We are all guilty of it, we treat email as a casual, flicked-off communication that our colleagues and friends will understand. The body content is bad enough but the subject line can be completely irrelevant.

How many times have you received an email that is the reply to a reply to a reply of an email on a completely different subject? Among close-knit groups it doesn't matter, but when you are trying to connect with a community of interest, clients or subscribers, its a completely different matter.

The folks at Network for Good are focused on that subject line again

How many times have you decided to read an email (or not) based on the subject line alone? The subject line is your first chance to make an impression. Pack your subject lines with details about what's inside, emphasizing why the reader should take a few extra seconds to see what's in the body of the message.

• Change It Every Time.
  Your subject line should change with every edition. Don't waste space with dates, edition numbers, sender information, etc.
• Lean toward personal value.
  For example, "Where Your Best Friends Will Be Dancing All Night Long" will work better than "Register for Our All-Night Dance-a-thon Fundraiser." (I must be getting old, but that just sounds cheesy to me, we can all do better than that)
• Describe the Candy, Not the Wrapper.
  Tell us what goodies are inside the email, not about the packaging. Forgo wrappers like "Parenting Workshops" when your readers are craving candy like "Dinnertime and Bedtime Routines that Preserve Your Sanity."
• Keep It Short.
  Somewhere around 35 characters seems to be the ideal now. You can play with subject line length and see what works for you, but do try to keep it between 20 and 60 characters tops.

I'd like to add another two,

1. Don't announce that this is "The organisation x monthly email newsletter", your "From line should tell them who sent it and, frankly, we don't care that its your newlstter, wnat we care about is whether it has anything sueful in it.
2. If there are multiple items in the newsletter, liost the headlines for each of them in that part of the email that will be visible in the "Preview" pane, then use the headline to link to the actual content further down the page. If you don't know how to do that, you probably shouldn't send any more email newsletters till you learn how.

Before an email can be read, it has to be opened. Make your subject line so irresistible, your supporters won't be able to help themselves.

Do you send email newsletters? What's your method for getting your recipients to open them?

If you receive email newsletters, who produces the one that you are most likely to open? Give them, a plug in the comments.

BIG question. Do we have to send regular informational emails anyway? Woudl you rather get an email once a month even if it doesn't have anything really interesting in it? Or would you rather hear fromn the same organisation only when there is really something solid to talk about?

Hidden agenda questions.

• Are we, as organisations, afraid that our supporters will forget that we exist?
• Do we really only use the emails as a way to regularly tap the recipients for donations?
• How well does that work?

Comments open for any and all of that, and ay other take on the topic you have.

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Robert L. Weiner at Idealware has a good rundown on using the right tool to manage your donor records and, tempting though it may be - you already have it and you might even be quite good at using it - that tool is not Excel or its sisters. Back Away From That Spreadsheet:

Excel seems like it might be a great fit to manage your donor data. But ... there’s a lot of reasons why it’s not a good idea.

[...] Put down that spreadsheet and get a database that is designed to track donations.

... Excel stores information in what’s called a “flat file” database. This means it’s not designed to handle relationships between data, such as when one record (like a donor) needs to link to several other records (like gifts). And it doesn’t provide a wide variety of features that make tracking efficient and less error prone. What does this mean for you in practice?

As soon as you get another gift from the same person, you must either add a new column for the gift or add a new row for the donor. Adding a new column makes it hard to total and to find gifts by date, but if you include the donor in your spreadsheet more than once, the list is difficult to use for mailings.

[...] You cannot easily link pledges to payments, or track “soft credits” such as crediting individuals for corporate matches or gifts made through their family foundations ... relationships between constituents, such as spouses with separate records, members of households, or employment relationships.

... databases will turn to piles of mush (to use the technical term) without constant vigilance. ... Excel does not provide a rich array of tools to maintain data integrity.

... It can also be cumbersome to analyze Excel data for complex patterns, such as looking for donors have given for over five years, have a cumulative giving level of over $10,000, and attended more than two of your events.

[...] Finally, if your fundraising program is successful, your spreadsheet can grow impractically large. Spreadsheets with thousands and thousands of records become hard to view, print, or manipulate.

How do you manage your donor records, are you stuck in a spreadsheet or do you have a working database? Have you tried any of the specialist tools and how do they work?

Has your organisation tried to engage with many smaller donors or do you depend on just 2 or 3 institutions to stump up large chunks of money?

In the USA, from small charities tro major political parties, the Internet is prioving an excellent way to find and aggregate many thousands of small donors who would not be worth pursuing by traduitional means; how likely is that to work in NZ and how should we go about it?

Suggestions always welcome in the comments

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Facebook has tried to reach break-even financially with advertising but, even with the huge numbers of people spending time on the site, this hasn't yet been the winner. The other route to Internet profitability is transactions, either selling stuff yourself, like Amazon and Dell, or enabling others to do business on sites such as TradeMe.

So its not a surprise to find that in a "friendly" atmosphere such as facebook, transactions are the next big thing. The main problem with that is that Facebook itself is a venue for scams, phishing and identity theft, giving them your credit card details might be a big ask as Chris Crum makes clear. Facebook eCommerce May Have to Clear Security Obstacle

Security firm Trend Micro has been researching malicious practices on Facebook, and has discovered numerous rogue apps on the social networking site this week. They've been alerting Facebook of them as they find them, but apparently more keep popping up as fast as they are eliminated.

... With all of the apps circulating around Facebook, it's got to be hard to keep track of what all are legitimate ones anyway. Perhaps even scarier is that some seemingly legitimate apps are possibly being hacked into for malicious intent anyway.

Trend Micro offers the following advice:

• Always check the URL displayed in your browser’s address bar before entering any sensitive information.
• Check the true destination of a link before clicking it, by hovering your mouse pointer over it. If it looks suspicious, don’t click it.
• If you’re a Facebook user, now would be a good time to go and review your privacy settings and clear out any applications you no longer use.

Malicious Facebook Apps

A report this week from the Web Hacking Incidents Database (WHID) found that 19% of hacking incidents occurred on social networks in the first half of this year. They were the most heavily-targeted vertical.

Perhaps the scariest part of this entire situation is that Facebook has just started allowing developers to sell physical goods through apps. This means, we are likely going to see a lot of businesses selling goods directly on Facebook. This has the potential to be huge for eCommerce, but security concerns are already one obstacle to successful eCommerce on the web in general. The more reports of malicious happenings regarding Facebook, the more scared people will be to buy goods through the network.

[...] Consider how often people are already logged into Facebook. They're even taking it with them to other sites via things like Facebook Connect, the Fan Box, etc. There's good reason for people to want to use Facebook to complete online shopping transactions, strictly from the convenience standpoint.

Trust is another standpoint however. It is good to see that Facebook is responding so quickly to known threats, but something will have to be done to eliminate them, or at least greatly reduce them for Facebook's payment platform to really take off.
Facebook Payments

Are you ready to trust social sites with your credit card details? If you ask people for money in the form of donations or purchases, how do you earn their trust? Comments are open.

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My daughter is setting up her own online clothing store and one of the things she introduced me to is her Google Checkout tool which charges a flat $US0.30 per transaction plus a percentage of the value. The great advantage being that you only pay when you actually sell something, not for having the checkout service which can be expensive.

But now Google has taken the process another step and Chris Crum at Webpronews says "Google Makes Online Stores Incredibly Simple"

Google Labs has launched an interesting new gadget that allows users to create a Google Checkout store in gadget form to use on their blog or web site. According to Google the process is as simple as three easy steps:

1. Sign up for a Google Checkout account
2. Fill out a Google Docs Spreadsheet
3. Set up and insert your gadget

Sounds easy enough. Easily create an online store using a Google Docs spreadsheet. Interesting indeed. "No complicated coding or technical tasks are required," says Google on the gadget's homepage. "You can get your first online store up-and-running in under five minutes."

As business owners and non-business owners alike look to sell stuff online to make some extra money in a less than ideal economy, a simple way of setting up a store can be just the ticket. With this gadget, once users sign up for Google Checkout, they can list their products in the spreadsheet and manage their inventory right in Google Docs.

The gadget itself can be embedded anywhere, which could be incredibly useful, particularly to those sellers who operate more than one site. In fact, online business owners are often encouraged to blog. Wouldn't it make sense to have the store embedded right on the blog, for easy access? I think it would in many cases.

The gadget comes in three different sizes - large, small, and tiny.

When it comes to making the spreadsheet [containing the products] available to customers, you can do this by clicking "share" in the upper right-hand corner in Google Docs Spreadsheets. Then you choose "publish as a web page" from the drop down menu, and make sure that the "automatically re-publish when changes are made" option is checked. Then just click "start publishing".

If you have any trouble using it, Google runs down the whole process here. They have also set up a Google Checkout store gadget forum.

If you have anything you sell, from subscriptions to tee shirts to publications, this could be the fast and easy way of integrating it into your website.

Do you support your organisation with merchandise sales? Have you tried online sales and if so, what tools do you use? What is your experience so far? Comments please.

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A major problem with using multimedia to tell your story is that most of us suck when it comes to making video. If you are just uploading a video of your cat massacring a lampshade it doesn't matter, if you are trying to get your message across to potential supporters you want something that tells the story well and doesn't waste their time or confuse them. Not so easy.

That's where comes in with a new program called YouTube's Video Volunteers. [Read more →]

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