Posted on Tue, Aug 31, 2010
By Jim Hussey, President
I’m not referring to the type of pre-nuptial agreements that two individuals may sign before marrying, but the discreet pre-nuptial agreement that some consultants require their clients to sign as a part of their contracts.
Pre-nuptial agreements between nonprofit organizations and fundraising consultants? You haven’t heard of such a thing? That’s because these consultants do not call such an agreement a pre-nuptial. They often refer to the clause as a form of protection for the consultant’s intellectual property. But in the end, such an agreement has a similar impact as a pre-nuptial.
As a pre-nuptial agreement in a marriage may prevent a divorced spouse from walking away with a ton of cash, these contract clauses often prevent clients from using the formats and copy developed by the consultant should they choose to end the relationship. In other words, the consultant owns the content of the campaigns they’ve developed … the copy, the art, the concept … not the client.
I’ve seen this situation on several occasions while working for a new client, receiving legal notices from the previous consultants informing me that the client is not allowed to use control packages that they developed. On one occasion, I was even informed that we could not reference the statistics from previous mailings. In such situations, the client must often start from scratch.
Are such agreements legal? Yes. Is it the best arrangement for the nonprofit organization? No. While these firms argue that they are merely protecting their strategies and intellectual property, I believe it is often used as a method to intimidate a client from changing to another consultant.
As a client, you are paying your consultant to develop campaigns on your behalf, and your organization should own the resulting product. So before you sign that contract, be sure to carefully read the fine print.
Posted on Tue, Jul 06, 2010
By Bill Goldstein, Vice President, Client Services
Yoda would have made a fantastic marketer. Being a diehard fan of the Star Wars films (yes, even the prequels); I cannot tell you how often his little nuggets of wisdom apply to our roles as direct response marketing strategists.
As we look forward to developing smart and innovative tests to grow our clients’ membership sizes, retain members, reduce expense, and improve revenues, consider some of these great quotes and how we can take them to heart in our testing strategies.
“Size matters not ... Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?” Too often, the tests which have the largest impact on our programs revenue and performance are the ones with the smallest changes to our packages and segmentation strategies. How many times has something as simple as 1st vs. 3rd class postage, a return address envelope vs. business reply envelope, or removing an insert dramatically improved results? It is important for us to be innovators. It is just as important to use best practices.
“Mind what you have learned. Save you it can.” Have you reviewed your client’s past testing results? Have the winning tests been rolled out yet? A strong testing agenda builds on what has been done so you are not repeating the same tests over and over again. If you have tested BRE vs. RAE multiple times, what is the consensus? You can save a client considerable expense by not repeating tests that are clearly one-sided.
“Always two there are, no more, no less: a master and an apprentice.” We spend considerable time and expense developing new messages, creative and testing strategies to improve programs. But all that work is for naught if the control and test are not correctly set up. Make sure you have isolated only one variable that you are comparing, such as segments; there is a stratification of the data; and a large enough sample size to read results.
“Always in motion is the future.” A smart marketer never accepts the status quo. As direct marketing strategists, it is our job to always test the conventional wisdom for our client’s programs.
"Reckless he is. Matters are worse." While it is criminal to rollout 2 million pieces of acquisition mail without a single test – we also do not want to throw a bunch of tests into a large campaign to say we did testing. Test smart and test with a purpose! If possible develop a testing agenda during the budget process and lay out your strategies for the next 12 months.
May the force be with you.
Let us know what testing strategies you use? What’s made the biggest impact?
Posted on Tue, Apr 13, 2010
By Brandon Hemel, Director of Analytics
In a deep, dark corner of the Adams Hussey & Associates office sits a team of over-caffeinated data heads, who wake up way too early in the morning and speak in a strange language called SQL.
As the Director of Analytics at AH&A and leader of our nerd-herd - btw that is NOT me :) I often get this seemingly simple request: “Can you guys go into our data and see what it tells us?”
Without fail, I find that I need to do additional research to figure out not just what happened but why it happened.
So to help you in case you are ever asked that question, I’m giving you an inside look at the most vital part of data analysis and you don’t even have to go through the pain of learning Structured Query Language (SQL).
The key aspect of investigation is adding perspective and insight into your results to get the why and not just the what.
Five Handy Things to Keep Around While Doing Historical Data Investigations
Time Lines of World Events
Unless your members and donors live in a vacuum, outside events will impact your fund raising efforts in both good and bad ways. But when looking back at your results after five or ten years has gone by, world events blend together. I find that Wikipedia.org and Infoplease.com are extremely helpful for these needs.
Metrics, Metrics, Metrics
Along with event timelines, consumer, government and world financial indices are great ways to compare and contrast your data against real world measures. My favorites are the Consumer Confidence Index, the Consumer Price Index and the Gross Domestic Product Index.
Metadata for your Source CodesAs Direct Marketers, we live and die by coding structure. If your data has inaccurate source codes or you have changed the schema – let your data analyst know this ahead of time (please!).
A Second Set of EyesDeep sea divers always work in teams and so should your analysts. A fresh perspective is always helpful.
Most importantly – you should always have a
Big ‘ole Book of Historical StrategyTo understand the framework of what it means when you see a distinct change in your data (whether it is a huge jump in revenue or a deep decline in membership), old memos, year-end reviews, or at least a person with a really good memory are invaluable when contextualizing your data.
Tell us what you think. How does your organization add perspective to your data? Data for the sake of data may be fun (!), but it won’t help your strategy or grow your organization.