September 2008 - Posts
I would say it's been a nice, relaxing weekend but I ended up not getting to do much relaxing (and I didn't get to do Museum Day after all). I recently started my own nonprofit with three other other people, and most of this weekend was taken with meetings, planning, contacting volunteers and paperwork.
In Blackbaud news, we just finished testing PCCharge Payment Server version 5.7.1 Release I SP 9a. It is compatible with Patron Edge 3.310 and will also be compatible with our upcoming PE 3.340 release. As long as you're on the latest, feel free to update PCCharge whenever you'd like.
I hope all of you museums out there are participating in the national Museum Day tomorrow, September 27th! Museum day is a great way to get those people who were interested in your organization but not willing to pay admission on the chance that the experience would be disappointing. Get them in, give them lots of information, and maybe even offer a one-day discount for purchasing a membership. For my readers out there from theatres and operas, go visit Smithsonian Magazine's Museum Day site to find out what museums near you are participating. I'm trying to decide between The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon and Drayton Hall plantation. Have you participated in this event in past years? How has it affected visitors and membership? Leave a quick note in the comments.
Continuing on with some more stuff I picked up at the conference, there was a big push on social media and keeping a well-maintained web presence. See below for the highlights and some ideas on how you can improve the web experience for your visitors, members and donors.
The session: Using Web 2.0 for Education, Advocacy, and Outreach
The concept: The social web is here. If you ignore it you are doing your organization and your mission a big disservice. Having a presence on the social web does not mean creating an account on every social networking site, but choosing carefully which ones to participate in, based on where your market is.
The details:
For those who still aren't familiar, the main concept of the term Web 2.0 is that the web is no longer a one-way information portal. It now serves and connects people in new ways every day, with things like blogs, forums, wikis, podcasting, video sharing, social networking and other tools.
You cannot afford to ignore your web presence. If you haven't built your own web presence on at least one of the major social networking sites, someone else has probably already done it for you and may be accidentally (or deliberately) spreading incorrect information. If you haven't created an account on Facebook or MySpace, take a quick look because it's likely that a fan of your organization is running a page under your name. During this session there were real-life examples of where this had happened. Luckily in every case, the person running the page was very happy to give it over to the actual organization. Know where you are and what things say about you.
Your brand does not belong to you anymore. Since the web has become so social, the reputation economy rules. You can live and die by reviews and comments about your organization. That's why it is so important to put out lots of your own content and work with individuals who are your fans. One zoo did a Flickr search for photos taken by visitors and found lots of images, some of them pretty high quality. They then went one better, sponsoring a Flickr photo contest with a prize (with rights to use the images on their site and in publications, of course), and this brought in hundreds of photos from individuals. People on the web are creating an impression of you that is out of your hands. Do what you can to mold that impression, and harness the creativity of the folks online who love what you do.
Be choosy about where you spend your time online. Instead of ignoring web presence, some people create the opposite problem by putting themselves on every social network they can find. Learn which sites your market is using and put a lot of time and effort into developing your presence on those sites. Don't create a presence on 10 different social networks, because chances are that you won't be able to keep up with all of them and those who do find you will only see outdated, half-finished content. My personal opinion is to skip MySpace altogether, it only provides any value as a place for bands to put music and concert schedules. Go with Facebook, and keep your eye on a newer social network called BrightKite, which is a location-based network. I think this one is going to get huge in the next 1-2 years.
Many people prefer self-service when possible. This one is pretty simple and was thrown out as an afterthought, but it shouldn't go unsaid. Your visitors and members want to be able to add and remove themselves from mailing lists, change their address and edit other personal details.
Now get out there, join a social network, improve your website and leave a comment about your experience!
Sorry for not getting any posts out last week. I was at the conference for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in Milwaukee and was taking everything in. There were a lot of specific kinds of issues I didn't realize that zoos face, but many of the problems and business practices do have a broader reach. In this series, I'm going to discuss relevant bits of information I picked up at various sessions and talk about how you can apply it to your organization to help achieve your mission.
The session: Membersip Marketing: Integrating Marketing Principles into your Membership Program
The concept: The speakers discussed having strong reporting and knowing where your market is, and taking advantage of the web to increase your reach and enrich your members' lives. This session was pretty good overall, and while a lot of the things discussed are common sense there were some cool perspectives on membership marketing and really good stuff on member retention.
The details:
Get new members to visit you as frequently as possible during that first year. An actively engaged member is much more likely to stay a member for a long time compared to a member who has only visited you once or twice in a year and doesn't know your mission. Have an inexpensive event or mixer for first-year members to get to know each other. If you're a zoo, it can be as simple as a behind-the-scenes animal feeding with a zookeeper. If you're an art museum it could be a brief lecture by a local art historian about your latest exhibition. Get creative, but get those people in!
If members get messages that aren't relevant, they will tune you out. With information overload in the form of mail, email, TV, radio and the web, you have to stay relevant in order to keep a person's filter from coming down on you. Once a member has decided that you aren't pertinent to his life, chances of renewing that membership are very low. If you send out electronic or print newsletters, there should be two versions; one that goes to visitors on your mailing list, and another one tailored specifically to members. Give the members something special, like an interview with a zookeeper/curator/creative director or extra detail about specific news items. Members aren't just visitors, they support your mission and want to know what is going on. The member-focused version should always include a web address to renew memberships on your site.
Tailor your marketing efforts to different target groups. Make sure you know who your market is made up of, and then determine the best way to reach those groups that are important to you. Do some data analysis to find out what ZIP codes are attending most frequently; send different marketing/renewal materials based on new vs. mult-year members or based on frequency of visits. One zoo wanted to to reach a large, Spanish-speaking market for membership, and did a lot of research rather than just sending out a direct mailing. The zoo determined that these folks have tightly-knit families and value family time greatly. They also frequently work overtime or more than one job, and want to relax on days off. This zoo's marketing materials described how there was "so much to see you can't finish in one day" and this was a major turn off. The organization wrote new materials that focused on the family aspect, the ability to bring a picnic, etc, written in native Spanish (not just translating the English copy). It was a hit and the zoo saw a major increase in membership by that market.
Measure marketing results. Marketing involves quite a bit of testing to see what works. Every organization creates and sends marketing materials, but many fail to measure the effectiveness of those campaigns. Simply capture the marketing information at the time of sale by having a quick "how did you hear about us", both at the point of sale and online. It doesn't require any customization and you can get the data back out using canned reports like the Marketing Campaign Report. It only adds a couple of seconds to a sale but makes a big difference in finding out whether or not you are spending your marketing dollars wisely.
Go take some of these ideas and run with them, and I'll be back again soon with more information from this and other great sessions.
A few years ago there was a Raiser's Edge organization whose building flooded during a hurricane, irreparably destroying all their hardware. They didn't have a solid backup plan, but they luckily found an old off-site copy of their data and only lost a few months of data instead of a few years worth.
Backing up your database is one of those things that everyone knows they should do. However, since backing up feels like a chore with no reward, creating a backup strategy falls by the wayside to deal with more urgent issues, like calming down the red-faced patron shouting at the poor new kid about his seat location. But like Baracus, I pity the fool who don't take daily backups!
Creating a backup plan is easy, so I encourage you to take a few minutes and set up a process doesn't break down when the database administrator is on vacation. There are four points to remember when creating your plan:
Back up your data - Use the Blackbaud Management Console or SQL Management Studio to create a backup schedule. Knowledgebase solution BB94455 can take you through doing it with the BMC; I promise it only takes five minutes.
Do it often - Set your schedule to run at least once a day, especially if you do a higher sales volume. Buying a bigger hard drive or more tapes is a lot cheaper than losing a week's worth of sales and memberships.
Take it home - You don't really have to take the backups to your house, but you definitely need off-site backup. In the case of the organization above, they took backups daily, but were keeping their backup tapes right beside the server. When the building flooded all of the backups were lost or damaged. It's crucial to take your backups somewhere safe. If you don't want to shuttle backup tapes between home and work everyday, you could hire Howling Mad Murdock to fly them in and out, or you can use online backup. There are some great online backup options like Mozy Home or Carbonite that offer unlimited space for $5/month and $50/year, respectively. There is Jungle Disk which uses the ultra-reliable Amazon servers and charges for the amount of storage you use ($0.15/GB per month, plus $.10/GB data uploaded). And of course there are the "enterprise" online backup solutions like Symantec online backup, which offer the same features and level of service as the folks listed above for an extra $400-500 a year.
Test it sometimes - Backing up twice a day won't save you if the backups are somehow being corrupted. This is rare but it happens, so at least once a month, attach the backup, run an Integrity Check, and make a quick cash sale or two to make sure everything is working.
Ahh, I do love it when a plan comes together.
We are making several important changes to the next version of Patron Edge in an effort to meet PA-DSS rules. These changes are required in order for your organization to reach compliance with Payment Card Industry standards and continue to process credit cards. The most important changes are these:
Credit card storage - Patron Edge 3.340 will no longer store credit card data. In the event that your database is compromised, you can now be assured that no one will be able to manipulate or decrypt the credit card numbers of your patrons.
SQL upgrades - Patron Edge 3.340 will no longer be compatible with MS SQL Server 2000. This is required for our new key management policy, which is the encryption key that your organization will set so that credit cards in transit (waiting to be authorized) cannot be compromised. This change will increase security as only your database administrator will know your encryption key. If someone were to obtain the older, Blackbaud-generated encryption key, your Patron Edge 3.340 database will not be vulnerable. So if your organization is not already running SQL 2005, now is the best time to start planning for an upgrade.
More details will be coming related to our compliance measures as the next release approaches, both on The Spotlight and on the Patron Edge documentation page.
Has your organization started planning for PCI compliance? Share your thoughts or best practices in the comments.