When is relevant irrelevant?

I was talking to a couple of friends recently who over a quiet dinner, both relayed their days from hell. Though the situations were quite different the problems in both cases related to a failure in a process and ultimately the choice of communication.

Essentially in both examples, email requests were sent by their staff members, high priority for an important matter and for whatever reason they weren't actioned. The results were disgruntled people, a delay to the service, complaints, and some repercussions at a higher level and a review of the current procedure.

What I thought was interesting was the steadfast reliance to just one mode of communication - and not necessarily the most appropriate or relevant.

This got me thinking about how we as charities communicate with our supporters and sometimes I think that too readily we choose one way, whether or not we are getting a response or not or because we always do it that way.

Equally sometimes we don't take into consideration as quickly as we might what is the most appropriate mode of communication for the message we are sending.

Thus we are probably not as strategic as we could be about trying to capture as many of the personal details as possible to give us more choice in how we can communicate.
And we certainly need to give more thought to the various channels open to us and how the use of these may change as the relationship develops. In the same way they do for us in our personal lives.

For example:

Q1. You want a friend to look after your beloved pet while you go away for the weekend - would you (a) text them to ask them to look after your treasured pet (b) write them an email (c) get on the phone?

Q2. You are at work and the light above your desk has gone and is flashing and making you feel a little queasy - would you (a) email facilities team letting them know about your strip lighting (b) give them a call to let them know (c) pop-down and just mention it?

Now there are no right or wrong answers to the questions above (though some would get you a quicker more effective response than others) - and equally I would say that the answers chosen would depend on a number of things: how good a friend is it, have you asked them to look after your pet before, do they live close by, do they need time check their diary several week's in advance, do they constantly text or are they always forgetting their phone? Or with facilities department - where are they in the building? Two floors away or 14 floors away, are they particularly busy at the moment due to staff holidays or sickness? You see what I mean?

The point is, there are variables that should probably be considered for all our requests to supporters too.

Recently I had the pleasure of collecting the IOF award for best use of the telephone for an emergency campaign. Which asked ActionAid Child Sponsors linked to a region of Pakistan whether in the emergency they would allow us to derestrict their support to enable a quicker response on the ground. The response was overwhelming and I was thrilled that we won.

But when the situation was originally being discussed there was an assumption that it would be a mailing because that is one of the main channels we use to send out our emergency communications.

For me however, there were a number of factors that needed to be weighed up:
It was an emergency, people would be worried about their own sponsored children (a letter no matter how well crafted would possibly raise more questions than answer), the request was urgent and we wanted to get the attention of as many people as possible, it was a potentially sensitive subject and required time for explanation if people had questions about their support, their child even our emergency response.

Therefore, the campaign was much more suited to the telephone and it had the desired affect. Allowing us to speak to our supporters, reassure them where needed and ultimately get them to understand why we were asking for what we were and the difference it would make to the people of Pakistan.

I appreciate that we are often limited by only having certain supporter details and thus there is only one route open to us. However, if we ensure that data capture of key contact information is part of the wider strategy for our supporter communications and look at it as a way of enabling us to better communicate to our supporters - then it is a worthwhile effort.

Of course our supporters will soon let us know if they don't want to be communicated via this means or that..and of course we should give them a choice - but if we have the choice to start with and choose the appropriate channel with the right communication based on their support and the other information we know about them - then I think we may also find the number of 'don't mail me or email me or phone me' exclusions could go down.

Relevant communications are all very well and good but at the end of the day they are only relevant if they get seen, read and hopefully acted upon. Therefore, how we choose to communicate these messages can be just as vital as the messages themselves.

A big thank you to Ethicall in Bristol for doing such a great job on the campaign.

What I learnt about 'thank you' from my Aunty Violet.....

Up until she passed away, I wrote to my Great Aunt Violet every week. Just a little note asking how she was and an update on how things were with me and the family.

She was probably the only person I did write to with any regularity but as I think back.. I had written to my aunt for almost my entire life - putting pen to ink smudged paper even before I could complete a full sentence.

Every birthday, Easter, Christmas..without fail, she would send me a gift.

Thoughtful presents and so reliable that you could set your hallmark clock by their arrival. Once the time passed I would sit down and pen a little note of thanks to Aunt Vi. Obviously when I was younger this took a little more work from my mum and the note was probably something like

Dear Aunt Violet

Thank you for the pretty necklace. Mummy put it on for me.

Lots of Love

Amanda xxxxxx

As I grew older I was able to realise and see my aunt as a special someone in my life - the content of my little notes grew and developed... it wouldn't just be a thank you, but also about why the gift was so important i.e. thanks for remembering that I liked Duran Duran - they are my favourite group at the moment..or something equally as insignificant - but to me meant the world.

The point of my little tale is really as a reminder that a thank you communication is a crucial element of communication plans and should be so much more than an admin function that punctuates a gift that has been received, but instead evidence of on-going narrative and relationship building.

Like with Aunt Vi, my initial letters were very much about the act of thanking - but I didn't really know her - they said what was needed and it was heartfelt, but as my knowledge of her grew and so did our relationship the letter became a thank you and so much more, an opportunity to share my world and her to share hers.

I have read a number of posts recently that state various advice and tips on thanking and I would agree with all of it.

There are indeed many ways to ensure that the content of the thank you has the right balance and is something that engages the donor and reaffirms their decision to donate to your worthwhile cause as a good decision and actually thanks them. There is some great advice to be found here on SOFII (you should register if you haven't already) and here with a great check list.

Where I think we are not going far enough is in how we use the Thank you as a way of demonstrating that we actually do know the person to whom we are writing. Often thank you letters sound like they are to strangers. Yet before we have got to that point of sending one, we have jumped through all nature of production and data hoops to prove the exact opposite.

We personalise appeals to segments of one, we quote how long people have supported, we play back key information about the nature of their support, we even personalise donation forms (and I don't mean with just names and address and SRN). We are becoming cleverer about pulling in pertinent information in order to build relationships which will help to solicit a certain response, most frequently a donation - but then the thank you is produced and it remains for many a rehash of the appeal they have seen and responded to.. and I think we can do better than that.

Ultimately, as our relationships develop with supporters so should the thank you - so much so, that this approach should be based on the entire value of their support not necessarily purely financial and not merely for a one-off gift. So some things to consider:

• What is the entire nature of this supporter's relationship with you - ok - they have given £xx to your recent appeal but chances are they have done so much more too - which is not necessarily ever acknowledged. Is this the time? Or what other opportunities should and could be used to do this?
  
• What is the best way to thank this person? The phone is a great way to thank someone and get useful feedback into the motivations of why they gave - but you need to ensure that you manage expectations


• Once you have set the standard of the thank you i.e. personal call or hand-written letter from chief exec to those who gave over £xxx amount - you should probably think about how these people will feel about any less personal letters in the future. After all - their overall support won't have diminished even if their one off gift may be a little less next time.

As this is a labour of love for me at the moment, I would like to caveat this post with the fact that what I am suggesting is not straight forward. I know. There are often many systems and processes in the way and I am not just talking about the letter going over to another page.

My point is that we have to start somewhere. By recognising that we can do this a whole lot better and starting to look at thank you communications as a key to your development and retention strategy not merely as a letter, would be a great place to start.

Thank you :O).

PS Wouldn't it be great if there was an actual award dedicated to this kind of stewardship - I for one, would be very proud to win that award at the IOF!