Integrating new technology with e-marketing

Posted by Jennifer Doyle on March 1st, 2005 at 10:07pm

If you are like me, you get countless e-newsletters in your inbox throughout the day. I subscribe to lots of them. I can’t help it. I am just so curious to find out what’s new. Whether its fundraising, advocacy, news or technology I gotta know. The hard part is deciding which ones do I read, delete, or even worse dragged into a folder to be read “sometime”.

With non-profits engaging in cultivating their donors, an e-newsletter is a good method to keep their supporters in touch with current happenings. But if supporters subscribe to multiple charity e-newsletters, news feeds, how do non-profits get an edge and differentiate themselves from other charities and other e-newsletters?

There are services available from Sweet Talk Studios that can greatly enrich your e-mail, newsletters and website content with audio and video functionality. How would this work? Say for instance you work with a children’s charity, can you imagine how much more moving it would be for supporters to hear the sound of children’s laughter when they open your email? Or for university alumni, to click on a link to relive a winning touchdown at an important football game. There are endless possibilities for this application. It could add the wow factor to your e-newsletter, email or even your website.

The audio component can also be vitally important when communication is critical, like in the case with the Asian Tsunami. The Salvation Army USA World Service Office has effectively integrated audio appeals on their website to provide updates of the Tsunami Relief efforts and as a method to ask for funding. The message lends a sense of urgencey, emotion, and a platform to to reach out to the world.

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