you get started doing your research.

International SPAM Laws

US CAN SPAM

Canada PIPEDA

EU Data Protection Directive

What is Web Analytics?

Simply put, using web analytics – with existing resources – small businesses can know which marketing tactics are working, which are not, and make evidence-based decisions about what to do next. For small businesses, “web analytics” refers to the use of website statistics software that collects and displays data on website traffic, website visitor behaviors, and marketing campaign conversion activity.

How can Web Analytics help your business?

Using web analytics small businesses can improve marketing effectiveness, elevate customer satisfaction, grow sales, and uncover new revenue opportunities.

What’s needed to use web analytics effectively?

• Choosing a web analytics tool or service.
• A plan for how to use web analytics.
• Skills to use web analytics effectively.

Excerpt above from the forthcoming eBook “Crash Course: Web Analytics Fro Small Business”.

Coding responsive email is a specialty. Here are some resources to get going:

Litmus Webinar – Mobile Email: Why, What and How
Campaign Monitor Email Template Builder
Campaign Monitor Email Templates

Integrating offline and online communications is imperative to effectively attracting and engaging donors in 2013 and beyond.

What Is Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is the strategic administration of data, communications, and content throughout an organization towards the achievement of stated goals and objectives.

The conversation that occurs whenever the terms “digital marketing”, “online marketing”, or “online” are used immediately focuses on website, email and other online communications media. This focus is inaccurate and misleading. Digital Marketing seeks to align data, communications, and content strategy and management practices.

Data: Digital Marketing makes current constituent contact, demographic, behavior, and preference data available in easy-to-use formats throughout an organization.

Communications: Digital Marketing defines and maintains strategies and tactics for the ongoing development, management, and evaluation of marketing communications across offline and online media channels.

Content: Digital Marketing establishes and maintains policies and practices that enable the ongoing creation of timely, relevant, and personalized strategic communications across development, program and service areas of an organization.

The Environment

There is a business case for maintaining a primary focus on establishing a progressive digital marketing capability within nonprofits that is illustrated by the following facts:

In the months October through December 2012, giving via traditional offline channels in the Public and Society Benefit nonprofit sector rose just 1.2%, compared to online giving which rose 26.37% in the same period. More dramatically, in January 2013 giving via traditional offline channels plunged -7.8%, while online giving shot-up 16%.¹

There is a seismic shift happening all across the fundraising landscape: donors are increasingly operating in a “multi-channel mode.” For example, even if a direct mail acquisition piece asks for a response by reply mail, research shows that anywhere from 40% to 60% of donors elect to first do further research online.²

While online fundraising grew to 7% of all giving in 2012, 93% of all giving still happens via traditional offline channels.³

The Opportunity

Shifts in donor behavior necessitates nonprofit organizations to change their approach and use digital marketing strategies, tools, and tactics to supplement and enhance traditional marketing activity.

Nonprofits can benefit from creation of a progressive strategic digital marketing capability that:

1. Creates long-term development and communications strategies that address evolving patron demographics, preferences, and emerging trends for engagement practices.
2. Integrates communications development and patron data collection, management, and analysis processes throughout the organization.
3. Synchronizes communications across offline and online channels to increase donor share and attract new donors by enhancing the donor experience — and donor satisfaction — at every point of contact across development, program, and services areas of the organization.
4. Establishes in-house capability to consistently produce and disseminate effective timely, relevant, and personalized communications to donors, stakeholders, and supporters.

Creation of a strong digital marketing capability offers nonprofits significant performance improvements, efficiencies, greater development revenues, better ROI, and a manageable path to sustainability amidst the changing environment. It also introduces evidence-based decision making to the marketing culture.

Benefits of a strong digital marketing capability for nonprofits include:

• Better development results.
• Improved overall organizational effectiveness and efficiency.
• Availability of current donor demographic, behavior, and preference data throughout the enterprise (to promote evidence-based decision-making).
• Real-time performance evaluation of marketing communications design and content (to add evidence-based decision-making to the marketing communications area).
• Enable rapid performance reporting – across development, program, and services areas – to partners, stakeholders, and patrons (to improve accountability while building trust and goodwill).

Summary

Competition for donor dollars is high and increasing rapidly. A strong digital marketing capability is simply necessary for nonprofits to achieve development goals.

10 years ago, the average retention rate of a newly acquired donor was around 33%, today it is 27%. That translates into a loss of 3 out of every 4 newly acquired donors. The Human & Social Services vertical ranked third among the top three nonprofit online donation verticals with a $133.92 average per donation.⁴

Making it easier for constituents to learn about your organization, answering their questions, and providing clear vehicles for contributions is essential to successful fundraising.

Using digital marketing to track the impact of contributions, and communicating that impact back to donors, nonprofits can increase the number of regular donors, the size of their contributions, and ensure high donor retention rates well into the future.

FOOTNOTES:
¹ Blackbaud 2012 Charitable Giving Report
² Masterworks.com Case Studies
³ Blackbaud 2012 Charitable Giving Report
⁴ Donor Centered Fundraising by Penelope Burk

John Mackey, founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods Markets, which will require labeling of all genetically modified products by 2018. (Jay Janner, Austin American-Statesman / March 9, 2013)

In the wake of the failure of California voters to pass Proposition 37 last November, a controversial ballot measure that would have required of certain genetically modified products, The LA Times reports that Whole Foods Market Inc. has mandated that all items sold in its American and Canadian stores feature labels that note the presence of genetically modified organisms, or GMO, by 2018. The company, known for its upscale emporiums of organic and healthful foods, claims it’s the first national grocer to set such a deadline.

Whole Foods Co-Chief Executive Walter Robb described customer demand for the labeling as “a steady drumbeat.”

“This is an issue whose time has come,” he said. “With cases like horse meat discovered in the U.K., plastic in milk in China, the recalls of almond and peanut butter in the U.S., customers have a fundamental right to know what’s in their food.”

“The government has not been willing to take on this issue, so it’s going to have to happen differently.”, Mr. Robb also said.

Whole Foods has more than 300 locations, including seven British stores that already require such labeling.

Major agriculture, food and beverage companies opposed to the initiative poured millions of dollars into advertising and lobbying to defeat the measure. Monsanto Co. poured $8.1 million and PepsiCo Inc. added $2.5 million to fund attack campaigns to defeat the measure, according to a MapLight analysis of data from the California secretary of state. On voting day, opponents of Proposition 37 had raised $46 million — five times the $9.2 million raised by supporters.

While the issues surronding GMO foods are complex, the basic question is simple – as food labels currently must feature ingredients and nutrition information to inform and enable consumers to choose, why not also require labels to show whether a food contains GMO. The grocery industry argues that genetically modified foods provide the same nutrition as organic fruit, vegetables and grains. Supporters want labeling so consumers can know which foods contain GMO and make a choice at the point of sale before making a purchase. The only reason to take a position against GMO labeling is to prevent consumers from knowing which foods they buy have GMO in my opinion.

As we seek better health and well-being in our lives and the lives of our children, I encourage everyone to become better informed about GMO foods. Bravo Whole Foods. The drawback is the 5 year wait. That’s a long time to be comfortable about the food choices we make.

Think of a business website as the place people go to check-out what you’ve got, decide whether they can benefit from it, buy it, and tell the world what they think about it. Think of web analytics as a visitor log book people sign when they come to your website and a recorder that records when they come to your site from other marketing campaign promotions.

According to the US Census, in a survey of 14,441,089 businesses, only 24.8% had a website. Other research shows 55% of the 10,000 most popular websites, and 49.95% of the top 1 Million websites use Google Analytics. So only the biggest websites are using web analytics to measure the effectiveness of their sites and marketing campaigns.

In a nation powered by small business, these statistic mean small businesses are not taking advantage of the digital advantage websites and web analytics offer. Websites and web analytics are simply the most effective sales, marketing and service tools a business has, especially small to mid-sized business. Business websites can be far more than online brochures. At their best they serve as the primary interface into the sales, marketing, and support systems of a business. And with web analytics a business can literally track and measure the effectiveness of its sales, marketing, and support activities.

The bottom line question for small businesses is “How does a website help me succeed and grow my business?” Success is typically related to sales for most businesses, but it can also be participation and engagement for non-profits and other types of organizations. However you define success for your business a website and web analytics are awesome tools to help you achieve it.

The next two questions are, “How do I setup and manage a website with web analytics?” and “Can I do it with existing resources?” Well, setting up and managing a website and web analytics requires an up-front investment in time focused on two areas: 1) Education – learning what to do and how-to do it; and 2) Implementation – taking regular and consistent action. And here’s the really cool news – the investment pays off!

Web analytics is not just a tool for measuring website traffic. It is an effective tool for business and market research, and measuring the results of offline marketing activities including traditional print and broadcast advertising campaigns. Web analytics provides detailed information about the number of visitors to a website, where they came from (search engines, websites, ads, emails, etc.), what they were looking for, and whether they found it. Use web analytics to measure which media in a new advertising or promotions campaign is most effective, or to evaluate the effectiveness of your customer support.

Perform these tasks to use web analytics effectively:

1. Educate yourself. Focus on posting new content to your website regularly, search optimization basics, and using the tracking features of a web analytics system (check out Piwik Analytics – Piwik.org).
2. Define Key Performance Indicators for your business.
3. Create and deploy analytics tracking link tags to your marketing/campaign communications (print collateral, ads, banners, marketing emails, etc.).
4. Setup conversion goals.
5. Track and evaluate performance.
6. Review and revise website content, marketing/campaign communications, link tags, and conversion goals (based on preference and performance data from your web analytics).
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 regularly (at intervals that make sense for your business but at least monthly).

Imagine being able to see precisely what’s working and what’s not with your marketing efforts at any point in time. Imagine being able to spot new opportunities and respond with new ideas and action plans that are backed by factual information. Imagine being able to actually see the return-on-investment of your marketing activities. All this and more are available to you and your team – big or small – by taking time to refine your website and learning to use web analytics.

Emailnery is beautiful email stationery that works in Apple Mail on Apple computers.Emailnery makes personal and professional email communications better looking, distinctive, and memorable. I designed the Emailnery.com website to communicate key product benefits, enable visitors to browse and purchase products, customize their products, learn how to install and use the products, submit testimonials, and request support.

Features:

• E-Commerce
• Easy Content Management
• Order Management
• Customer Support
• Automated Event Email Communications
• Product & Support FAQs

For the American Cancer Society I designed compelling booklets that communicated program benefits using clear minimal language and engaging graphics. The booklets were designed to easily fit into pockets and purses to improve retention when distributed.

Goals.
The collateral was created with the following objectives:

• Improve Retention
• Communicate Effectively To Broad Audiences
• Promote Registration

Results:

• +300% Increased Retention Rate
• +400% Increase In Registration & Requests For Information