Last week, Ericsson analysts announced that, according to their estimates, the world’s 5 billionth mobile phone subscription was reached on Thursday July 8th, and they illustrated the pace of growth with the fact that there are now more mobile subscribers in China alone than there were globally in 2000.

While such a milestone is a clear reminder of the growing ubiquity of mobile phones, it’s actually the parallel growth in mobile broadband subscriptions that Ericsson also report in the same news release that I think is all the more exciting from the fundraising point of view. They forecast 3.4 billion mobile broadband subscribers by 2015, up from 360 million in 2009 – which is in-line with other market estimates and represents the level of growth that has led analysts at Gartner Research to announce earlier this year that mobile phones will actually overtake PCs as the most common web access device world-wide by 2013.

This might seem like a crazy forecast, given the relatively low levels of mobile web use we see today. But with multiple studies showing month on month exponential growth in mobile web user numbers and eMarketer analysts predicting that there will be more mobile internet users in China by the end of this year than the entire population of the US it’s already looking like the technology adoption curve to beat them all.

All of which is why, when I was asked to present the Hot Topic: Digital Fundraising session at the Institute of Fundraising’s National Convention here in London last week it was Smartphones and the incredible range of new fundraising opportunities their mass adoption looks set to offer us that I took as my hot topic subject.

You can see my full presentation above or view it on Slideshare here – and if you’d like to read more about some of the emerging new fundraising opportunities then you can also take a look at my article in the April edition of the Resource Alliance’s ‘Global Connections’ e-newsletter.

I had the very great pleasure last week of finally meeting face to face with someone who I can honestly say has changed the way I think about online fundraising over the last 18 months or so – that person being Christine Egger of Social Actions.

I first came across Christine and the work of Social Actions back in early 2009 when I blogged about their ‘Change the Web Challenge’. Since then I’ve had the opportunity to share ideas on open source thinking and the evolution of online fundraising and wider microphilanthropy through numerous email, Twitter and Skype exchanges with her – every one of which has left me with an excited “now I get it” feeling about what the future of online microphilanthropy might hold.

So, when the Institute of Fundraising asked Jason Potts and me to plan-out the Digital Fundraising channel for their National Convention here in London, Christine was naturally top of my list of ‘big thinkers’ to get onto the convention platform. Which is why we finally came to be having coffee in the Convention Hotel last Monday morning.

You can see Christine’s Convention presentation above – or even better view it on Slideshare here complete with full notes to help explain the finer intricacies of “Designing and aligning for the emerging philanthropic web”.

Grab yourself a cup of something, sit back, and take some time to think through the ideas Christine shared in her session – from understanding where open giving markets fit into online fundraising to ideas on how to design your own activities to take advantage of the way the philanthropic web is developing, it’ll be time very well spent.

Last Thursday I was out at the launch event for the DMA’s Digital Tracker Study, a research initiative (backed by online research company FastMAP and email marketing company SilverPop) that aims to provide regular insights into some of the key questions online marketers are asking in relation to using email and social media use.

I’ve embedded a copy of the main research presentation above, so you can take a look at the top-line findings (or click here to view on SlideShare).

As is always the case with such research, some of the observations just confirm what most good online marketers know already – like the fact that traditional sales promotion techniques (money off or free delivery) work well in email.  But I did find some of the insights related to people’s use of Spam flags and also the difference between use of mobile devices to access emails and social media sites of real interest. Plus, there are also some great headline stats – like almost two thirds of recipients finding less than one in ten promotional emails of interest (which might explain some of the dismal click through rates many email marketers see).

Here are some of the insights that jumped out at me – but do take a look yourself and see if the results confirm or counter your own experience or current thinking:

• 43% of UK adults receive over 20 promotional emails a week – so there’s lots of competition for attention in their inbox

• 64% of people find just 1 in ten (or less) of these emails of interest to them – suggesting that if you can be truly relevant than you can really stand-out

• 19% of people will flag your email as Spam if they feel they receive too many and 18% will Spam flag emails they don’t recall signing-up for- so make sure you send a memorable ‘welcome’ email in response to every sign-up and then watch your frequency if you don’t want your email campaigns blacklisted (although the more relevant and thus ‘valuable’ your email, the less frequency should be a concern)

• A further 8% use the Spam flag instead of opting-out if the opt-out process seems too slow or unclear – so, again you’re risking blacklisting if you don’t make it as easy to opt-out as you did to opt-in

• The majority of email is still read on desktop (67%) or laptop (49%) devices – but 11% of adults now also read them on mobile devices

• Interestingly, this contrasts with 18% of people using mobile devices to access their social networks – suggesting a very different mode of use between email and social networks, which marketers need to take into account

I’m back home in London now after speaking at the 2010 Deutscher Fundraising Kongress over in Fulda last Thursday, having spent most of the last three days waiting for trains alongside countless other travellers stranded by the European air travel lockdown caused by ash from an Icelandic volcano. However, on the up-side, the unexpected land journey did give me an opportunity to see far more of the country than I would otherwise have done and it was certainly a great conference – with over 500 fundraisers attending, mainly from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

I was there to give a couple of sessions. One on Online Community Fundraising that you can see over on my givinginadigitalworld.org blog and the other on Consumer Insight that you can view above or on slideshare.

All too often smaller charities feel they can’t benefit from Supporter Insight because they can’t afford to invest in research, while many of those with larger budgets still can’t find the answers they need in the research reports they receive. This session draws mostly on my time as Head of Strategy and Consumer Insight at Cancer Research UK, to highlight the key difference between Research and Insight and show how even small charities can make use of Supporter Insight techniques if they know where to look.

I’m just back home after a flying visit over to the Fundraising Ireland 2010 National Conference in Dublin, where I was presenting a session about online community fundraising – the slides from which are available to view above or via Slideshare.

The conference was a sell-out event and the sessions I got to, as well as my own, were characterised by some really great interaction and questions – which reflected the great atmosphere at the whole event. Add to that the best conference lunch I’ve had in ages and the whole thing was a great success. So, many congratulations to the organisers at Fundraising Ireland. They’re a pretty new network for Irish fundraisers, and just announced that they are about to re-vamp their website as an Irish fundraising information portal as well as introduce a membership scheme. Without a doubt, well worth getting involved with them if you’re a fundraiser in Ireland.

One of the topics that was returned to a couple of times in discussions was the lack of useful Ireland-specific research on everything from giving trends to online usage. To help-out with the latter, here are the links to the latest freely available Irish online usage research I’ve been able to find – and which I quoted from in my session:

> Latest report from ComReg (the Irish Commission for Communications Regulation) a bit of a heavy read but does include the latest data on internet access in Ireland – published just this month: download it for free here

> Amarach Research Irish Life Online Report from Feb 2009: downloadable here

> Barry Hand’s blog post on the top Irish websites for Feb 2010: read it here

> Information on facebook user numbers in any country around the world: Checkfacebook.com

If anyone comes across any other recent research into the Irish online market – especially if it relates to social media use – then do let me know.

I’m just back from holiday and straight-away immersed in all sorts of client work, as well as getting-down to preparing presentations for several conferences I’m speaking at over the next few months. As it’s often only at conferences that I get an opportunity to meet folks who subscribe to my blogs, I thought I’d give them a quick plug here – then if you’re attending you can come by and say ‘hello’.

The first is the 2010 National Convention for Fundraisers in Ireland, which is being held in Dublin on March 23rd and 24th. I’m presenting late morning on 24th on Community Fundraising 2.0 – when I’ll be talking through some of the latest online fundraising developments worldwide as well as focusing specifically on some really interesting home-grown Irish initiatives.

Next month, from 14th to 16th April I’m over in Germany at the Deutscher Fundraising Kongress, presenting sessions on ‘Using Research to Generate Supporter Insight’ and ‘Online Community Fundraising’. I know that quite a few German fundraisers do subscribe to my blogs – so hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to meet some of you there.

Then, of course, in July (5th to 7th) it’s the Institute of Fundraising National Convention here in London, where I’m co-presenting a ‘Hot Topic’ session with Jason Potts of Think Consulting – where we’ll be sharing what we think are some of the hottest developments in digital fundraising. Given how quickly things are changing in the digital space, that’ll be one that we prepare right at the last minute!

Each time we see a significant evolution in the way consumers communicate there is always a temptation to jump to the conclusion that the latest method will surely kill-off the previous methods. Presumably such predictions were bandied about after Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone call back in 1876 – yet the mail service didn’t die-out as a result of the adoption of telephones. Rather more recently, there have been suggestions that email will kill-off traditional mail ever since I got my first email address back in the early ’90s (remember Compuserve?) – but it hasn’t happened yet (although that debate does continue).

As such, following the incredibly rapid adoption of Social Media over the last few years it’s not surprising that people are having the same discussions again – ’surely if everyone is tweeting or facebooking then they’ll no longer be using email?’. Indeed, this was the very idea being put forward in a WSJ Tech Article I spotted towards the end of last year entitled: “Why Email no longer rules”.

However, it turns-out based on a growing body of research evidence that the rumours of Email’s imminent demise at the hands of Social Networkers are incorrect. Here are just a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean:

Firstly research from Nielsen back at the start of last year. This is particularly interesting because Nielsen analysts had previously gone on record stating that Social Media was more popular than email, based on a global analysis of internet usage. However, when they went on to do more detailed research examining just how Social Media use decreases Email use they actually ended-up disproving their original hypothesis and instead proved that social media use actually leads to increased Email use – as illustrated in the chart below. You can read more about their research here.

More recently, this same finding has been confirmed by US Relationship Marketing Agency Merkle in its ‘View from the Social Inbox’ report released just last month. Based on research conducted in late 2009, they too found that active social network users are more likely to be avid email users. With 42% of social networkers checking their email 4+ times per day compared to just 27% of non-social networkers (as shown below). You can download the full Merkle report here.

So, now that we have a growing body of evidence that Email is continuing to be a key online communication channel – despite the overwhelming popularity of various forms of social media – here comes the important question… Given Email’s continued, if not growing, importance – just how happy are you with the way you’re using it to engage with your supporters?

This question has been particularly front of mind for me recently as I’ve been working with two large UK charities to help develop their online fundraising strategies and in both cases opportunities to improve email use have offered some of the greatest income growth wins.

If you’re in the same boat, then don’t feel too downhearted – because you’re certainly not alone. According to the 2009 Adestra/Econsultancy Email Marketing Census, 72% of email marketers (from both commercial and non-profit organisations) admitted that they are not using email as effectively as they could – despite acknowledging that it offers the best ROI of any online activity other than natural search. Interestingly, as shown below, the top two reasons given for not using email effectively were ‘Quality of email database’ and ‘Lack of strategy’, with ‘Poor technology’ 7th in the list – reflecting the fact that many organisations now have access to the technology required to undertake pretty sophisticated email programmes, but their strategic planning has yet to catch-up:

With most of the online fundraising buzz these days tending to be focused on some form of social media activity, it’s good to be reassured that dear old email is here to stay – and, in the light of this, to be prompted to make time to consider whether you’re online income is suffering because you’re not using it as well as you could be.

(First published on my givinginadigitalworld.org blog)

As is usual towards the end of the year – and even more so towards the end of a decade – people tend to start postulating as to what the future will hold, leading to a pre-Christmas flurry of articles and blog posts about key trends to watch going forward.

In the good old days this used to involve journalists calling-round or sending emails in early November and then collating whatever their contacts contributed into an end of year trends piece.  In an interesting sign of the times, this year social media has undoubtedly taken-over as the key way of sharing and collating thoughts on the future – with a range of crowdsourcing initiatives underway focusing on just this topic. So much so that Philanthropy 2173 blogger Lucy Bernholz is saying that this is the point at which the whole idea of crowdsourcing trends has ‘jumped the shark‘.

To illustrate what I mean by this, in just the last couple of days I’ve been sent details of two specific social media initiatives aiming to capitalise on crowdsourcing to highlight key philanthropy and fundraising trends. The first is the US-based FutureLab, which kicked-off mid-year and has now got 60 ideas and discussion questions under debate. The second is  Fundraising Scenarios, created by UK-based consultancy The Management Centre. Then, you can add to this the Twitter equivalent which is fast gathering pace under the hashtag #nonprofit2010.

With all this going-on, there’s really no need for me to add any specific 2010-2020 insights here – other than to say that I predict fundraisers going into strategic planning for the next decade with a very long list of trend-related things to try to take into account.

For quite a few months now I’ve been working with the team at Cancer Research UK to help develop a new segmentation for their frankly massive supporter database. After countless days spent working through transactional analyses, quantitative and qualitative research findings, and segment profiles we’re now pretty much reaching the point where the segmentation is due to launch. So, it was perfect timing for one of my old colleagues there to email me a link to a very interesting blog post by Brad Bortner of Forrester Research – explaining “Why good segmentations fail”. Thanks Bob!

Bortner explains that recent Forrester research reveals most segmentations never fully deliver their planned business results – not because they haven’t been well developed, but because effective plans are not put in place to ensure that the segmentation is properly adopted and used across all parts of the organisation.

He then provides some very sound advice on how to avoid this happening, including

• Ensuring cross-functional buy-in from the very start – so you don’t end-up with a wonderful segmentation that no-one is interested in using
• Providing clear guidance as to which segments should be prioritised for development – to prevent diffusion of effort as teams try to target all segments for fear of missing an opportunity
• Supporting development of an integrated approach to the priority segments – such that all teams work together to get the most from the segmentation
• Hosting a one- to two-day Segmentation Adoption Session with all key stakeholders at which as a team you bring the segments to life; confirm priority segments; define optimal segment products, channels, and messaging; and agree how to measure successful implementation going forward.

Undoubtedly well worth a read if you are considering reviewing your supporter or customer segmentation anytime soon.

Here in the UK we are in the midst of a series of country-wide strikes by our national mail carrier Royal Mail. The strikes are all down to disagreements relating to ‘modernisation’ – which the management say is essential to overcome market changes that have led to core business deliveries falling at 10% per year. But which that the mail workers’ union fears will result in job losses.

One commentator I heard the other day, speaking of the need for modernisation and whether it was simply too little too late, summed-up the fundamental challenge the Royal Mail faces thus… “They are operating in a Sunset Industry. In ten or perhaps twenty years time there simply won’t be any bulk mail as we know it today. There will just be home deliveries and everything else will be online.”.

This set me thinking… Firstly, how this seems like a classic example of a once monopoly supplier walking myopically into obscurity, not unlike the big gas mantle suppliers as the world shifted to electric light. Right from the early days of email, I could never understand why the Royal Mail didn’t get in on the act. Our national telephone company did, resulting in British Telecom now providing the bulk of of all broadband connections in the UK. But not Royal Mail. Not sure which bit of the term ‘e-mail‘ they didn’t find relevant to their business?

Secondly, and more relevantly, this is a very timely reminder to all strategically minded fundraisers not to get trapped in a similarly myopic manner – unless they want to be part of a Sunset Industry too. Because, of course, most individual donor programes are still predominantly reliant on direct mail – leading this week’s issue of trade publication Third Sector to sport the front page headline “Charities ‘will lose millions if the post strikes continue’”.

For several years now response rates to most cold and warm direct mail campaigns have been falling, yet surprisingly few fundraisers have seriously begun to consider how they might significantly reduce their reliance on the postal system. Mind you, if the forecast is correct of “ten, or perhaps twenty years” before people no longer use personal mail as we know it, then perhaps you feel you’ve actually got more pressing issues to deal with?

If so, then bear in mind that if there’s one thing that the amazingly fast growth of social media usage has shown us, it is that the pace of digital communications change has a tendency to surprise even the most enthusiastic observers. So, perhaps you should allow some time to think about it? If Third Sector’s headline predictions come true and Christmas Appeal income is slashed due to non-delivery, then you’ll certainly have the basis of a clear business case for seriously considering the alternatives – because it seems likely that these won’t be the last such strikes that we see as the sun continues to set on Royal Mail.

So, whether the strikes continue through Christmas or not, how about you make a New Year’s resolution to kick-off 2010 with a thorough contactability audit of your individual donor database – properly assessing just what proportion of landline, mobile phone, and email addresses you have across the key segments of your database? Then set yourself specific annual targets for improving non-postal contactability and a clear strategy to test and learn how to make most effective use of alternative channels going forward.