Higher Education User Group in Glasgow

So I'll start with a question.  Would you ever send out a mailing to your donors and not segment it or tweak it for your audience?  No?  Then why are so many orgs doing this online?

Yesterday I took part in the Glasgow leg of the HE user groups that are being run this week.  I think people were quite impressed by the new functionality that is in version 5.6 of BBNC.  Best of all the content optimisation piece - hence the question at the beginning!  This new functionality in the software allows users to post up two (or more) differing versions of a page and then have the system decide which content produces the best results.  It uses a chi square algorithm to decide the statistical significance of the piece.  Superb functionality that coupled with things like targetted content can mean that we are able to segment your website and make informed decisions based on actual scientific values instead of hunches in much the same way that you segment your mailing in the Raiser's Edge.  The user group seemed to like it so I'm looking forward to seeing this on some scottish HE websites very soon (not that I'll actually see anything obviously).

Also at the user group Karen Laing from Aberdeen University took us through their BBNC lessons learned which was really helpful.  They have been very successful tracking down lost alumni using BBNC and run most of their events using the software which is excellent to hear.  I also got to try out a new toy, ahem I mean tool, which I have been using.  Twitpic allows you to take photos on your phone and then post them straight to Twitter.  I know it's been about for a while but I'd never used it before and didn't realise how easy it was to use.  Click here for a photo of Karen presenting yesterday.  I see a lot of non profits are now really bought in to Twitter as a way to evangelise their cause.  Although I am seeing a few whose Twitter details are really just extension of the employee who is twittering - that is a lesson that needs to be learned early on that the twitterer (is that the correct term) should still be branded like the org and is really the voice of the org.  Personal twittering is fine but if it's branded like your org remember that it's coming from the org. 

 Anyway - Can you make money on Twitter?  Some folks have.  Beth Kanter last year at Gnomedex last August showed the real potential of the product for spreading the good word.  Click on Beth's blog for more details but they managed to raise $2600 in only 90 mins!  This is a relatively new technology (started in 2006 by podcasting company Odeo) and NFP's are just finding their feet with it (as are the guys at Twitter) but the potential to get onto peoples desktops is fantastic.

So I've been all over the place with this blog but the point I'm making is that online there are many things we can do but we should always remember our branding and online should be no different from off line when it comes to targetting and optimising our message. 

BTW - I'm going to talk more about this next week at the Case Europe Schools conference in Brighton.