This episode is presented by Evertrue. Set yourself up for higher retention rates all year long by joining my free webinar with Evertrue on January 16th. RSVP at positiveequation.com/thanks.
Are you craving a dose of gratitude in today's fast-paced world? Join me as I venture into the transformative power of a simple thank you with JD Beebe, the mastermind behind ThankView.
This episode is a trove of insights as we explore the role of video when it comes to improving donor retention, how easy and cost-effective it is to get started, and how ThankView is redefining the realms of personal and professional relationships, particularly in the non-profit sector.
JD also reveals an innovative feature that lets you search for popular names within a database and send a personalized video to everyone sporting that name! Plus, you’ll hear how this potent combination of gratitude and technology is increasing recurring gifts.
Gratitude is not merely a virtue, but a powerful tool in fostering success.
Resources & Links
Connect with JD at jd@evertrue.com and learn more about ThankView on their website.
After GivingTuesday winds down, how can you set yourself up for higher retention rates all year long? Join my free webinar with Evertrue on January 16th to learn how to creatively use video campaigns, email, and direct mail to reengage your supporters! RSVP and start the New Year with me at positiveequation.com/thanks.
I’m hiring a Brand Partnerships Manager! This is a contract-to-hire position starting at 20 hours per week. If you have great people skills, a deep love for creating aligned partnerships, a sprinkle of creativity, a sharp eye for detail, a knack for sales, and the ability to manage tasks and pitch like a pro…I can't wait to meet you. Learn more here.
Applications are now open for 5 organizations to join my Monthly Giving Mastermind program which starts in February! Ready to build a dedicated community of recurring donors to generate consistent revenue? Let's make it happen togeth
Don’t miss DonorPerfect’s Community Conference SPARK on June 4 & 5! It’s for any fundraiser wanting to excel in donor management, program innovation, community engagement, and organizational growth. Register for FREE! RSVP: https://bit.ly/DSSPARK
Want a donor acquisition plan tailored to you? All you need to do is answer 5 simple questions. Get your personalized growth plan: https://bit.ly/DonorGrowthQuiz
The NIO Summit is the nonprofit industry’s premier digital fundraising event! Join hundreds of fellow nonprofit professionals in Indianapolis September 18-19 and save $600 on your ticket -- the lowest price available anywhere right here: https://bit.ly/NIOSummit2024
Let's Connect!
This episode is presented by Evertrue. Set yourself up for higher retention rates all year long by joining my free webinar with Evertrue on January 16th. RSVP at positiveequation.com/thanks.
Are you craving a dose of gratitude in today's fast-paced world? Join me as I venture into the transformative power of a simple thank you with JD Beebe, the mastermind behind ThankView.
This episode is a trove of insights as we explore the role of video when it comes to improving donor retention, how easy and cost-effective it is to get started, and how ThankView is redefining the realms of personal and professional relationships, particularly in the non-profit sector.
JD also reveals an innovative feature that lets you search for popular names within a database and send a personalized video to everyone sporting that name! Plus, you’ll hear how this potent combination of gratitude and technology is increasing recurring gifts.
Gratitude is not merely a virtue, but a powerful tool in fostering success.
Resources & Links
Connect with JD at jd@evertrue.com and learn more about ThankView on their website.
After GivingTuesday winds down, how can you set yourself up for higher retention rates all year long? Join my free webinar with Evertrue on January 16th to learn how to creatively use video campaigns, email, and direct mail to reengage your supporters! RSVP and start the New Year with me at positiveequation.com/thanks.
I’m hiring a Brand Partnerships Manager! This is a contract-to-hire position starting at 20 hours per week. If you have great people skills, a deep love for creating aligned partnerships, a sprinkle of creativity, a sharp eye for detail, a knack for sales, and the ability to manage tasks and pitch like a pro…I can't wait to meet you. Learn more here.
Applications are now open for 5 organizations to join my Monthly Giving Mastermind program which starts in February! Ready to build a dedicated community of recurring donors to generate consistent revenue? Let's make it happen togeth
Don’t miss DonorPerfect’s Community Conference SPARK on June 4 & 5! It’s for any fundraiser wanting to excel in donor management, program innovation, community engagement, and organizational growth. Register for FREE! RSVP: https://bit.ly/DSSPARK
Want a donor acquisition plan tailored to you? All you need to do is answer 5 simple questions. Get your personalized growth plan: https://bit.ly/DonorGrowthQuiz
The NIO Summit is the nonprofit industry’s premier digital fundraising event! Join hundreds of fellow nonprofit professionals in Indianapolis September 18-19 and save $600 on your ticket -- the lowest price available anywhere right here: https://bit.ly/NIOSummit2024
Let's Connect!
There's a significant lift on recurring gifts if you thank the donor within the first 24 or 48 hours, like a substantial 40 or 60% chance that they'll come back, more so than you'll turn them off. And we all know retention is the silent killer within nonprofits because if you have a 40% retention rate that means you have to get more than you already have every single year just to be whole again. So anything you can do to increase the likelihood that that donor stays around I know you employ the recurring giving strategies just by saying thank you quickly, that will help you.
Speaker 2:Hey, there, you're listening to the Missions to Moomis podcast and I'm your host, dana Snyder, digital Strategist for Nonprofits and Founder and CEO of Positive Equation. This show highlights the digital strategies of organizations making a positive impact in the world. Ready to learn the latest trends, actionable tips and the real stories from behind the feed. Let's transform your mission into a movement. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Missions to Movements, and my guests are fascinating. This one is recording this episode standing outside a Starbucks on his way to a Dave Matthews Band concert. This is a laptop in hand. Jd BB, make it happen. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I think that says all you need to know about me, so we can just stop here. No, thank you very much for having me. I'm very excited to chat.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to chat too. President at Ever True, previously co-founder, which I want to dive into so much of. Thank you, and JD, I have to ask you, because we started off on a very non-traditional basis here how can Google you and find out all the company information? What's the non-Google version of who you are?
Speaker 1:Ooh, I mean the kind of wacky stuff I did previously. Were we talking about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, or just fun stuff that you think people I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't have a lot of special talents or anything of that nature. I was conceived a goofball and remained one. Until today, pretty much everything I've done has been in the pursuit of silliness. I started the first company selling fake beards after the movie the Hangover came out. Since then, I wrote Love Notes as John Hamm. I made a website called callobamacom and you could leave a voicemail for a fake Obama and I posted them on the internet and they were very sweet and weird. I've sold costumes. We've raised money for a particular cancer society by making global testicles you name it, I've done it. So I think that's all usually pretty Google-able if you Google far enough. Yeah, that's a little bit more about me.
Speaker 2:If you go far enough down the rabbit hole, yeah, like page 20. No one's got time for that these days. Well, look, here's what we do have time for and why I wanted to bring you on specifically now. So, listener, if you were listening to this episode Live, and Live in Color, it is the week of Thanksgiving, like a couple days out, which is wild, and that means then coming up is giving Tuesday and therefore end of year and all the amazing things that come with that too. And I think in the sector we spend a lot of time planning for this moment. Right, we spent a lot of time planning for the ask for the solicitation of gifts and brainstorming of the solicitation of gifts. But I think, honestly, where I've seen org stand out in my mind is on the thank you, is on the post gift side. So enter said company, thank you, explain what does the company do. And I know Ever True is now the overarching parent company. So if anybody's listening to these different names and what are they talking about, but if you can dive a little bit into the background of thank you, because I think that has a really, really unique arsenal useful resources for people, specifically in the thinking space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Thank you actually got it started again. As I've mentioned, I've done a lot of things and some of more serious for Pute, and thank you was really born out of the necessity of my wife tasking me with doing the thank you notes after our wedding or our upcoming wedding. So I immediately thought how can I turn this into a business, as I do most things and thank you was initially targeted at the newlyweds, Then birthdays, baby showers, bar mitzvahs, things where personal life you were looking to thank people, because I was thinking the thought of writing 100 thank you notes. Just I couldn't conceive it.
Speaker 2:Sounds like a really sore hand.
Speaker 1:Yes, and you want to do it in a timely manner and you want to really show that you're thankful. It doesn't just want to be the same kind of hack need I guess I got to write this because I have to write this. So we thought there could be a way to do it with video. I searched high and low for a solution for that, couldn't find it. So my friends and I had previously that had started an advertising agency. So we had some money in the bank. We hired our friend who became our CTO and we said let's go build this for the consumer market. That went disasterously. I'd use it for my wedding. It was great. I will give it away to anyone who wants to use it for their wedding still today. But we thought there's got to be another place for this. We don't want to just let the idea go by the wayside. And I had made a gift to my own water boss University while we were building it and they sent me a bookmark and I thought that was nice, but I thought they should send me a thank you. So the team and I marched up to Boston. I Kept in touch with a Dean who I asked hey, can you put me in touch with the donation department. He said that's not a thing, it's called advancement. I said what the heck is that? Finally got put in touch with annual giving and the response from the BU annual giving team was so immediate that we basically went home and said this is what we're gonna do and in the the years since then we would learn it was a full court education on not only higher ed advancement but just development donations, but really with the same court tenant. It was just all about how do we help make it easy to say thank you? Because as we come to learn again, there's so many things a nonprofit is doing and thanking tends to become an afterthought. They think, oh well, they gave and that's enough. But we really want to say we, you know, we think that there's value in doing this and ultimately a lot of clients agreed with. You Know if we have now 1500 organizations using the platform. It's developed a ton since then, but really still with the same core focus of make it really easy to say thank you and make it really meaningful.
Speaker 2:I mean the biggest thing and I'm not sure if we mentioned it yet is the use of video.
Speaker 1:You know I can talk at length and then I sometimes forget I could even not even say the normal thing. Yes, the whole platform is designed around creating one or 100 videos with ease. You can do it from your webcam, from your phone. You can upload great content. But, yeah, it just makes it easy to have a face and a voice, actually communicate the gratitude, versus having a hand right, which, again, I have no issue with the handwritten note or direct mail. I think it's all great. This is just another channel and it's been great to kind of see it proliferate through the nonprofit space, because Sometimes you don't see the people that are the beneficiaries of your kindness or get to connect with the leadership of these organizations. So we've been able to make that possible.
Speaker 2:This is going to be the start of a couple episodes focused on Thankfulness and we're gonna go into some. I have some examples for you and other episodes. But I want to ask you, and in this one too, but a nuts and bolts question if somebody is listening is like oh yeah, we haven't thought about this and it is literally go time. Is think, view something that is easy to set up and use between now and and giving Tuesday, now and end of year, or does it require a robust set up time?
Speaker 1:No, if you're listening to this and you give us a thumbs up, we can have you set up before this episode is done. I mean, that might be pushing it a little bit, but we can have you Stood up. It's a very simple implementation process. Again, you're able to pull in from your CRRAM or upload Guest list that you have. It's very easy to use. And then, in terms of training, our team is around the clock. We have people answering questions all the time. It's very user-friendly. But we also have implementation sessions to help you get stood up. And If you want to watch videos, you'll probably see my face a lot, because I do a ton of walkthrough and demos and, honestly, you text me say, hey, jd, how does this work? And I'll probably send you back a video in 15 minutes.
Speaker 2:He does. It's true. We jumped on the call and he was the one giving me a demo of the behind-the-scenes of how it works. It's real. I'm asking you some nuts and bolts questions because it's that season and people need some answers get it if I say yes, okay, I'm in. Is there a way for them to Test it for the next couple months, or how does the actual like sign-up process work?
Speaker 1:Sure, so you'd reach out. Thank you, comm. Just go on there. It's really simple to set up a demo. You hop into a demo with my team. We're very straightforward, we want to help out. We can set you up with a two-week trial. You jump in there, cart Blanche, you can get in there. You can design all the assets. There's these nice little envelopes. You can brand the animate open. It's very cute. You can do everything you want and really kind of run it through its paces. And then if you want to sign up, then it's really easy to sign up and we've tried to make it as cost-effective for any organization as we can, because we don't want to break the bank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, appreciate that. Have I had a brainstorm slump where you just need somewhere to go for new ideas? Now, yes, this podcast is for sure one, but I wanted to introduce you to ever true studios. It's basically like Netflix but for fundraisers. Their platform offers free on-demand documentaries, series and over 250 podcast episodes tailored for advancement professionals, like raise and talking shop. You can subscribe at ever true comm Backslash studios to start binging and you can click the link in the show. Knows, again, that's ever true comm backslash Studios. And since you're a podcast fan, I just wanted to highlight you can go on Spotify or Apple to find these shows right now raise podcast, hosted by the ever true CEO, who's really talking about the most exciting things and fundraising from a completely different angle. That is what the raise podcast is all about. And Talking shop is hosted by David lively. He is the senior associate vice president for alumni relations and development and Campaign manager at Northwestern University, and Aaron Moran, director of commercial enablement at ever true and the former associate VP and chief of Staff at DePaul University. So basically, what happens when an advancement Operations nerd and a big ideas major gift guys sit down to chat? They talk shop. So raise podcast and talking shop. Go check those out, go ahead and you can visit all of these documentaries and content at ever true comm backslash studios. Now back to the show and on the kind of like strategy side, how have you seen video really make a difference in the art of saying thanks?
Speaker 1:I think what we've brought I mean video is just as a medium. I think it's just great. It says so much that the written word can't say and being able to actually express and espouse how you feel. But what I think we've really done is provide a level of metric that maybe wasn't apparent before. Again, there's appeal codes if you're trying to raise money with direct mail and things of that nature. But when you're using thank you, I doubt a lot of people are saying, okay, they were sent a thank you message and that correlates back to X, y and Z. What we've been able to show is, again, boston University, one of our first clients. They created two cohorts when they first started, one that they thanked with thank you and one that they didn't, and year over year they saw a 15% increase on the group that were thanked personally versus those that weren't. So again, is that all attributable to us? Hard to say. That is as much as we have metrics. Some of the stuff is fuzzy at times, but it goes without question that we make it easy to do this, we make it easy to track this, and then it really comes down to the art of your organization. If you have a really animated president or founder of your organization, they should be on camera. If you have amazing stories from people and families you've affected and they give you the okay to do it, you should be, sharing that and I think the other thing that I found that we've seen kind of work time after time is a lot of people think it needs to be really highly produced. They need a really nice shot and the drone fly over and everything in slow motion and black and white and that's great, that can be great, but time and time again we call them low five versus high five. So low five like my webcam, the engagement and the completion rates and the response rates on those tends to be higher at every organization than the highly glossy video. Because I think it's that humanity and it's that reality and I drive people to say if you flub up or you stumble over a word, don't immediately rerecord. That's just being human and people like to see that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. It's very true. What is the difference of? I know this platform really helps organizations to obviously brand, but scale and automate the send out for somebody who might be used to using loom as an example of like recording a quick video on loom and sending out that link to somebody. What's the difference?
Speaker 1:on the back end of how Thinkv works, so I will say I love loom in so many ways I'm jealous of loom. I think they're just so smart and there's just so many applications for that platform. But we really focus on a use case. So I have a video, or I want to record a video for one or hundreds of people, or maybe I want to send one video to a thousand people. Our platform, in one of the flows, works very much like an email client. So if you're used to using MailChimp or constant contact, I'm uploading my recipients, I'm choosing my look and feel, I'm inserting merge fields where, again, it's not the video part, but maybe I want to say hi Dana to you and hi JD to me. And there's a lot of flexibility in how you can do that branding from the envelopes to the landing pages, because this can be sent via email or text message. So depending on how you want to connect with somebody.
Speaker 2:Oh, it can be sent via text too.
Speaker 1:It can be sent via text message. Then it drives into a personalized landing page where it's either, you know, I can create one video for you and go all the way down. I can create an intro to a video and then have it be a generic second video. There's a lot of flexibility, but it really is about that delivery to I have from one organization out to a bunch of single individuals. We also have just made it really easy to we call it thank you one to one. So after this meeting, it's a very simplified flow. I put in that I'm sending this to Dana, I record the video, I grabbed a little snippet of code and I drop it into my personal email and it works the same exact way but with, you know, a lot less choices involved. So that's where I'd say it again. It's mostly where Loom does like the screen recording and I can show you what's happening on my screen. We just haven't focused on that because we wanted to do more of the focus on the message versus the showing of how things work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think. One feature that I thought was pretty neat for listener if you are an organization that you have a very daunting but amazing list of people that support you, and let's say you have 15 Danes and you can explain this probably better, but you can search for popular names, right, yep, and you could send that one video that says hi, dana, to like all of those Dana's. Or if you have 20 Sarah's, yep, to all of the Sarah's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we call that the Jake trick because it's always the name Jake that we use when we're showing it off. But it's exactly as you just said. If you have common names and what we've actually found, which we can also do for you we have this name frequency tool. So if you upload your entire database to us, we'll analyze the database and show you the top 200 names, which Almost in every single case, accounts for 50% or more of your entire database. Just the top 200 names, which, again, 200 feels like a lot, but on Thanksgiving, at the end of year, when you're doing a big push Even, I think the top 20 names account for like 18% of your audience, so it does not have to be a huge, huge lift. I mean, we're talking. This works with a thousand person databases. This works with a hundred thousand person databases. So there's a lot of tricks that we can help you employ to create a personalized element that you know, again, doesn't take you days and days and days to get done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I love that one. I thought that was an interesting way because I think personalization is so important, of course, when you're saying thank you, but you also want to work with your time that you have, yeah, and the staff members. I wanted to ask you a little bit about different use cases. Yeah, so I think the standard Thank you after a one-time gift seems normal, right, how can this be set up for something like a recurring giving program?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you know there's the dual-edge sword of having something. As you know, such a clever name is thank you is they say, oh, that's great, but I only use it for thanking. It's like no, no, no, you can use it for literally anything. So for recurring giving program. I think that's when the organization just employs updates. You know, most organizations have a newsletter. Why can't you turn one of those newsletters or try for a month or two turning it into a video newsletter because one More engaging? We're gonna get the same click-through data that you get through your newsletter. We're gonna get an additional data point of sewing, who's watching and how many times are watching, how far they're watching, and then you can Hyper focus in on that audience to say, okay, they're really resonating with this message. Maybe I give them a phone call you know, a thankful donor phone call, whatever it might be. We also do have in the platform if you have their birthdays or the gift of their anniversary. We can automate some of those touch points. So when that one year comes around, you can thank them. But in the case of a monthly, like a recurring giving program. I think it's just about a content calendar, the same stuff you are likely producing and pushing out on social. If it's video-based, you should be pushing through thank you because it's just again. Think of it as a channel, not so much as, oh, this is an explicit tool just to say thank you. No, it's. It's a channel to communicate through so grateful patience, updates about what's happening, where their money is going, events that just happened or are coming up. There's a thousand ways you can do it and, again, this doesn't have to be a massive lift, especially if you're already creating this content for your social channels, for your Instagram, tiktok, wherever it might be.
Speaker 2:Yes, love that great example, I love the. You can use this on the front end as Well as on the back end, and I think one point I don't want to gloss over, because I think it's really important, is the data that you just talked about. Yep is, if you do send something out on the front end, you can tell who is watching this video, how long are they watching it. You are able, if I'm understanding this properly, you're able to tell who's watching it by a certain percentage or length of time and then reach back out to the like the highest quality Viewers per se.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So this again, this is one of those like as much as I'm like you can do this, and they're like, no, it's for thinking, hopefully your audience can employ these methods. You have a capital campaign, or you have a massive thing coming up, or you you want to AB test. Right, maybe there's a new message for a campaign you have coming up. I want to test this out. You can blast your audience with an AB test, so here's one video for this audience and here's one video for this audience. You can then go back to the metrics, see who's watching, who's engaging the most, segment that list and then either send them another thank you or put them on a call list or Grab an email or you know. Whatever your next move is, the platform makes it really easy to identify that engage cohort so that you can take that next action. I'll just say we eat our own dog food with thank you. When I, when I started thank you, I would blast out again I just use my own product to promote myself and I would look for the people that watched it and I would follow up with them first, and my close rate, or my interest rate, on that was unsurprisingly through the roof. It was like a 10x return on my effort there, versus if I just send things out and just kept on going willy-nilly from you know a to z great make sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey, I hope you are enjoying this episode. I wanted to give you a quick announcement. The next round of my monthly giving mastermind will start in February. Previously it was mid-January, but as I'm going through 2024 planning, I really want to give us all time to get settled into the new year. So the monthly giving mastermind will start in February for five organizations max. So if building a monthly donor program has been on your to-do list that it keeps getting pushed back due to limited time or resources, this is for you. By April you will have a program that is ready to go live. So let's make it happen together. You can head to positive equation comm backslash mastermind to learn all about it, to apply, to view more details and to view our work with featured alumni of the program. Again, that's positive equation comm backslash mastermind. Second use case, just because it's very timely, giving Tuesday I mean thank you has been around for how many giving Tuesdays?
Speaker 1:really in earnest since 2016.
Speaker 2:Okay, so a while. Have you seen. I'm sure you have what's like a very creative use case for giving Tuesday.
Speaker 1:I mean again, if you're looking to give or you know you're looking to raise funds on that day, I'd say it's more like akin to a giving day at it at a university. You're seeing content all throughout the day, here the updates. Here's what's happening with a call to action to give. So much of life is about consistency versus Genius. Yeah, it's just about getting in there and sharing. Here's what we're trying to achieve today. Here's how we can get you involved. Here's what we'd like you to do. And then, as they do that, we make it really easy to thank those people in real time too. So if you're promoting it somewhere, the second that gift comes through one. We have automations with folks like BlackBot and XC, if they're users of that platform, where you can actually just automatically push people that have given a gift into the platform, into a campaign. So you're just refreshing days going on and I'm just sitting there thanking people throughout the day, and I'd say that's where you really employ or like lean into what your organization is about. Obviously, I'm always kind of jealous of the humane societies because they have cute puppies and kittens and all things to talk about, but food kitchens what's an infographic that I can show that your support has created. You know we're moving up and up and up. Just make them feel like they're part of the cause. And again, video is a channel. It doesn't have to be. The biggest thing I'd say is just don't overthink it. Like, if you have an idea, just try it and you can always like, even throughout the day. You'll improve throughout the day. You don't have to have the lighting perfect or the script crisp. It's okay to just kind of be human.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I thank you Nailed it. One word that you hit was like in near real time of saying thanks. There's, I'm going to share a couple of these Tip Top Tuesday series that you used to put together and one that really stood out to me and listening might be like well, this is so simple, but it's really rare. Actually. They sent out thank yous on Giving Tuesday within two hours, just videos, and that's just having somebody that's watching right as donations are happening and then firing off the video and it takes maybe, yes, volunteers or a staff member that's sitting there to make that happen, but that is not normal.
Speaker 1:I know and it's you know. We've had a lot of organizations, even from year one, that have picked it up and said, oh, this is so, so simple. But it has been odd to me, if I'm being quite honest, that not everyone does that. It is so simple and I think there are and I'm going to butcher the metrics, so, please, you know, correct me in post or whatever but there's a significant lift on recurring gifts. If you thank the donor within the first 24 or 48 hours, like a substantial 40 or 60% chance that they'll come back, more so than you know. You'll turn them off and we all know retention is the silent killer within nonprofits because you know if you have a 40% retention rate, that means you have to get more than you already have every single year just to be whole again. So anything you can do to increase the likelihood that that donor stays around I know you employ the recurring giving strategies Just by saying thank you quickly, that will help you. And here's the thing you can do it where it's personalized to every single person. Thank you, dana, for your gift of $100. Thank you, jd. Or at the very least you know you can have a video on the ready gift. Comes in, it's a canned video from the president or the head of development or whomever. Thank you so much for your gift on this day. It doesn't have to be any effort is good effort, I'd say, in this case, when we're starting from zero.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I think your advice a couple of minutes ago don't overthink it, don't overthink it, don't overthink it.
Speaker 1:I've spent my whole life saying that and it's worked out so far, you know.
Speaker 2:Just don't overthink it. Progress over perfection, man. I never would have started my company. I had zero clients. If I would have waited for one, I probably never would have stopped Right.
Speaker 1:In the business case it makes so much sense because you know you know nothing. But as you go further on you realize how much you actually didn't know. And if you had known that to begin with, you probably would never have started. So it's, you just got to start going.
Speaker 2:Totally Well in talking about that. You now have like an ecosystem of tools and products, and I have recently been testing direct mail myself, and I do not coin myself as a direct mail specialist at all. However, it's really funny. I just sent out a mailer. I attended the nonprofit storytelling conference and, as part of like a sponsor of the event, I got the list, and so I was like you know what? I'm going to do something creative Send out a direct mail piece to everyone attending, inviting them to my session. Have a QR code from my podcast, and I had people come up to me saying I got your direct mail piece.
Speaker 1:It was beautiful. Who says that? Well, again, you know, when everyone zigs, you zag, and there's always a swinging pendulum of old school versus new school. And as part of Ever True and our merger with Ever True, we merge with the company Pledge Mind that does bespoke small mailers, direct mail, and it's great being omnichannel, is you know, it's easier than ever.
Speaker 2:How do those two like? How can personalized direct mail and videos like work together and compliment each other during a campaign?
Speaker 1:So I love that you're already doing the stuff with the QR code and driving them towards called action. There We've actually been doing that. We have a program called donor experience campus creators. So instead of having a call center, we're trying to say we can do the same level of outreach at a higher level of personalization with fewer students using video and omnichannel. So the first thing some of our orgs are doing now is they're sending out the direct mail piece. And if I'm, you know, if I'm essentially your gift officer for that year, that student you're going to hear from you get a direct mail piece with my face on it. He is a little bit about JD. Do this QR code to learn more about me. And again, it's either as an introduction or steps along the way. I think it's really again, think about what you're trying to communicate throughout the year. If they're a new donor, then introduce them to a new story or introduce them to the people at the org that you want to build those relationships with and make and I tell as the sender if they scanned that QR code to get to know you. Yes, yeah, that's all trackable. Yeah, Depending on how you set the QR code up, that can be a triggered response, it can be individual QR codes, it can be one QR code and you can see how many hits hit the website. So, especially if you're you know if you're using it for an appeal purpose, which I think is great too. That's really easy to track because that's you know. You can say here's the mailers that went out, here's the number of visitors that hit the site, here's the gifts that were completed through this site, and it makes it really easy to drive the ROI on a piece of outreach like that.
Speaker 2:Amazing. We're going to have Lauren Daley from Pledge of Mind joining us in a couple episodes to dive deep into direct mail, because I'm just fascinated by it ever since COVID happened and we're all just at home more Yep, look, I still get excited to go open my mailbox. However, I feel like direct mail pieces have not evolved really much at all in decades.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's all. There's different strokes for different folks and I think, in some cases, catching the attention with a postcard versus the ugly Betty that you have in there and their rip-offs, and this, and that there's different times to employ different strategies. And I'm so glad you're talking with Lauren Daly because, one, she's a gem of a human being and, two, she knows a ton about that space. So I will not try to pontificate on things I don't know and she knows much better than I do.
Speaker 2:I love it. Well, JD, I'm so appreciative of your time and the creativity of the platforms that you create that are so beneficial. How many organizations now are on ThankView?
Speaker 1:1,500 are now and across the EverTru portfolio, we're close to about 2,000 organizations that we work with.
Speaker 2:Cool, so neat. Yes, that's amazing, jd. What is? I want to wrap with two questions with you. What's one thing that you would like to ask for help or support on?
Speaker 1:Oh, we have just a few minutes left. Right, this was pretty personal. I'm not a great planner. Any planning tips that people have, just what are daily rituals that I can start to employ that make me a better planner. I've been lucky to work with and co-found things with people who are much better at that than I am, so I tend to be their beneficiary, but I want to get better.
Speaker 2:Nice, that's a good one. Yes, I'm very like by the seat of my pants, with ideas and stuff too. Are you a manifesting generator? Have you heard of that before?
Speaker 1:Sometimes like, oh, you're an otter or a lion or a I don't know what. You know you're the jackal or so I don't know. But yes, I kind of know what you're talking about. I don't know what personality type I am. I'm just again kind of all over the place, personality type.
Speaker 2:You're like I would just make it happen. Yeah, If people do have advice on planning, where can listeners connect with you?
Speaker 1:Please reach out to me at JD at evertruecom E-V-E-R-T-R-U-Ecom. Yeah, I'd love to hear from anyone and happy to help and certainly would love any advice that people have.
Speaker 2:Yes, and, if you're interested, you know I am somebody who likes to demonstrate these things and I love to share what I think is the coolest tech in the nonprofit industry. In January, I'm going to be co-hosting a webinar with somebody brilliant from JD's team and we're going to dive into because I think it's important to dive into both the direct mail and the thank you video side. So we're going to kind of combine them together and showcase some really cool use cases of these products and how you can use them in Q1. Because not only if you're like right now, like do not have the bandwidth cool. However, you're going to have a plethora of new donations I'm manifesting that for you listener Plethora of new supporters, and you're going to need to reach out and nurture them and say thank you, and what a better way for them to get to know you and your personality and your team through video. So more details on the webinar are coming your way. Stay tuned. I will send out emails. It's going to be talked about in this podcast and in this episode, somewhere beginning in the middle of the end. But, jd, so grateful for you and your time. Go, have a wonderful night out.
Speaker 1:Thank you, dana, and I appreciate all the work that you do for the sector, and thank you for having me, and this is great. I really appreciate the conversation.
Speaker 2:Can you tell I love talking. All things digital to make this show better. I'd be so grateful for your feedback. Leave a review, take a screenshot of this episode, share it on Instagram stories and tag positive equation with one e so I can reshare and connect with you.