Bee Measure

Get Direction From Your Data

By

Decrying Fluffy Metrics, How to Elevate Your Engagement Rates & SEO Changes

I adopted an, um, energetic dog early this summer. The seemingly endless walks around my neighborhood with her have given me a lot of podcast-listening time. I’ve found a few new favorites.

If you are familiar with this newsletter, I obviously like my tech news with a good dose of skepticism. Loving Recode’s Pivot for a mix of tech, politics and business updates… and some major sarcasm. It has me LOLing about IPOs and income inequality ⁠— something I didn’t think was possible.

How Are Other Orgs Doing? Here’s The Answer

It’s my favorite yearly opportunity to snoop on other nonprofits! The 2019 M+R Benchmarks Study includes data from 135 nonprofits across a variety of sizes and sectors. This report has so many good takeaways, it’s hard to choose what to call out here. An interesting fundraising stat was that the revenue from one-time gifts decreased by 2% in 2018, while monthly giving revenue increased by 17%. Focusing heavily on recurring donors could be a winning strategy moving forward.

[Read more…]

By

Google’s Data Studio Updates, Location Ranking & Tinder for Clothes

Google’s Data Studio Just Got a Bit Better

Google’s Data Studio is a pretty sharp (and free) way to create dashboards and visualizations from your Google Analytics data and other data sets. But it’s always been limited in what it can do. However, the program has received some fun product updates in the past few months. My favorite new features are custom data range comparisons and the Tableau-esque ability to drill down in charts. So far, I’ve used this new feature to create more useful maps. Now, dashboard viewers can drill into details about which states and cities their users are located.

Ads, They Know Us Better Than We Know Ourselves

There is a growing interest in the idea of personalization and privacy in the online age. This caught the eye of the New York Times, who decided to conduct its own digital advertising experiment to show how far advertisers go to collect and use our information. My main takeaway is that we have a choice to make: either we all agree to be targeted by hyper-personalized ads that are more relevant to us or we need to create and pass more stringent data privacy laws.

[Read more…]

By

Stop Siloing Digital, Brewing The Nation’s Best IPA & A Much-Needed Perspective Change

Maximizing Your Resources

Strategy and marketing consultant Anne Boyle has a strong opinion about nonprofits that claim they “can’t afford” to create a marketing strategy. The idea is simple: organizations should be putting strategy and planning first in order to maximize their resources. One of her tips that’s actually really helpful, in my opinion, is to not try to be perfect but to just get it done.

Ditch The Digital Department

This article really threw me for a loop. “Digital” has been a buzzword for a while now, but do organizations even need someone solely dedicated to it? The short answer is no. The long answer is still no, but with more nuance. Basically, it’s advised that your organization “hire digitally skilled staff to populate every department” rather than invest in a digital department.

[Read more…]

By

Google’s Big Birthday News, Picking Your A/B Tests & Painting Data

Happy Birthday, Google! (And What That Means to You)
Most media celebrated Google’s 20th birthday with retrospectives of Google Doodles. More interesting to me, however, is the future. The tech giant shared how it expects to change search in the coming years. I had two big takeaways: an increased emphasis on making images (and video) really work on search and new features to keep users on its platform (reducing the need for them to click off to websites). Stay turned! I’m sure this newsletter will cover more about what’s next for Google.

Maybe You Don’t Need to Test…. Everything
For most nonprofits, just finishing a website redesign is a huge achievement. (I’ve been there. Extra bonus points if it’s on time and in budget.) The idea of A/B testing everything before launch is so daunting. Here’s one consultant’s take on what to test and what to push out and refine later.

[Read more…]

By

Fundraising Gamer Style, Writing Better Content & Why No One Likes SEO

Good Content Keeps ’em Coming Back 
It is easy to get caught up in increasing website traffic and forget that you need quality content to keep them there – and get them to return. This recent Forbes article reminds us of common mistakes nonprofits make in developing content. First, stop copying your print materials. What works in a flyer isn’t right for online. If volunteers help maintain your website and social media, be sure to train them on style and content. Finally, good writing is important. Just because someone is an expert on a topic, does not mean they can write well about it. Don’t be afraid to get out your red pen (or activate Word’s track changes).

Making a Game out of Fundraising
Bored with the same old silent auctions, 5Ks and Facebook fundraisers? The brave new frontier of digital fundraising is in gaming. According to this article in Nonprofit Quarterly, game company Activision Blizzard donated nearly $13 million to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) through their online game, Overwatch. Blizzard, which makes World of Warcraft, sold limited edition avatar skins as well as merchandise like t-shirts for players. Another game company recruited champion players to livestream their gameplay, donating tips from viewers to a charitable cause.

Poor, Misunderstood SEO 
If you don’t really understand what SEO is, you aren’t alone (even outside the nonprofit marketing world). A recent survey found that businesses ranked search engine optimization (SEO) as the “least popular digital marketing channel.” Only 44% of respondents named SEO as part of their online marketing strategy (social media, website and email were the three most popular.) The researchers expressed surprise over this finding, attributing the lack of popularity to a misunderstanding of SEO and the fact that results from SEO efforts often take some time to show.

[Read more…]